An interview with HONEY SOMMELIER Helen Rogers

(and owner of Highgate Honey)

We live in a hyperbolic society. We throw exclamation marks around willy-nilly and treat minor situations as if the world is ending. We’ve (literally) changed the meaning of the word literally, and we regularly use superlatives to describe things that are mediocre at best (pardon the pun). (I was literally just about to type “I’ll hold my hands up, guys, this is mainly down to me”, which is hyperbole in itself! There’s 6 billion people on the planet for God’s sake!) Anyway, all of this to say the capitals deployed in the title of this post were not hyperbolic or extreme: they were to signify one of the best jobs I’d ever heard of, a HONEY SOMMELIER.

(I can type this without caps lock, see: honey sommelier. It did take a lot of restraint, though…)

Obviously, once I knew this job existed I could not rest¹ until I’d asked Helen Rogers, beekeeper, honey sommelier and co-founder of Highgate Honey, some questions about what she does and how it came to be(e). So, without further ado:

Hi Helen! Thank you so much for being on Pep Talk — please could you tell us a bit about you?

Hi Ellie! I’m a beekeeper and honey sommelier - yup, that means that I eat a lot of honey! I look after about 30 hives of honeybees in 7 different locations in North London. I also run honey-tasting workshops and have written a book 80 Flowers for Bees which is all about picking the best plants to grow to help support bees. You could say that I’m a bit obsessed with bees and honey…

I’m originally from a tiny, very rural, village in Oxfordshire - becoming a beekeeper about 12 years ago really brought me back to my great love of nature and I’ve never looked back.

Amazing. What did your “career path” looked like pre-honey sommelier-ing?

I worked for many years as a full time Structural Engineer in London on all sorts of buildings, sculptures and footbridges. It was a great job and I still do some consultancy work specialising in advising on repairs to cantilever stone stairs (I know! This is probably the most niche job in the world²). Unfortunately at the time I had my children it wasn’t possible to continue as an engineer unless I worked full time. That’s when I became a consultant and stay-at-home mum.

My husband knew how much I loved nature, and surprised me with the gift of a beehive for a birthday. That one hive turned into 4 or 5 after a couple of seasons. Now I manage hives owned by other people and companies as well as around 20 of my own hives. We started Highgate Honey about 5 years ago and we sell all our own honey and beeswax products like candles and beeswax wraps.

The power of a well-thought out gift! Now, tell us about being a honey sommelier…

There are only a handful of honey sommeliers in the UK. We have all trained in Italy, where honey is taken far more seriously than here. I first really became interested in the different types of honey when I harvested 2 very different colours of honey on the same day from the 2 hives that I had at the time. Not only did the honey look different, it smelt and tasted different too. I learnt that if bees forage on different types of flowers then the honey that they make is different.

In Italy, I learnt all about monofloral honey (honey from 1 type of flower) and trained to identify 18 different types by smell and taste. I also learnt to recognise blends of these honeys.

It made me realise that in the UK most people don’t understand about different types of honey and are unaware that we have some fabulous kinds of honey that are made here. I run honey-tasting workshops to introduce people to some of them.

My work is just the same as a wine sommelier, but with honey. I love coming up with ideas about pairing honey with other types of food like cheese and compiling honey-themed menus.

Don’t mind me, just drooling on the keyboard here. What do you love most about your job?

It’s January now, so there isn’t much work to do with the bees. I’m really missing my weekly hive visits that I need to make in the spring a summer. When I’m working on the bees I really can’t think about anything else as it requires my full concentration - I love that.

I also love watching peoples’ faces when they try real honey for the first time and realise that the stuff they’ve been eating in the past is probably just sugar syrup. I sometimes go to schools to give talks about bees. The children's enthusiasm always energizes me and keeps me optimistic for the future.

And finally, a question I always used to ask on my podcast: what are you enthusiastic about outside of work?

I love gardening - mainly growing fruit and vegetables for our family and loads of flowers for the bees! I’m an avid reader and knitter and I’m currently writing a book about cantilever stone stairs - I’m not very good at doing nothing!

Thank you Helen for answering these questions — I can’t wait to get my hands on some honey! You can buy her honey at Highgate Honey, and follow her on instagram @highgatehoney.

I have to also give a shoutout to

Lucy Werner

here, as I found Helen in the comments of a collaboration post Lucy put on instagram (a brilliant idea, especially this in the caption: “Part of hyping ourselves is stating publicly what we need and are looking for. This is your permission slip to ask.”). You can check that post out here, and make sure to check out Lucy’s substack too:

Hype Yourself

.

1. I thought I’d written a newsletter about how literally I mean “I can’t even”, but I can’t seem to find it now? It was based on a story around my friend, but I didn’t name and shame him in the piece so I can’t even search my emails for it…[EDIT] it was a blog post and I found it here!

2. Just in case you’re not keeping count, that’s not one, but two incredibly niche jobs. I think we should get Helen some sort of trophy or crown perhaps?