06 September 2017

Heather Hills Farm Celebrates Sweet Success with Great Taste 2017 Top 50 Foods in the World Accolade

Great Taste, the world’s most coveted food awards, which celebrates the very best in food and drink, announced the Great Taste stars of 2017. Out of over 12,300 products to be judged, Heather Hills Farm was one of only two Scottish artisans to scoop a Great Taste Top 50 Foods in the World accolade for our 3-star award-winning Raw Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey, together with 1-star awards for our Scottish Heather Honey with Whisky and handcrafted Scottish Marmalade with Heather Honey.

As a traditional family-run honey farm established from just a single hive in 1945, we now boast 1300 across Perthshire and Deeside, the most beautiful parts of Scotland. Add traditional extraction and collection methods to the mix and its little surprise that as a Great Taste Producer and Citaslow Supporter, our artisan raw honeys and handcrafted preserves are internationally recognised for their superior quality and distinct flavour.

“The principles of raw honey - where the honey is not heated over the normal temperature of the hive and is unfiltered – is now only just being understood”, says Mark Noonan, our Managing Director. “However, it is still not widely known that honey is like wine and dictated by its terroir - the flower, the nectar, the soil, the climate, the bees, the people and the practices. It’s basically nature’s way of creating something so wonderful from a recipe of variable elements”.

“We are passionate about Scottish provenance and delighted to have won awards for our recipes that pair our signature Scottish Heather Honey – gathered from wild-flowering heather - with other key ingredients that allow the marriage of flavours to truly shine. Our Scottish Heather Honey with Whisky is blended with the 10 year old Edradour Malt from our local distillery in Pitlochry and in recognition to the time-honoured tradition of marmalade making in Dundee, we have handcrafted our Scottish Marmalade with Heather Honey, a thin-cut Seville orange marmalade that blends the aroma and taste of the Spanish orange groves into our late Scottish summer.”

“However, there are so many other honeys from around the world - each with a different aroma, palate, finish and texture. Some we cannot produce in the UK and some far superior than those we can produce – this due to their terroir. As such, to complement our Scottish Honeys, we have created our Connoisseur Range - a selection of the finest, raw monofloral honeys sourced from around the world - specially selected for their unique characters, all traditionally gathered and raw.”

“For example, Leatherwood Honey only comes from Tasmania of which the Leatherwood Tree is indigenous. It grows in an ancient rainforest dating back 65 million years and takes 250 years to mature before it can blossom to produce the nectar for the bees to gather.“

Our Leatherwood Honey captures the wonderful aromas of these humid rainforests. Known as the ‘Nectar of the Gods’, it has a smooth, buttery full-bodied finish with an unbeatable floral aroma and has been described by judges as: “stunning…perfect continuity of nose and palate; amazing length, powerfully individual aroma yet somehow subtly engaging…Perfection”. Recognised by the global Slow Food movement's Ark of Taste - an international catalogue of endangered heritage foods that are sustainably produced, unique in taste and part of a distinct ecoregion - it’s a varietal with character and one not to be missed!

Judged by over 500 of the most demanding palates, belonging to food critics, chefs, cooks, restauranteurs and producers, as well as a whole host of food writers and journalists, Great Taste is widely acknowledged as the most respected food accreditation scheme for artisan and speciality food producers. As well as a badge of honour, the unmistakable black and gold Great Taste label is a signpost to a wonderful tasting product, which has been discovered through hours and hours of blind-tasting by hundreds of judges.

1300 Hives - 52 Million Honey Bees - Speciality Honey & Preserves