Spain's Golden Harvest: Organic Honey from Puremiel

Spain's Golden Harvest: Organic Honey from Puremiel

HoneyTrio

In the southern Cádiz region of Spain, the remote and pristine Grazalema & Alcornocales Natural Parks are in full bloom, and Puremiel’s bees are busy in production mode – working hard to bring us the delicate (and organically certified) nectar that naturally sweetens our world.

Organic honey is not an easy substance to obtain. Among the many strict criteria for certifying honey as organic is that the foraging area must be at no risk of containing environmental toxins such as pesticides. Since bees’ fuzzy little bodies are designed to attract pollen, they can easily gather any and all environmental particles they come in contact with. And in a day’s work, a colony’s foragers will cover a staggering amount of territory. There are few locations in the world that can claim to have the extensive pristine environment needed to produce truly organic honey. Fortunately, the natural parks of the Cádiz region of Spain are among those few.

The dramatically rugged limestone massif of the Sierra de Grazalema natural park, designated as a Unesco biosphere reserve in 1977, is known for being the rainiest place in Spain. It is because of all this rain that it is also one of the most verdant areas with a wide range of flora for the Puremiel bees to choose from. And with over 127,000 acres, the bees can roam far and wide without encountering any human activity or toxicity.

Los Alcornocales Natural Park located between the provinces of Cádiz and Málaga has nearly all of its uninhabited areas covered in native Mediterranean forest. In fact the Alcornocales, which translates as “cork oak groves” holds one of the most extensive cork forests in Spain and one of the largest in the world.

It is within these two extensive parks that Puremiel’s honey bees forage for nectar – roaming far and wide in search of their favorite flowers to provide food for their hives, and ultimately for us, in such delectable varieties as orange blossom, native forest, eucalyptus, and lavender, which was a Sofi finalist in 2011. This year’s harvest is rumored to be of exceptional quality and flavor. We look forward to testing it out for ourselves!

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