Honey Brûlé (originally title Terres Brûlées) is a bochet, a mead created with caramelized honey. The recipe is an old style from medieval France that has not been in production for centuries. I began my creative process with these two things in mind. I scoured through classic French music looking for inspiration and stumbled across the song “Ne Me Quitte Pas” by Nina Simone. It’s a provocative and emotional song that tells the story of someone trying to rekindle an old love gone cold, asking their lover not to “quit them”. I fell in love with the symbolism of the song. The lyrics plea for reunification and describe a previous time when love burned like a volcano, scorching the earth. This “scorched earth” created the fertility of the volcanic soil, enabling the potential of a bountiful harvest. This metaphor works perfectly for this mead, as an ancient and almost forgotten recipe made from burnt honey.

LYRICS
We have often seen
Fire flowing again
From an ancient volcano
That we considered to be too old
It seems like
Burned earth
Produces more wheat
Than a warm month of April

The tone needed to be caramel-like, so I used lots of warm brown and reddish-orange. The primary center of attention is a daisy, a flower often depicted in stories of someone questioning love. This single flower grows up from a cracked and burnt soil in the foreground of a volcanic mountain as a symbol of hope and fertility. An orange Celtic knot sun sets behind the purple mountains in the background burnishing the sky in an orange glow. Silver outlines emanate from the daisy, symbolic of the lover’s plea, “Don’t forget me.”