Pitcairn Honey

Pitcairn's isolation pays sweetly: the island's bee population, certified free of the diseases that trouble apiaries worldwide, produces honey marketed credibly as among the purest anywhere - floral notes of mango, lata and passion blossom in jars that travel by the same rare ships as everything else, royal endorsement anecdotes included in the label lore. Visitors taste at source, meet the hives on garden walks where keepers oblige, and carry jars home as the island's definitive product - the settlement's tiny economy in its most portable, spreadable form. Hives are kept in several places around the island and the crop is small by any commercial measure.

What to look for

• The source tasting - purity by the spoon.
• The garden hives - keepers' rounds by courtesy.
• The floral notes - mango and passion in the jar.
• The postal export - the economy's sweet ambassador.

When to go

Year round - the hives keep the calendar; ship schedules move the stock as everything else.

Good to know

Supply is genuinely small - buy when offered; prices carry the freight of the world's remotest apiary, fairly.

Nearby

Adamstown's store and the garden tracks.