I want to tell you about honey, which is not something I expected to have strong opinions about. I'm a 54-year-old retired civil servant based in Suffolk, and I've been eating honey on toast for breakfast for approximately forty years. For most of those forty years, the honey was whatever was on offer at the supermarket — a large jar, a familiar brand, something that tasted generically sweet and did its job without distinction.
I live about twenty miles from Tiptree in Essex. I'd driven past the Wilkin & Sons factory dozens of times. I'd bought their jams for years without thinking much about it. It took a conversation with a neighbour — who mentioned, in passing, that she'd started buying their honey and it was quite different from what she'd been buying before — to make me try it.
She was right. It is quite different.
What Makes Artisan Honey Different
Mass-produced honey is typically blended from multiple sources, often from multiple countries, and processed in ways that standardise the flavour and extend the shelf life. The result is something that tastes consistently sweet but doesn't taste of much else. It's honey in the way that a supermarket white loaf is bread — technically correct, nutritionally adequate, and entirely without character.
Artisan honey from a single source has a flavour profile that reflects where it came from — the flowers the bees visited, the season, the specific character of the local landscape. Essex blossom honey has a delicate, floral sweetness that's distinct from the generic sweetness of blended honey. You can taste the difference immediately, and once you've tasted it, the blended alternative seems flat by comparison.
Why Tiptree Specifically
The Tiptree Essex Blossom Honey is made by the Wilkin family, who have been producing preserves in Essex since 1885. That's 140 years of the same family, the same location, the same commitment to quality. They've held a Royal Warrant as purveyors to the Royal Family since 1911 — a distinction that requires consistent, demonstrable quality over a sustained period, not just a good product at a single point in time.
The honey is 100% pure English honey, free from artificial colours and flavours, produced in small batches using traditional methods. That's not marketing language — it's a description of how artisan food production actually works when it's done properly. Small batches mean quality control. Traditional methods mean the honey isn't over-processed. Pure English honey means you know exactly what you're getting and where it came from.
The 340g jar is the right size for a household that uses honey regularly — large enough to last a reasonable amount of time, small enough that it doesn't sit in the cupboard for months losing its character.
The First Morning
I opened the jar on a Sunday morning and spread it on toast. The colour is deeper and more golden than supermarket honey — it looks like honey is supposed to look. The consistency is slightly thicker, which means it spreads cleanly rather than running off the toast.
The flavour was the thing. Floral, delicate, with a complexity that the supermarket honey I'd been eating for forty years simply doesn't have. It tasted of something specific rather than something generic. I finished the toast and immediately made another piece.
My wife, who had been sceptical about what she described as "paying more for honey," tried it and said nothing for a moment. Then: "That's actually very good." That's the highest endorsement she gives to food.
In Tea
I also use honey in tea — a habit I picked up years ago and have maintained. The Tiptree honey dissolves cleanly in hot water and adds a floral sweetness that complements the tea rather than overwhelming it. The flavour is subtle enough that it enhances rather than dominates, which is what you want from honey in tea. The supermarket honey I'd been using was sweeter and less nuanced — it added sweetness but not much else. The Tiptree honey adds character.
The Heritage Question
I want to say something about the Wilkin family heritage because it matters to me in a way that I think is worth explaining. When a family has been doing the same thing in the same place for 140 years, they've had 140 years to get it right. They've had 140 years of feedback, of refinement, of understanding what works and what doesn't. The Royal Warrant since 1911 is a signal that they've been getting it right consistently for over a century.
That kind of heritage is rare in food production. Most of what we eat is made by companies that have existed for decades at most, optimising for cost and scale rather than quality and character. Tiptree is the exception. The honey tastes like the product of 140 years of getting it right, because it is.
My Verdict
If you've been buying supermarket honey on autopilot and you haven't tried a proper artisan alternative, the Tiptree Essex Blossom Honey is the place to start. 100% pure English blossom honey from a family with 140 years of heritage and a Royal Warrant since 1911. The flavour is genuinely different from blended alternatives — floral, delicate, complex in a way that supermarket honey isn't. On toast, in tea, or by the spoonful when nobody is watching.
I haven't bought supermarket honey since my neighbour's recommendation. I don't intend to.
Find it in our store and browse more artisan food products here:
Edward Blackwell is a retired civil servant based in Suffolk, approximately twenty miles from the Tiptree factory. He has been eating honey on toast for forty years, switched to Tiptree Essex Blossom Honey six months ago, and considers this one of the better decisions he's made in retirement.
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