Honeys from the South East - Class Summary

Honeys of the Southeast — Your Tasting Notes

From Flower to Flavor · Windcrest Farms Honey Tasting Experience 

August 2026

Thank you for tasting with us. This page is just for you — a set of notes to take home from the honey flight shared at Windcrest Farms August 20 & 22. Bookmark it, come back to it, and use it next time you're standing in front of a honey shelf trying to decide what to buy.

As a reminder from class: honey tasting isn't about finding the "right" answer. It's about noticing more than you noticed before.

What to Notice When Tasting Honey

Color
Notice the honey’s shade and clarity, from nearly water-white to deep amber. Color can offer clues about floral source, season, and mineral content, but darker does not necessarily mean stronger or better.

Aroma
Gently warm the sample by holding the tasting vessel in your hands, then stir the honey to help release its aroma. Smell before tasting and notice whether the scent is floral, fruity, herbal, woody, earthy, spicy, or something else.

Texture
Pay attention to how the honey feels on the tongue. Is it thin, silky, creamy, thick, crystallized, grainy, or almost buttery? Texture is an important part of the overall sensory experience.

Flavor
Notice the flavors that appear as the honey moves across your palate. Beyond sweetness, you may find notes that are floral, citrusy, fruity, herbal, malty, caramel-like, woody, earthy, or even slightly bitter.

Finish
The finish is what remains after you swallow. Notice how long the flavor lingers and whether it changes. Some honeys disappear quickly, while others leave behind lasting floral, fruity, spicy, woody, or pleasantly bitter notes.

Local honey helps you taste your region. Curated honey helps you taste the world.

Today's flight included two honeys produced within about 24 miles of each other, plus four varietal honeys sourced from beekeeping partners throughout the Southeast. Here's where each one came from and what made it worth tasting.

1 & 2. The Wildflower Comparison

The heart of today's tasting: two Wildflower honeys, produced less than 25 miles apart, tasted side by side.

Windcrest Farms — Union County, North Carolina

Produced at Windcrest Farms in the Upper Piedmont and Catawba River Basin region — a rural, farm-based apiary rather than a backyard one. Same river basin as The Giddy Bee's hives, different foraging landscape entirely. Confirmed nectar sources, scarlet clover, white clover, soy beans and tons of local agricultural goodness from nearby farms. 

What to notice: Two jars, same label — "Wildflower" — and still two different honeys. That's the point. Wildflower doesn't describe a flavor; it describes a category. The flavor comes from the landscape underneath it.

The Giddy Bee — Lancaster County, South Carolina

Produced from Anne Marie's own hives in Lancaster, South Carolina, close to the Catawba River. This is a backyard/suburban apiary, foraging along a mix of green space, gardens, and roadside growth — including the corridor along the Highway 521 bypass and nearby rail line. Confirmed nectar sources in the area include clover, tulip poplar, herbs, wild blackberry, privet, and wildflowers such as sunflower, aster, and coneflower.

What to notice: Wildflower honey is a seasonal snapshot — a record of whatever was blooming, whatever the weather allowed to bloom, and whatever the bees chose to visit during that particular harvest. You may have noticed a light foam or fine texture on the surface; that's a natural result of extraction, and a good reminder that this honey came straight from the hive.

3. Orange Blossom Honey

Source: Honey Feast — Clermont, Florida

Honey Feast is a small-batch Central Florida beekeeper located on a 15-acre farm in Clermont, adjacent to Lake Louisa State Park. Their farm includes a sustainable apiary along with hundreds of citrus trees, including navel oranges. Their Orange Blossom honey reflects one of Florida’s most recognizable nectar flows and is bottled and packaged directly on the farm.

What to notice: Despite the name, Orange Blossom honey doesn’t taste like orange juice. Expect a clean, bright sweetness with a light, fragrant floral quality and subtle citrus character. Weather during the citrus bloom can have an outsized effect on the harvest — rain, wind, temperature, and bloom timing all influence how much nectar is available and how successfully bees can forage.

Try it with: tea, fruit, yogurt, vinaigrettes, soft cheeses, light baked goods — or infused with herbs and spices, where its delicate citrus-floral notes can really shine.

4. Tupelo Honey

Source: Blue Ridge Honey Company — Lakemont, Georgia

Produced primarily from the White Tupelo tree, which grows in swampy river basins and floodplain wetlands across the Florida Panhandle and south Georgia. The bloom window is brief and hard to access — beekeepers often place hives on platforms, docks, or riverbanks to reach it — which is part of why Tupelo carries the reputation (and price) it does.

What to notice: Often described as delicate, floral, fruity, and lightly buttery, with a clean sweetness that can feel soft or bright depending on the harvest.

Try it with: warm biscuits, mild cheese, plain yogurt, fresh fruit, delicate tea — anywhere it can stay the featured flavor rather than getting buried.

5. Black Mangrove Honey

Source: Bee Friends Farm — Jacksonville, Florida

A family beekeeping operation and Florida-licensed honey packer based in Jacksonville. Bee Friends Farm are migratory beekeepers, moving hives seasonally to follow Florida's best nectar flows across the state, and manage several hundred colonies during peak season. Black Mangrove is one of their signature mono-floral honeys, gathered from Black Mangrove trees that grow rooted in salt and brackish coastal water — one of the few nectar sources of its kind.

What to notice: The honey's flavor comes from the tree's nectar, not from the surrounding saltwater. Expect a rich, sweet-and-savory character that's a little different from anything else in the flight — some tasters pick up a mineral or "coastal" impression.

Try it with: cheese, cornbread, roasted vegetables, seafood glazes, vinaigrettes, or a cocktail/mocktail.

6. Sourwood Honey

Source: Blue Ridge Honey Company — Lakemont, Georgia

Produced from the Sourwood tree, native to the Appalachian Mountains and foothills. The name comes from the tartness of the tree's leaves — not the honey, which is prized rather than sour. Sourwood has a narrow bloom window tied closely to elevation and weather, and a true varietal harvest depends on enough Sourwood in bloom at the right moment with limited competing nectar nearby. It's one of the most sought-after honeys in the Southeast for exactly that reason.

What to notice: Often buttery, floral, warm, spiced, licorice or caramel-like notes, with a finish that tends to unfold gradually rather than arrive all at once.

Try it with: biscuits, aged or soft cheese, plain yogurt, or a simple dessert — Sourwood is one to use simply and let it speak for itself.

Reading a Honey Label (Quick Reference)

A few terms worth knowing next time you're shopping:

  • Pure Honey — honey without added syrups, flavors, or other ingredients.
  • Raw Honey — generally means the honey hasn't been heavily heated or processed, but there's no single legal definition every producer follows. Worth asking: was it heated or just warmed, and to what temperature?
  • Unfiltered — can mean different things producer to producer. Many beekeepers strain out larger wax pieces while keeping the honey's natural character intact.
  • US Grade A — evaluates appearance and physical characteristics (clarity, aroma, moisture content, freedom from sediment). It does not verify that a honey is raw or pure — technically, corn syrup could be labeled US Grade A.
  • Organic Honey — tricky, since bees forage up to five miles from the hive and don't distinguish treated plants from untreated ones. "Organic" typically refers to the beekeeper's practices, not a guarantee about everything the bees visited.
  • Local Honey — no single legal distance. Look for a named beekeeper or farm and a specific town, county, region, or state — and check whether the label distinguishes where the honey was produced from where it was bottled.
  • Varietal Honey — honey identified with one predominant nectar source (like Orange Blossom or Sourwood), even though bees rarely visit only one plant.
  • Wildflower Honey — a mixed-source honey reflecting whatever was blooming near the hive that season.
  • Infused or Flavored Honey — pure honey with something intentionally added — delicious, but a different category from a single floral-source honey.

One thing worth remembering: "local" doesn't automatically mean better-tasting, raw, unheated, or organic — and it isn't a proven treatment for seasonal allergies, since most seasonal allergies come from grass and tree pollen that honey bees don't typically collect. Local honey is worth choosing for plenty of good reasons — supporting a beekeeper you know, tasting your own landscape, strengthening the local economy — just not that one.

Choosing a Honey for What You're Making

  • Everyday sweetening: a balanced Wildflower or mild varietal
  • Tea: Wildflower or Orange Blossom — something that complements rather than competes
  • Cheese boards: a distinctive varietal like Sourwood or Black Mangrove
  • Cooking & glazes: a fuller-flavored honey that holds up once combined with other ingredients
  • Baking: remember honey is liquid — it changes moisture, acidity, and browning, so it's not always a 1:1 swap for sugar
  • A special varietal: keep it simple — drizzled over cheese, warm bread, or plain yogurt, where it can actually be tasted

Keep Tasting

If you'd like to keep exploring:

  • Follow The Giddy Bee for honey education, product updates, and upcoming tastings
  • Join the email list for first access to seasonal honeys and experiences
  • I'm sure there were questions that we didn't get to in class, or 100 more that came up after you left. I've pulled together a list of some of my favorite reads and resources to share with you: The Giddy Bee's Recommended Reading List and Resources
  • If you loved today's experience and know others that would too - reach out about booking a private or corporate honey tasting experience by emailing us at hello@thegiddybee.com

Honey is one of the simplest foods on our table, but every jar holds an entire landscape — flowers, weather, soil, season, bees, and the work of a beekeeper. Next time you open a jar, take a moment to notice the story inside it.

— Anne Marie, The Giddy Bee

Level 1 Honey Sommelier, American Honey Tasting Society