Honey on Our Minds
And in Our Winter Blooms Holiday Gift Collection
“ When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is to not let the bees know you’re coming.”
In the category of miraculous foods and drinks, we’d list coffee first. But honey also belongs in the top 5. The sweetener requires 2 million flowers for every pound. Honey’s sweetness has been celebrated since ancient times. For our holiday collection this year, Winter Blooms, we were drawn to honey for its floral dimensions.
Flowers inspired the entire collection: The look and feel of all our coffees and tools in our Winter Blooms collection were inspired by Bay Area floral artist Sayaka Wada’s exquisite arrangements. In addition, the guiding flavor for our campaign was florality. This often overlooked yet magical quality—part aroma, part taste—is present in only the finest coffees we offer. But hints of rose, lavender, or citrus blossom (to name just a few kinds of florality) are present in other foods, too, especially honey.
It stands to reason: that which comes from flowers might taste like them too. And so we saw an opportunity to include honey in our winter lineup as another way to showcase florality. Because what is honey if not the essence of renewal? It is, after all, the food that sustains a colony of bees through the winter into the next year.
Beautiful Mornings Coffee Set with Coffee Blossom Honey
This jar of coffee blossom honey comes from one of Guatemala’s most renowned coffee producers, setting this holiday gift set of our Winter Blooms Blend and Classic Granola apart. Unlike many other coffee blossom honeys that are sourced from smaller producers whose bees pollinate several farms, this honey is made from bees exclusively pollinating the myriad of coffee cultivars on Finca El Injerto’s ecologically managed land. There, coffee groves flourish at astonishing elevations, between 5,000 and 7,000 feet in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. The bright acidity and vivid fruity flavors that such altitudes bring out in coffee also come through in this honey, which we love for its sweet fruitiness and malty, even smoky finish.
Acacia Honey Latte
Adding anything to a latte—a drink predicated on achieving the right balance between milk and espresso—is like playing with fire. But we knew we wanted to offer a seasonal drink that gives guests the chance to explore florality beyond our drip coffees. Many kinds of honey were auditioned as potential additions to our latte, a dense, syrupy shot of Hayes Valley Espresso and creamy steamed milk. Most failed. Honeys often have an intense sweetness and even a touch of funk that tastes great when drizzled on bread, but wreaks havoc on something as precariously balanced as a latte. So when we tried acacia honey, a honey known for its clean and mild taste, we knew immediately it was the ideal addition. In the words of Matt Longwell, Global Product Manager, Beverage, “Its sweetness is so soft and delicately floral that it doesn’t necessarily give itself away as honey until the finish.”
Costa Rica Coffee Set
There is no actual honey in this coffee set. But we had to include this exciting set of three coffees—a celebration of Costa Rica’s expert take on honey-style processing. The name refers to the method farmers use to transform coffee cherry into exportable beans by controlling the amount of fruit that remains on the beans while drying. The word honey describes the range of colors the seeds can take on as they dry, depending on the amount of fruit left on. A white honey is where most of the cherry was scrubbed from the seed, while a black honey is a coffee where most of the fruit dried on the seed. The flavors of the finished coffees reflect the method. The white honey is cleaner and crisper tasting, while the black honey veers fruitier and jammier, resembling a natural processed coffee.
A bit of magic. A bit of florality. Sounds like honey to us.