Antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibiotic! The list of honey’s beneficial properties could go on and on. But, does all honey have an equal benefit for our health? Oh, no. As honey producer Luigi (the guy in yellow) points out, honey is good for you as long as it’s pure and free of contaminants. In fact, Luigi’s honey…
Category: Honey by Luigi Manias
In Ales, Sardegna: a honey dinner
Luigi Manias is our honey guru and the beekeeper we’ve been working with since the very beginning of Gustiamo. He’s an inspiring intellectual who is considered one of the world’s experts on everything bees and honey. While traveling around Sardegna for Carnival celebrations (did you follow our Sardegna food tour?) we spent quite some time…
In Sardegna Honey Can be Bitter
Corbezzolo, the rarest Honey Made by our sage beekeeper Luigi Manias in Sardegna, this is an unconventional honey. Corbezzolo is a Mediterranean wild strawberry tree that is rich in arbutin, a naturally occurring substance that gives Corbezzolo Honey a distinct bitterness. That’s right, this honey is bitter. Corbezzolo trees bloom for three months a year,…
Gustiamo Goes To Sardegna
Summer or Fall, rain or shine, the Gusti Team travels to Italy. We never stop learning from our farmers and food makers, and we do it the old-fashioned way: in person. We just came back from Sardegna, and we are eager to show you how the Gusti producers are doing during the busiest period of…
Raw Honey
Raw Honey from Sardegna Luigi’s honey is raw! Perhaps we don’t say that enough. Lately, we’ve had a lot of people asking us about it. Our honey is made by Luigi Manias in Ales, Sardegna and it is as raw as honey gets. Raw means that the honey is removed very gently from the honeycomb and jarred. It is unheated, unpasteurized,…
Luigi Manias IGTV Debut
Instagram TV couldn’t have launched at a better time. Our friend Dan Toffey (who, actually, also works at Instagram) just visited Luigi Manias in Ales, Sardegna. While harvesting cardo honey, Dan published this video on IGTV. Luigi (with no beekeeper suit), Maria Francesca (with a yellow beekeeper suit) and Dan (with a white beekeeper suit) all worked together…
Why Organic is More Important for Honey
Let’s talk about the miraculous species of organism known as Apis mellifera. Bees. The kind that make honey. Luigi Manias, beekeeper and native of Sardegna, tells us that bees have a way of concentrating elements found in their environment. That actually explains a lot. It explains why corbezzolo honey is so bitter, even if the corbezzolo…
The Seasonality of Honey
Eccentric, wild, free, and yes, un po’ pazzo… in the best possible way. This is how we would describe our beekeeper Luigi Manias. And his honey? Also crazy. Crazy good. Luigi goes to extreme measures to make sure his honey is a reflection of Sardegna’s landscape. What does that mean? Pure, clean, organic, and a product of…
The Best of 2014: Luigi Manias Corbezzolo Honey
Dissapore is definitely one of our favorite Italian food blogs. They write about all the best food makers in Italy and, as you might expect, are constantly mentioning our producers. Dissapore just came out with their 2014 best list, entitled The Best of 2014: 30 incredible things we ate this year. In the top 10 was Luigi Manias’s Corbezzolo…
Elizabeth Minchilli’s Seadas with Corbezzolo Honey
Seadas are a dish that we enjoy often in Sardegna, but have never made ourselves. Thanks to our friend Elizabeth Minchilli that is about to change! Check out her how-to video for making these fried classic Sardo pastries. Want to know the secret to making these? It’s the honey, honey 😉 As, Elizabeth Says: “the most important part…