If you’ve never heard of this stuff before, you are not alone. Deli Bal Honey may be unique in the annals of ‘super-charged foods’. It can be pleasant in small doses, medicinal in higher doses, and potentially deadly in its strongest concentrations…
Deli Bal honey, fresh from from the hive. Note the intriguing dark amber, reddish-nuanced colour…
This stuff is dynamite. If you believer the locals who produce it. It certainly has the potential, if you believe the scientists who’ve analysed it. Praised for millennia as a medicine, an aphrodisiac and even a knock-out agent, it has as colourful a history as any hallucinogenic compound. But it’s not a member of that family…
A novel toxin
Deli Bal – commonly known as Turkish ‘Mad’ or ‘Crazy’ Honey – contains a substance called grayano-toxin, which comes from the blossoms of certain mountain flowers that are found in only two known places on Earth. One is in the mountains, along the northeast Black Sea coast of Turkey. It’s from this rugged region that most of the Deli Bal which makes it out to the rest of the world comes.
Grayanotixin has a reputation for triggering a wide range of reactions. In its small est doses, it’s said to lower your blood pressure and impart a pleasant, dropwsy sensation. In slightly higher amounts, it is rumoured to act as an aphrodisiac. Higher doses still are said to cause delusions and bouts of ‘madness’. At its highest doses, it can debilitate or even kill ‘users’.
Colourful history…
Perhaps the most famous story surrounding Deli Bal is the ancient legend that it defeated an invad-ing army. In the 4th century BC, Greek military leader Xenophon recorded the sorry tale of soldiers traveling near Trabzon on the Black Sea coast who unwittingly overdosed on Deli Bal.
“Not one of them could stand up, but those who had eaten [only] a little were like people exceed-ingly drunk,” he reported. “Those who had eaten a great deal seemed like crazy, or even, in some cases, dying men. So they lay there in great numbers as though the army had suffered a defeat, and great despondency prevailed.”
A thriving local industry
Deloi Bal poduction has become a thriving local industry in the seaside The Kaçkar Mountains of Northern Turkey. Beekeeper Hassan Hkutluata told CNN…
“In our untouched forests, the purple rhododendron blooms in spring,” Hkutluata told CNN. “The bees collect [the] nectar from those flowers, and that’s how we get the mad honey.” (See photo, top of page.)
It’s exceedingly popular and demand even in it’s home territory is high year round. As a result, the small amount that finds its way to Europe and North America sells for around (US)$50 per lb. / 250 g.
What’s it like?
The honey is reported to have a pleasant, medium-sweet, floral taste with a sharp aromatic high note. It’s unmistakable, unique. Try it once, and you’ll never mistake it for any other substance, or vice-versa.
The amount of grayanotoxin that makes it into Deli Bal honey varies from season to season, and what other flowers the bees have been feasting on, Times reporter Louise Callaghan says. A spoonful can ‘pack enough buzz to deliver a gently soporific high’ – while a jarful would ‘land you in a hospital’. She says she tried a cautious level teaspoonful, and it did produce a buzz, “but no more than I could handle.”
My take
I prefer my exotic honey without the toxins, thank you. I recognised a lot of the more-distinctive qua-lities of Buckwheat honey in descriptions of Deli Bal I read while bouncing around the news and so-cial media websites. Buckwheat is more expensive by a fair bit than regular clover or fruit-blossom honeys. But considerably less than Deli Bal. And it’s much easier to find.
Nevertheless… Buckwheat is worth every cent more that it costs. And you don’t have to worry about overdosing!
~ Maggie J.