Sweet Provenance: There’s a history behind each sample spoonful
Milou Barry and I saddled up to the stainless steel counter that sits in the honey production quarters of Bocage Bee & Honey. “Garrett, we need a taste of the old Old Bridge honey and the new Old Bridge,” she says. “Bring us some Verry Cherry, too.”
Garrett Holloway, the nephew of Bocage Bee & Honey’s beekeeper Elizabeth Holloway, loads up an armful of honey bottles and places them in front of Barry. We each take a small tasting spoon, and she fills each one with a dollop of the old Old Bridge. This honey variety is harvested from around its namesake in West Baton Rouge. According to Barry, many folks have an emotional reaction to the name itself. It evokes a sense of place for people connected to Baton Rouge and South Louisiana.
I smell the honey, not because Barry says this is good form, but because it seems like the right thing to do. I bring just enough honey to my tongue to get a sense of the flavor and I can sense my eyes growing wide with the kind of satisfaction that spoonfuls of sugary sweetness can bring. “Taste the wildflowers in that one?” Barry asks. The floral tones were distinctly there giving the honey a rich complexity. I licked my spoon clean, excited for a refill.
Barry handles the marketing and sales at Bocage Bee & Honey Co., while also being responsible for naming each variety and creating graphically interesting labels that fit the honey’s origins or prominently featured flavor: River Road honey, for example, named for its geographical location. Heirloom Farms Fresh Peach, named for the leading fruit.
A storied past in the kitchen is key to Barry’s ability to detect subtleties in honey varieties and conceive such fitting names and labels. She opened and ran The Real Pickle restaurant in Shreveport for many years and then started Wild Olive catering when she returned to Baton Rouge. She has consulted with several top restaurateurs in the region, including the chefs at Commander’s Palace and Café Adelaide in New Orleans and Beausoleil in Baton Rouge. Most recently, Barry helped Beausoleil chef, Nathan Gresham, pick just the right honey variety for a new summer drink. Extra Fine Early Spring honeycomb, which originates from the Poplar Grove Plantation, has spent the last several weeks infusing into gin. The new drink will also feature lemon, simple syrup, and a lavender ice ball—a fancy way to flavor and cool down your drink. Though the new drink is still unnamed, Beausoleil features another drink, aptly named Bee’s Knees, a mix of Beefeater gin, fresh lemon juice, chrysanthemum liquor and Bocage’s Alma Sugar Cane honey. The drink prominently features the sweet honey, which is balanced with a tart zing of lemon. Adding a dimension of texture that most cocktails can’t offer, honey ever-so-slightly coats your throat on the way down. Watch for honey-featured concoctions at Blend, too, the new wine and small plates bar in downtown Baton Rouge.
Holloway and Barry began a partnership in 2009 after Barry visited Holloway’s home. “Liz [Holloway] held up a frame of honeycomb,” Barry says. “It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was like a jewel to me.” The comb was a Meyer lemon variety. “Our treasure,” Barry says. From that point on, Holloway would supply Barry with the honey, and Barry would experiment with recipes. Their friendship evolved into a business partnership, eventually bringing in Sandy Withers who uses the beeswax to make soaps and lotions. One of her most recent creations is baby diaper rash cream and extra thick lotion for eczema and severely dry skin. While luxurious, her products also serve a purpose. Brulee Honey soap, which also includes orange peel, can take the crawfish smell off your hands.
Holloway, who has been named “Beekeeper of the Year” more than once and who has been known to tend to her bees without a bee suit in the Louisiana summer heat, also makes candles. Like the honey, beeswax comes in different shades depending on the pollen gathered.
“I want you to taste what a drought will do,” Barry says, squeezing another healthy spoonful of the new Old Bridge, the honey variety that weathered a bad drought. When the plants do not have enough rain to flourish, the bees have to find other sources of nectar. The new version was certainly delicious, but tasted like any store-bought traditional honey—no special flavor or depth.
Seasonal conditions are obviously key to honey production, as most crop harvests are. But, Bocage Bee & Honey has had its share of “accidental” successes. The same drought that stifled flavor in the Old Bridge variety, produced a new variety called Buttonwood. The buttonwood tree is an evergreen shrub that grows in mangrove forests. Its button-like green bulbs produce little white flowers that thrive in dry conditions, and the bees, unable to find copious nectar elsewhere, inadvertently created a new variety of honey that the shop hadn’t experienced before.
“You have to listen with your tongue,” Barry instructs as she hands me another variety called Verry Cherry. Birds and an unseasonably warm winter are to thank for this honey, the most unusual and exciting that I tasted. After the birds peck the cherries, the bees gather the juice and bring it back to the hive. For now, Verry Cherry is down to its last few spoonfuls, and customers will have to wait for the new harvest. Barry says that keeping bees and bottling honey is a lot like being a vintner who carefully records the conditions that the grapes are subjected to in order to understand the end product.
Another accidental variety, Verry Carefully Burnt Honey, came to be when beekeeper Holloway left fifty pounds of honey heating for much too long. When she smelled burning and discovered her oversight, the honey was a charred black brick and appeared to be ruined. Barry, who had arrived to the house for dinner and cards, met a very upset Holloway who was nearly ready to pour the burned honey down the storm drain. But Barry got one whiff and knew something special had been created. The burning created a very rich caramelized honey, great to use as a finishing sauce on ice cream and other desserts. It took Barry and Holloway weeks, but they were able to figure out what chemically and physically had happened to the honey so that they could replicate it on purpose. Very Carefully Burnt Honey is now one of the shop’s bestsellers and the Baton Rouge shop is one of only two places in the country to make and bottle caramelized honey. “Pure serendipity,” Barry says.
Barry discovers new ways to incorporate honey into dishes regularly. There are typical recipes that call for honey: salad dressings, meat glazes, drizzling sauces for desserts. But, honey in mustard or turnip greens, marinara sauce, even red beans and rice—can soften flavors and add complexity that refined white sugar cannot. With twenty-one different varieties, creative cooks are bound to realize new ways to use honey in their recipes.
Many of Bocage Bee & Honey customers use the product to help fight pollen allergies, Barry says. While the team does not claim pharmaceutical expertise, they will suggest one grass, one tree, and one flower honey variety to someone suffering allergies. Entire families visit the shop to stock up, swearing by their three teaspoons of local honey a day—just enough, they think, to potentially build up immunity to pollen allergies. Other customers will seek out Bocage Bee & Honey at the Red Stick Farmers Market, making a conscious choice to support local business that features a completely natural and local product.
“We cannot exist without bees,” Barry says, and she means it quite literally. This gratitude for the bees runs through all that Bocage Bee & Honey does and the unique varietal honey the shop brings to South Louisiana.
Details. Details. Details.
Bocage Bee & Honey
3358 Drusilla Lane Suite D
Baton Rouge, La.
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