Best Honey UK: How to Judge a Jar Before You Buy

The best honey you can buy in the UK is the jar that makes the most checkable statements: a named country of origin, a floral or regional name the law conditions, and laboratory figures published against the batch number. Most of the rest — “pure”, “finest”, “premium” — costs nothing to print and can be neither proved nor disproved. This page names no brand and ranks no jar: THYMELIA has no shop and nothing on sale, so there is no honey of ours to recommend. What we can publish is the standard, and how to apply it to somebody else’s jar.

Honey quality, as English law defines it, is composition: what a jar may be called, where it must say the honey was harvested, and two laboratory figures it may not breach.

Plate I · PaintingRecord

What is the best honey to buy in the UK?

The jar that names the single country where the honey was harvested, restricts its floral or regional name to what it can substantiate, and publishes a certificate of analysis carrying the batch number on the label. All three can be checked by someone who has never tasted the honey. Nothing else on a jar can be.

Six things to check on the jar

1. The country-of-origin wording. Regulation 17(1) of The Honey (England) Regulations 2015 compels one thing: no person may trade in honey unless the country of origin where the honey has been harvested is indicated on the label. Where honey originates in more than one country, those countries may be replaced with the indication “blend of honeys from more than one country” or similar wording. Naming the country is the duty; the blend phrase is a permitted substitute, not a requirement, and a packer using it has chosen anonymity rather than been assigned it.

Two corrections. “Blend of EU and non-EU honeys” was struck out of the England regulations on 27 May 2021 and is dead wording. And there is no single UK rule: Scotland’s regulation 16 permits a wider menu of formulations, and since 14 June 2026 a multi-country jar in Northern Ireland must name every country of origin in descending order of share by weight, with each country’s percentage — though stock labelled before that date stays lawful there until it is exhausted, so both styles sit on Northern Irish shelves for now. Distrust any sentence beginning “the UK requires”.

2. The floral name and the regional name. The two most informative words on a good label, and the law sets them at different heights. Regulation 17(3) allows a product name to be supplemented with its floral or vegetable origin — “thyme honey” — only where the honey comes wholly or mainly from that source and possesses its organoleptic, physico-chemical and microscopic characteristics. Regulation 17(4) allows a regional, territorial or topographical name — “Cretan honey” — only where the honey comes entirely from that origin, with no characteristics test. So a floral name is a majority claim backed by a laboratory profile; a regional name is an absolute claim about geography. Neither is open to filtered or baker’s honey.

3. HMF and diastase. Regulation 16(1) bars placing a product on the market as honey unless it meets the compositional criteria in Schedule 1. Two of those are laboratory numbers, and they are the only quantitative handle a buyer has on the word “quality”:

Four details in the statute do the work. The limits are determined after processing and blending, so they bite on the jar as sold, not on honey as it left the hive. Diastase is on the Schade scale, and the regulations write the figure bare — “not less than 8”, with no unit word attached. The floor of 3 is conjunctive, available only to honey naturally low in enzymes and with HMF no higher than 15 mg/kg. And the 80 mg/kg ceiling attaches to a declared tropical origin, so a honey declared from Crete sits under 40 mg/kg.

HMF rises with heat and age, diastase falls with both, and the pair is therefore a heat-and-age history — which is why a jar publishing them tells you something a jar that does not cannot.

4. The certificate of analysis for that batch. A laboratory report for one specific batch, and the strongest signal available before purchase — the only one a seller can be held to afterwards. What makes it evidence rather than decoration is narrow: a batch number matching the code on the jar, the name of the laboratory, and results for moisture, HMF, diastase activity and the sugar profile. A certificate with no batch number is a document about nothing.

5. Public registers before opinion. Defra’s GB protected food and drink names register settles in a minute what a brand’s own story cannot settle at all: a jar either carries a protected name or does not. Awards are a different kind of information. Great Taste, run by the Guild of Fine Food, has entries tasted blind by a panel it puts at over 500 experts, who see only the producer’s own description of the food. A star records that tasters, blind, rated the flavour — not that origin, composition, purity or compliance with the honey regulations was checked.

6. A price sense-check. A colony makes a limited surplus, the flow is seasonal, and extraction, jarring and laboratory work cost money. So price is one input to the judgement rather than a verdict on its own: a figure far below the going rate for the declared type is a question worth asking of the label, not an answer. Read it alongside the checks above, never instead of them.

Fig. I · The jar, read as a checklistDiagram

Quality is not a word on a label — it is a short list of things printed on one, and two that are not

What can be settled before you pay divides three ways: the one line the law compels, the lines it conditions when a producer chooses to print them, and a code that ties the jar to a certificate. Read down the label, then look at what it cannot carry.

The label, as it is printed

Specimen · every field blank

brand name

floral nameHoneycheck 01

Product ofnamed countrycheck 02

Or, lawfully“Blend of honeys from more than one country”

regional namecheck 03

protected name markcheck 04

award stickercheck 05

Lotbatch codecheck 06

“Pure”“Finest”“Premium”“Artisan”“Raw”check 07

Not a label particular

Diastase activity · HMFcheck 08

Every field on this specimen is an empty slot. A real jar prints words there — and those words, with a register and a certificate, are the whole of what can be checked.

What each line is worth

check 01The floral nameConditioned · reg 17(3)

Nothing compels a producer to name a floral source, and naming one is a claim the regulations condition. A product name may be supplemented with its floral or vegetable origin — “thyme honey” — only where the honey comes wholly or mainly from that source and possesses its organoleptic, physico-chemical and microscopic characteristics. A majority claim, backed by a laboratory profile. Not open to filtered or baker’s honey.

check 02The country-of-origin wordingCompelled · reg 17(1)

The one line the law compels: no person may trade in honey unless the country of origin where the honey has been harvested is indicated on the label. Where honey originates in more than one country, those countries may be replaced with the indication “blend of honeys from more than one country” or similar wording — a permitted substitute, not a requirement, so a packer using it has chosen anonymity rather than been assigned it. Two corrections: “blend of EU and non-EU honeys” was struck out of the England regulations on 27 May 2021 and is dead wording; and there is no single UK rule — Scotland’s regulation 16 permits a wider menu of formulations, and a multi-country jar in Northern Ireland must now name every country of origin in descending order of share by weight, with each country’s percentage.

check 03The regional nameConditioned · reg 17(4)

Set at a different height from the floral name. A regional, territorial or topographical name — “Cretan honey” — is allowed only where the honey comes entirely from that origin, and there is no characteristics test attached: an absolute claim about geography rather than a majority claim about a plant. Also closed to filtered and baker’s honey.

check 04A protected name, if the jar carries oneConditioned · reserved name

The fastest check on the label, because it is not a matter of opinion: a jar either carries a protected name or it does not, and Defra’s GB protected food and drink names register settles in a minute what a brand’s own story cannot settle at all. Read the register for what it records — the name and its status.

check 05An award sticker, if the jar carries oneOpen · flavour, judged blind

A different kind of information, and narrower than it looks. Great Taste, run by the Guild of Fine Food, has entries tasted blind by a panel it puts at over 500 experts, between eight and 24 to an entry, who see only the producer’s own description of it. A star records that tasters, blind, rated the flavour — not that origin, composition, purity or compliance with the honey regulations was checked.

check 06The lot or batch codeThe index · it ties the jar to a certificate

The one line on a label that is not itself information. It is an index: a certificate of analysis is evidence rather than decoration only when its batch number matches the code on the jar, and a certificate with no batch number is a document about nothing. Everything at the foot of this plate is reachable through this line and no other.

check 07The words the label chose — “pure”, “finest”, “premium”, “artisan”, “raw”Open · undefined in law

“Premium”, “finest” and “artisan” appear nowhere in the regulations: no defined meaning, no grade, nobody auditing them. “Pure” is the baseline rather than a distinction, since nothing may be added to any product sold as honey except other honey. And English law does not define “raw”, so that description is worth exactly what the batch evidence behind it is worth — which returns the reader to check 06.

Check 08 · the two compositional figures — and no jar prints either

Regulation 16(1) bars placing a product on the market as honey unless it meets the compositional criteria in Schedule 1. Two of those criteria are laboratory figures, and they are the only quantitative handle a buyer has on the word quality. Neither is a property of the wording, so neither appears on a label: both are measured after processing and blending — they bite on the jar as sold — and printed on a certificate of analysis for one batch, the document the lot code at check 06 indexes.

Diastase activity

Schedule 1 · not less than 8 on the Schade scale

The regulations write the Schade figure bare — “not less than 8”, no unit word. Diastase falls with heat and with age. Two carve-outs sit in the statute: baker’s honey is outside the criterion, and a floor of 3 applies to honey with a low natural enzyme content, such as citrus, and an HMF content of not more than 15 mg/kg — conjunctive, so both conditions must hold.

Per batchNo batch yet

HMF · hydroxymethylfurfural

Schedule 1 · not more than 40 mg/kg

HMF rises with heat and with age, so the pair reads as a heat-and-age history. Two carve-outs again: baker’s honey is outside the criterion, and a ceiling of 80 mg/kg attaches to honey of a declared origin from a region with a tropical climate, and blends of those honeys — so a honey declared from Crete sits under 40.

Per batchNo batch yet

A certificate is evidence rather than decoration when it carries a batch number matching the code on the jar, the name of the laboratory, and results for moisture, HMF, diastase activity and the sugar profile. Both fields above are blank because no THYMELIA batch exists.

Compelled — the law requires the lineConditioned — optional, but the law sets what it may sayOpen — no meaning set by the honey regulationsThe index — it ties the jar to a certificateNot on the jar — read off a certificate for the batch

Everything checkable in a shop is either the line the law compels, a line it conditions, or a name a register can settle. The rest of the check is not on the jar.

Is supermarket honey real honey?

Mostly yes in the legal sense — the compositional limits above bind every jar on the shelf, and nothing may be added to any product sold as honey except other honey — but the fuller answer needs the border-screening evidence and the reasons the kitchen tests fail, both set out in how to tell if honey is real.

Does “raw” make it better?

No — it is a claim about process, not a grade, and English law does not define it. The word appears nowhere in The Honey (England) Regulations 2015; what they do instead is prohibit honey — baker’s honey aside, which Schedule 1 excepts — from having been heated in such a way that the natural enzymes have been either destroyed or significantly inactivated. So the description is worth what the batch evidence behind it is worth: HMF and diastase, published against that batch number. Which is the best raw honey resolves per batch, into a number. What the term can and cannot mean is in what is raw honey; the wider category sits at raw honey.

What does “best quality honey” actually mean?

In law, quality means composition: the Schedule 1 criteria, including the two figures above, plus the rule that nothing is added except other honey, and nothing removed beyond unavoidable foreign matter — a rule that does not bind honey sold as filtered honey, which is the point of the name. The regulations then allow a product name to be supplemented with information relating to its specific quality criteria — a permission to publish figures, not a licence to reach for adjectives.

So the phrase resolves into measurable markers (HMF, diastase, moisture, sugar profile, pollen spectrum) and traceability: which apiary, which batch, which laboratory. Both can be got wrong in public, which is what makes them worth stating. “Premium”, “finest” and “artisan” appear nowhere in the regulations — no defined meaning, no grade, nobody auditing them. There is no best honey in the UK in the abstract, only the best-evidenced jar in front of you.

Which country has the best honey?

No country holds that title and no register awards it. What registers record is which specific honeys, from which specific places, hold a legally reserved name.

Greece has two honey PDOs on the GB register: Meli Elatis Menalou Vanilia, the fir honey of Mount Mainalo, EU-registered on 2 July 1996, and Pefkothymaromelo Kritis, Crete’s pine-thyme honey, EU-registered on 15 September 2017 — both carried onto the GB register on 31 December 2020 by agreement rather than examined here. The UK’s own entry is Welsh Heather Honey / Mêl Grug Cymru, a PGI registered on 31 March 2025.

Read the register for what it is. It does not publish the specification for Pefkothymaromelo Kritis, directing inquiries to Defra, so the entry substantiates the name and its status, not what the honey must contain. And no standalone Cretan thyme honey holds protected status — the protected Cretan honey is the pine-thyme combination. The varietals behind those names are in Greek honey.

Why this page names no brand

Because a seller ranking honey is marking its own homework. THYMELIA is a UK house of Greek foods working two harvests — raw thyme honey from Chania in western Crete, and early-harvest olive oil from the hills above Kalamata. We have no shop, no stock and no jar on sale, and we are not naming a date for one. A page that ranked other people’s jars while preparing to sell its own would be an advertisement in a lab coat. The same standard applied to the other harvest — what is checkable on a bottle before you taste it — is at best olive oil UK.

What we can publish is the standard we intend to be held to: HMF at most 40 mg/kg and diastase activity at least 8 on the Schade scale, evidenced per batch and published against the batch number. That is set out at testing, and where the honey will come from at sourcing.

Which honey is best is not a question anybody selling honey should answer about their own. It is a question a buyer settles with a label, a register and a certificate — and when there is a jar here, that is the test it will have to pass.