Honey: where to taste it at Christmas markets

Honey is made by bees from flower nectar or honeydew, and its colour and taste depend on the plants foraged, lavender, fir or chestnut, which makes it a regional product to bring home from Christmas markets, where each beekeeper sells the jars of their own region, often next to honey gingerbread and nonnettes.

Which honey to buy at a Christmas market

Mountain honeys take up a good share of the stalls: Vosges honey in Plombières-les-Bains and Thann, Bauges honey in Chambéry, Écrins mountain honey in Gap, lavender and mountain honey in Digne-les-Bains. Our guide to mountain Christmas markets flags up the fir honeys of local producers.

In the south, Draguignan sells honey from the Provence Verte, Narbonne honey from the Corbières, Alès honey from the chestnut groves and Sarlat chestnut honey. Further north, Orléans has honeys from the Gâtinais, Fontainebleau honey and saffron from the Gâtinais, Chantilly honeys from the Oise, and Caen, Bayeux, Vannes, Limoges and Beaune keep some at their producers’ stalls.

Outside France, Montepulciano puts forward Valdichiana honey, Turin, Milan, Aosta and Vipiteno sell it, and Ghent counts it among its East Flanders products.

PDO honey: Corsica and Vosges fir on the stalls

Several French honeys carry a quality label, among others: PGI for Alsace honey, Provence honey and Cévennes honey, PDO for Vosges fir honey and Corsican honey, Label Rouge for lavender honey and Provence all-flower honey.

Corsican PDO honey comes in six honeys through the seasons: spring, spring maquis, summer maquis, chestnut grove, maquis honeydew, autumn maquis. The Bastia market sells it under this appellation. Fir honey, for its part, is a honeydew honey, dark brown with green glints, and it is the one protected by the Vosges PDO.

Honey in pictures