Mountain honey

Mountain honey is honey that bees gather in the mountains, most often a multifloral honey from the nectar of mountain meadows and pastures. As with meadow honey, the EU directive has no separate definition of mountain honey: it is a trade name. The make-up depends on altitude, the plants around the apiary and the year.

A 2021 Italian study examined six such honeys from the Alps, where apiaries stood on mountain grasslands rich in Alpine herbs. The laboratory showed the honey to be either monofloral from rhododendron or raspberry, or bifloral from those plants, while the sample from the lowest altitude contained linden, heather and chestnut pollen. The authors conclude that producing true mountain wildflower honey is difficult and that thorough description of it matters.

The word also appears in European protected names: among the kinds of Miel de Granada is a mountain honey, and Miel de Asturias has multifloral kinds named forest, coastal and mountain. These documents give no description of the taste of mountain honey.

Why this matters to you: mountain honey is no guarantee of one taste or composition. On the label look for the country, region and altitude of harvest rather than expecting the traits of a monofloral honey; meadows and pastures vanish when forest advances into them, so this honey depends on keeping them.