We choose to buy from specific companies for variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s because we love the origin story, sometimes it’s because the product is so phenomenal. Isn’t it great when you can both in one product? That is the story with the Carmel Honey Company. The the origin story of a 14 year old who has his own honey company is mesmerizing. But you don’t buy this honey out of charity, you buy it because it is phenomenal. I got a chance to meet the founder, Jake, and try some of his phenomenal honey at the recent #LLBlogNotaConf blogger getaway in Carmel by the Sea.
The Carmel Honey Company is run by a now 14 year old but it didn’t start that way. It started as a 5th graders career project in his class. They were all assigned roles and positions that would occur within a company. Jake was assigned the role of web designer. He created a fully functioning honey business site due to his already existing passion for honeybees. This project didn’t stop with just a website that he took that fully functioning website and used it to help create the Carmel Honey Company. Now Carmel Honey Company has a hundred and twenty-five hives. Our young entrepreneur owner had just come from the Food and Wine Festival where he was with Graham Elliot the weekend previous to the honey tasting I was at.
Jake has a serious passion for bees of all types he doesn’t stop with just running a profitable business. He also does non-profit work and going into schools and talking about bee culture and what we can do to help the bees survive because the bees help us survive! He is a very impressive young man!
You know that I love business, business education and young entrepreneurs. But that is not the real reason that I’m loving the Carmel Honey Company right now. It’s for the honey! The tasting that I attended we got to try 4 different types of honey. We got to try an orange blossom honey, a sage honey, a wildflower honey, and a meadowfoam honey. Now I’ve had a lot of honey. I come from the Central Valley, the land of produce, so of course I had some great honey from some great beekeepers. My personal favorite and standard honey I use everyday happens to be the Mandarin orange honey but I have to say that the Carmel Honey orange blossom honey is phenomenal! It has an extra tangy citrus bite that just isn’t there in a lot of the orange honeys that I’ve eaten. The sage honey was intriguingly savory yet still sweet and harmonious to the idea of using it in a great sauce over beef. Wildflower honey, which typically is my least favorite honey, was really good. But the honey that gave me the greatest pause was the Meadowfoam honey. I’ve never tasted anything like that.
I’ve tried a lot of other varieties of Honey (pomegranate honey anyone?) but I’ve never tasted anything quite like Meadowfoam honey. It is a single source honey and has a unique sweetness. It tastes like dessert. Like rally good vanilla marshmallows that have been toasted in preparation of a s’more. It’s rich and dense and everything that a great dessert should be. This isn’t a honey that you’re going to eat a lot of. But it is a honey that is going to satisfy that sweet tooth. I personally think that this will be great over a grapefruit or just when you’re rummaging through the kitchen going to need something a certain something and that will satisfy it. I think would also be great in any kind of dessert baking or any time you want to reduce the sugar but keep a luxurious sweetness. I am thinking of strawberries and marscapone cheese with a drizzle over the top. I’m sure that this is not the first Meadowfoam honey to exist but it was phenomenal and entrancing.
I love all the honeys that I tasted that day but the Orange and the Meadowfoam will keep me ordering time after time. So go support a kid who has started a very successful and thriving honey business and get some great honey. Now if you will excuse me, I have made myself hungry!
(While I was at the #LLBlogNotAConf and the honey tasting was an included event, I was not paid for this post. All opinions are mine and I did receive gift for attending the tasting.)
