Kaikoura Blue Borage Honey
Location: Kaikōura, Te Tai o Marokura. River valleys and dry inland faces beneath the Seaward Kaikōura Range, where the mountains meet the Pacific.
Flavour Profile: Pale and delicate, with vanilla, creamy fudge and light summer florals, a soft buttery body, and a clean, dry finish.
The Story: Where the Mountains Fall Into the Sea
Kaikōura is a place of extremes stacked on top of each other. The Seaward Kaikōura Range climbs to around 2,600 metres within sight of the beach, and a few kilometres offshore the seabed drops into the Kaikōura Canyon, a submarine trench that draws sperm whales and dusky dolphins close to land all year round. The name itself means "to eat crayfish", from Tama ki te Rangi, who stopped here and ate kōura on his journey south.
Behind the ranges the country changes completely. The river valleys are dry and stony in the rain shadow, and in high summer they turn blue. Blue Borage covers the riverbeds and the hard faces where little else bothers to grow, and our hives sit out among it from December.
The Coastal Alpine Spirit
Kaikōura is still rebuilding. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake of November 2016 ruptured more than twenty faults, lifted stretches of the seabed metres out of the water, and cut the town off by road and rail. The coastline is literally a different shape than it was. Honey from here carries some of that resilience with it.
Why It's Unique: The Weed That Makes Great Honey
Blue Borage is a European biennial that arrived in New Zealand around 1870 and made itself thoroughly at home on dry, stony ground. Farmers class it as a weed. Beekeepers count it among the best summer nectar plants in the country, because it secretes nectar at lower temperatures than clover and a deep taproot keeps it flowering right through a drought. In a hot, dry January it is often the nectar that is still flowing.
In the jar it is lower in glucose than most honeys, so it stays smooth and resists setting, with a dry, slightly chewy mouthfeel unlike anything else we sell. Its pale gold colour deepens to amber with age, so it is best enjoyed fresh.
Perfect Pairings
• Coffee and tea: Dissolves cleanly and adds a vanilla-soft floral note. Our best hot-drink honey.
• Seafood: A local pairing that works. Whisk a little into a dressing for crayfish, or brush it on grilled fish with lemon and chilli.
• Fresh cheese: Burrata, ricotta and young goat's cheese, with cracked pepper and good oil.
• Blue cheese: Its dry, delicate sweetness softens the salt of a strong blue.
• Delicate baking: Madeleines, shortbread, honey custards and panna cotta, where a stronger honey would take over.
At a Glance
• Status: Raw, single-varietal Blue Borage (Echium vulgare), slow to crystallise
• Spirit: Bright, delicate and resilient
• Origin: Kaikōura, Canterbury, South Island, NZ
• Flowering season: December to March
The Nectar Source: Plant and Place
What is Blue Borage? Blue Borage is the name New Zealand beekeepers use for Echium vulgare, a member of the borage family (Boraginaceae) that came here from Europe. It is also called viper's bugloss, and the two names describe the same plant. It is not the culinary herb borage, Borago officinalis, which is a different species in the same family.
The botanical name has a story of its own. "Echium" comes from the Greek echis, meaning viper. The seeds were thought to resemble a snake's head, and under the old doctrine of signatures a plant that looked like an affliction was believed to cure it, so the plant was prescribed for snakebite. "Bugloss" is Greek for ox tongue, after the coarse, bristly leaves.
A plant built for dry country. It is a biennial. The first year is a flat rosette of leaves and a deep taproot. The second year sends up a flowering spike of around 90 cm, crowded with vivid blue flowers and protruding red stamens. The taproot is the whole trick: it reaches water that shallow-rooted pasture plants cannot.
How it got here. Blue Borage arrived around 1870 and spread quickly. It is now common through both islands, and especially abundant in the drier inland South Island, on roadsides, stony riverbeds and disturbed land. Kaikōura's inland valleys, in the rain shadow of the Seaward Range, suit it perfectly.
Why bees love it. It is a top-tier bee plant for good reasons. It yields nectar at lower temperatures than white clover, which lengthens the bees' working day, and its deep root carries it through dry spells that stop clover flowering. The blooms also give the bees a distinctive deep-blue pollen. Flowering runs from December to March, with the size of the crop shaped largely by earlier rainfall.
In the jar. Typical analysis is about 30% glucose, 36% fructose and 3% sucrose. The low glucose-to-fructose balance is why it crystallises slowly and stays smooth, and the high fructose is why it dissolves so easily in a hot drink. Its colour averages around 24 mm on the Pfund scale, a pale honey with a faint brown cast. It darkens with age about twice as fast as most New Zealand honeys, which is a good reason to eat it fresh and keep it cool and dark. The texture is its signature: dry, with a chewy, slightly tacky quality on the palate that no other New Zealand honey quite matches.
The place. Kaikōura, Te Tai o Marokura, is one of the few places on earth where alpine and deep-ocean environments meet within a few kilometres. The Kaikōura Canyon runs close inshore and drives a nutrient upwelling that supports sperm whales, orca, dusky dolphins, fur seals and albatross, which is why the town's economy shifted from whaling to whale watching in the 1980s, a change led by local Ngāi Tahu whānau.
On 14 November 2016 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake ruptured more than twenty faults along the coast. Stretches of seabed rose out of the water, leaving pāua and crayfish exposed to the air, and landslides buried State Highway 1 and the main trunk railway and isolated the town. The coastline is permanently changed. Beekeeping here happens in a landscape that is still visibly settling.
Handling
Keep it cool and out of the light, and eat it while it is young. Its delicacy is exactly the point.