Pescia Honey, Pure Terroir

Over the past week, our Seattle Post-Intelligencer has written a lively series of vignettes about honey “laundering” or adulteration (www.seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/honey). Thanks to having imported Paolo Pescia’s vari-floraled honeys for 10 years now, we are great honey devotees, and have been obsessed with some local, quality honeys too. Favorites include the lavender honey we picked up this summer at San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal Farmer’s Market, Hawaiian White Honey, and Rockridge Farm’s raspberry honey (of which we were able to grab a whole delicious comb a couple summers ago).

Contrary to the reports of adulteration in some imported honey, Pescia’s honeys, like many other limited-production honeys, are free from chemicals and contaminants. Honey like Pescia’s sulla and chestnut are produced when he transports his apiaries into the interior of Tuscany’s natural parks. Moreover, Pescia honeys have “proudly” passed several lab analyses for the Chinese-based contaminant choloramphenicol, which has never been discovered in honey “Made in Italy”.

For those more interested in the gastronomic attributes of this natural product, honey like Pescia’s is truly a terroir-driven product-like a fine wine-which captures the aroma, flavor, and natural environment of specific Tuscan locales. Here is a vignette of one of our visits to a Pescia honey terroir.

Driving southward on the A12 west of Pisa, we began to take more notice of the surroundings as we drove by the vast umbrella pinewoods that comprise the San Rossore-Migliarino National Park. With the marble quarries of Carrara and the playful Carnevale city of Viareggio just behind us, the land turns more to pure nature. From the pinewoods we began to drive along the rolling hills that form the landscape south of Livorno. Human habitation is sparse here, with only the occasional Tuscan farmhouse with its square-inside-a-square design or a restored medieval tower punctuating fields and small islands of pines or rows of cypresses.

On a late Spring day the hills were dotted with freshly-rolled bales of hay and bold green grasses. A peach-magenta sun was beginning to angle its light on the new spring-green hues of varied small cultivations. The green landscape was emboldened with patches of incredible pink-deep magenta red, which naturally caught our eyes. With the sun’s rays slanting I squinted to try to figure out what plant could be flowering so abundantly and boldly at this time of year. Looking at the flower carpet’s regular, short stature and rounded leaves I realized it was a bean plant, perhaps a clover.

It took only a few minutes to clarify as we were soon meeting Paolo Pescia inside the small town of Rosignano Marittimo to drive to our agritursimo for dinner. He arrived full of energy in his 4-seater pickup still loaded with a couple of apiary pieces, a tin cone for smoke, his net mask to protect his face from bees. He had just returned from a day of tending the hives set beside sulla fields. Sulla was the flower that had mesmerized us roadside and it was is in full flower here too.

Paolo led us to the agriturismo as the sweet aroma of beeswax and fresh honey drifted in from his pickup. “We have a bumper crop this year and there is work to be done,” he asserted in a way that instantly made us a part of the honeymakeing process, participants in his mestiere or vocation. Besides sulla, we had seen Acacia trees in flower in the hills and plains from Piedmont through Liguria and into Tuscany in that verdant, warm Spring.

“Acacia has already begun to set seed down here on the coast, so we’re carrying the bees up into the Appenines now to get more honey.” We would find out the next day when stopping in the Chianti hills that frenzied bees everywhere are attracted to the sweet legume flower-originally, like the tomato of Italy, imported from the New World.

Under a torrid sun the next morning we awakened to a cooling view of the sea at Rosignano Solvay, where the bicarbonate waters make a swirling design of light blue, aquamarine and dark blue as the eye moves towards the horizon, Elba, and Corsica. Paolo’s wife Sonja met us in fatigues and a green shirt, as she had been scraping honey from comb all morning, making the new crop of macchia mediterranea honey. Its pungent, caramel-toffee aroma permeated the Pescia’s capinone or warehouse-workspace, mingled with the sweet afternote of fresh, warm beeswax. Sonja had us taste a hand-lettered jar of cardo or cardoon blossom honey and as its light sugar grains floated across my palate, I sensed the sweet and mild –not bitter or artichokey-lightly vegetal and floral flavors. I refreshed my palate with a sweet floral spoon of acacia honey and then -another surprise-pick up a jar of straw-colored mandorlo or almond flower honey. Its hand-lettered label also is a reminder that this is a rare honey, very limited. Like all of Pescia’s honeys, the flavor was distinct, evocative of the plant it came from, with a compelling texture and aroma.

When it finally came time to take tiny tastes of the still-liquid, heady, new-crop sulla honey from pink sulla-colored gelato spoons, the aroma and flavor were like biting into a thick, essential-oil rich flower petal-intensly flavored and full of the sun of Spring. A honey that brought back to our mind’s eyes the fields of bright pink flowers that had captured our attention the day before. In a complex rite of nature, theTuscan sun had been transformed into the viscous nectar that magical bees had made into this honey ambrosia.

Try any of Dr. Pescia’s honeys gently cooked into panna cotta to fully unveil their flavor and aroma. Hopefully you too will be soon be transported by the spoonful to the rolling coastal hills and pinewoods near his Tuscan home.

Honey Panna Cotta

In this simple but elegant dessert, you can truly taste the essence of what makes Dr. Pescia’s honeys so unique. The sweet character we expect from honey is nearly secondary to the almost savory, earthy-floral flavor that the honey infuses into the cream. Other distinctive honeys can be used in the place of those from Dr. Pescia.

1 envelope (1 tablespoon) powdered gelatin

2 cups heavy cream

1/3 cup Dr. Pescia heather or sulla honey

1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest (preferably blood orange)

Sprinkle the powdered gelatin over 1/3 cup cool water in a small dish; set aside to soften.

Warm the cream in a medium saucepan over medium heat, just to the point that it begins to steam but not boil. Stir the honey into the warm cream until it is fully dissolved and take the pan from the heat. Add the softened gelatin and stir until it is fully melted.

Ladle the mixture into six 4-ounce ramekins or other small dishes. Let sit until cooled to room temperature. Sprinkle the tops with the orange zest, cover the dishes with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until set, at least 2 hours.

To serve, unmold the panna cottas onto small plates.

Makes 6 servings.