A sweet adventure: I tried purple honey for the first time. Here’s what I thought.
Purple honey really does taste purpley.
Last month, I saw a viral Reddit post claiming bees in the Sandhills of North Carolina — and nowhere else on earth — produce purple or blue honey.
In my reporting, I learned the region’s beekeepers absolutely do see purple honey, but only from time to time, and under mysteriously unknown circumstances. As far as they know, it’s a phenomenon specific to North Carolina.
The beekeepers I talked to described the flavor of such honey as “fruity,” “grapey” and “purpley,” (whatever “purpley” tastes like).
But I needed to know for myself.
David Auman, president of the Richmond County Beekeepers Association, got into beekeeping specifically to make the purple stuff, and his bees have come through for years. He invited me as a guest judge to the club’s annual Honey Tasting Contest this week in Ellerbe — a nearly two-hour drive from the Triangle — promising a spoonful of purple.
And he delivered. He gave me a jar shaped like a bear with the label “Sandhills Purple Honey.” He said it was five years old.
Then I went to the back of the building, a Rod & Gun Club at the end of a dirt road with animal heads mounted on the walls, to taste-test 15 jars of recently harvested liquid gold.
But I didn’t know one of those jars was actually a violet hue. Auman sneakily entered a more recently harvested purple honey into the contest, covering up the jar to hide the lavender haze. My co-judge, state apiary inspector Shirley Harris, and I surprisingly deemed this honey as unsweet.
(Harris, who has nearly 100 honeybee hives at her home, taught me how to properly taste honey. Place it on your tongue, let it dissolve and allow the taste to fill your whole mouth. Sit with the flavor for a moment, even after you swallow.)
I only learned I was tasting purple honey the next morning, when I texted Auman to ask why he didn’t enter any of his purple specialty into the contest.
“I had current purple entered last evening. I had paper taped over my labels,” he replied, punctuating the message with a bee emoji.
Surprise! My first taste of purple honey, and I didn’t find it had the fruity, grapey taste I thought it would.
What does purple honey taste like?
Not realizing I had already tasted some purple honey, I spent my drive home wondering how I should try my new prized possession — the Sandhills Purple Honey in the bear container. Since honey is an everyday staple for me, typically eaten over my breakfast and in my afternoon pick-me-up, I figured I’d wait ‘til the next day for my long-awaited sample.
But I was not patient. I busted through the front door, squeezing a glop on a teaspoon and swallowing it in one gulp. Having just consumed a few cups of honey for dinner at the tasting contest, my spine tingled from the sugary flavor, my stomach begging me to warm up leftover pizza instead. I sealed up the jar and put it on the shelf, ready for my real tasting the next day.
The taste was clear, though: Grape cough syrup, medicine-y and all.
I redid my taste test the next morning, after a full night’s sleep and a belly ready for honey again. I tasted it in three ways, observing that this honey tasted differently than the one from the taste test.
- Drizzled over peanut butter banana toast.
- Stirred into black tea.
- A big ol’ spoonful.
Here’s what I thought:
▪ Purple honey on toast: My first bite of the crunchy toast, silky peanut butter and squishy banana were soured by the purple honey. The flavor was clearly different than my usual clover honey (which has a light, clean taste), but it wasn’t a bad one.
After a few more bites, the flavor mellowed into just being … honey. I eagerly ate up my breakfast, happy to add another round of the purple drizzle to tomorrow’s open-face meal.
▪ Purple honey in tea: The black tea masked the honey flavor, so it didn’t taste any different than a cup with any other kind of honey.
I thought about all the tea I’ve had in friend’s homes, with their supermarket or faraway-travels honey sweetly stirred into my cups. I, personally, never tasted a difference. Now, when I’m trying my hardest to notice extra tang or brightness, I’m coming up short. Tea with honey is, I suppose for my tastebuds, universal.
▪ Plain purple honey: Medicine. A pure shot of grape-flavored medicine. But not the sour-ish cough syrup I take now when I’m sick. It was more like the extra sweet kind I’d have as a kid.
Have you ever sucked on a lollipop from a doctor’s office, barber shop or even a bank? All the purple ones taste the same. And they taste like purple honey.
This story was originally published October 27, 2022 at 8:39 AM with the headline "A sweet adventure: I tried purple honey for the first time. Here’s what I thought.."
