Unlike most food items, bees are the sole curator of their product. "Everything else has a human piece, but honey they do alone,” says Katie Flinn. “We do nothing but the uncapping.”

Flinn, a Warren County Farm Bureau member, is Iowa’s first honey sommelier and owner of Milk & Honey Orchard and Apiary near Indianola, along with her husband, Wade, and their four children.

She trained with the Italian Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey, in Bologna, Italy, where she learned to smell and taste honey based on 18 botanical sources along with beekeepers from all over the world.

Bees’ diet determines the honey’s characteristics, and Milk & Honey specializes in unifloral varieties.

Pictured above: Flinn. PHOTO BY: Conrad Schmidt

Black locust blossoms make an earthy-tasting pure white honey with vanilla warm apple notes.

  • Dandelion honey is bright orange.
  • Linen trees produce a unique honey with hints of lemon and mint.
  • Sunflower honey...