Honey - the taste of the burbs

My partner and I visited friends on the outskirts of Melbourne last weekend. They are the proud recent owners of some bees, all lodged in a smartly painted white hive. Keeping bees is not for the faint-hearted. Beyond the threat of stings there is the possibility of "bee thrall" where the beekeeper opens the hive and becomes mesmerised, Quatermass-like, by the fluid motion of the bee commune, forgetting not only why they had opened the hive, but that the hive contains tens of thousands of potentially enraged stingers.

We were lucky enough to taste the first honey from the hive. Tradition has it that the first honey is magical and you should make a wish before you have the first taste. We duly did... and then tasted. The flavours of that honey - squeezed cold into a jar and eaten fresh, no boiling, no added anything - were astonishing. There was liquorice - "ah, they'll have been at the fennel flowers"; there were notes of pear - "the neighbour's pear tree". The teaspoon of honey was like flying through the local back yards. The flavours were like a bee's conducted tour of favourite, fragrant spots. Close your eyes and you're with them. Did I really detect the faintest aftertaste of rusting Holden?

Commercial honey is okay, in the same way that blended whisky is okay. Blended whisky contrives to taste like whisky ought to, generically, but if you want to get into the whole whisky experience: the heather, smoke, honey, peat and goodness knows what else, you need a single malt. Honey, it turns out, is no different.

That first magic teaspoonful has ruined us for all other honey.