How honey is tasted

What the laboratory cannot tell you

A laboratory analysis reveals how much water honey contains, which sugars and which pollen. It cannot tell you how it smells and tastes. According to a review by Marcazzan et al. (2018), sensory analysis therefore complements physico-chemical and pollen analysis: it checks quality, detects defects and compares a honey with the description of a typical single-flower honey. In its 2004 descriptive sheets of European unifloral honeys, the International Honey Commission (IHC) combined all three views – sensory description, pollen and chemistry. The senses also pick up defects that routine tests miss, such as a smoky smell, a metallic taint or the start of fermentation.

How the experts assess it

The Italian register of experts prescribes a quiet room free of foreign odours, a temperature of 20–22 °C and daylight or similar lighting. 30–40 grams of honey at 20–22 °C go into a 160 ml balloon glass, a technique described by the French researchers Gonnet and Vache in 1981. Each assessor works alone and in silence and judges at most about twenty samples in a session. Assessors are trained according to the international standard ISO 8586.

Sight comes first: physical state, clarity, impurities, colour and crystallisation. Then smell. The honey is spread round the side of the glass with a spatula to release as much aroma as possible, and assessors sniff in short breaths with pauses, because the sense of smell tires quickly. Finally, 1–2 grams of honey are left to melt in the mouth. Assessors judge sweetness, acidity, saltiness and bitterness, astringent or refreshing sensations, thickness and crystals on the tongue, the aroma perceived through the back of the nose, and how long the taste persists.

Smell and taste influence each other. In an experiment reported by the magazine Food Technology, assessors wearing nose clips rated a sugar solution sweeter than honey; without the clips they found them equally sweet. Honey’s aroma, in other words, boosts its sweetness.

The aroma wheel

To understand each other, assessors use a shared vocabulary. The International Honey Commission adopted and adapted an aroma wheel created by the Belgian group CARI: aromas are divided into families and sub-families, each with a real reference substance that assessors can smell. In 2013–2014 the commission revised the wheel and validated 96 reference odours. The draft of the new wheel has seven families – floral, fruity, warm, aromatic, chemical, vegetal and animal – with sub-families such as delicate (violet), fresh fruit (apple), green (cut grass), dry (hay) and damp (mushroom).

In 2014 the Honey and Pollination Center at the University of California, Davis published its own honey flavour and aroma wheel. It was led by the centre’s director Amina Harris with sensory scientist Sue Langstaff and contains around a hundred descriptors – from butterscotch and vanilla to molasses, and even ‘cat pee’, as tasters describe the smell of some honeys.

What well-known honeys taste like

The specification of the Tuscan Miele della Lunigiana, a protected designation of origin, describes its acacia honey as almost colourless, with a faint fruity aroma reminiscent of flowers, distinctly sweet, without bitterness and with a delicate vanilla flavour. According to the same specification, chestnut honey has a strong, penetrating aroma and a lingering taste with more or less marked bitterness; the Italian beekeepers’ union Unaapi also calls it astringent. Lime honey smells fresh, minty and balsamic, a little ‘medicinal’, recalling lime-blossom tea.

Buckwheat honey was assessed by a trained Slovenian panel: an animal note dominated, followed by warm and chemical notes, with only a faint floral one. Chemical analysis shows that its typical malty smell comes mainly from the compound 3-methylbutanal.

Honey sommeliers

Italy leads the way. The National Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey (Albo nazionale degli esperti in analisi sensoriale del miele) was founded in 1988, received formal rules from the agriculture ministry in 1999 and is now run by the research body CREA in Bologna. Candidates take three courses – introductory, advanced and examination – and practise on their own in between; the exam is mostly practical – recognising and describing honeys. The title of expert may not be used for advertising.

Members of the register also judge Italy’s oldest contest, Grandi Mieli d’Italia – Tre Gocce d’Oro in Castel San Pietro Terme near Bologna, which began in 1981 as the Giulio Piana prize. In 2026 it received 1,772 honeys from 616 beekeepers; each beekeeper receives a score sheet with comments. The Italian method has spread elsewhere: the American Honey Tasting Society was accredited by the Italian register in 2019, Britain’s Honey Guild keeps its own register of experts, and in France and Belgium tasting is taught by Etienne Bruneau of CARI, a co-author of the aroma wheel.

The Black Jar contest in Asheville, North Carolina, works quite differently: only taste is judged, jars are wrapped in brown paper and judges taste through black straws so they cannot see the honey’s colour.

And in Czechia?

The Český med (Czech honey) contest, run by the Bee Research Institute in Dol, does not judge taste or aroma: points are awarded for the laboratory analysis, the mandatory and additional label information and the overall aesthetic impression. The institute offers sensory assessment as a laboratory service, and according to 2020 materials it has become part of its method for verifying honey authenticity. We found no public courses for ‘honey sommeliers’ and no register of experts in Czechia.