The story behind the True Honey Company's $2000 jars of honey

This rare harvest of honey sells for over $2000. Photo / Supplied

Harrods in the UK will next week start selling a jar of Kiwi honey for £1388.

To save you doing the maths, that's equivalent to $2724 per 230-gram tub of golden nectar from The True Honey Company.

While there's still a week until its available at Harrods, one individual has already pre-ordered ten jars of the honey batch, which has been limited to only 1000 jars worldwide.

So what is it that makes this honey so special that the more privileged members of society are willing to drop thousands of dollars to get a taste?

Jim McMillan, founder of the True Honey Company, says the value comes from the way the honey is harvested.

Jim McMillan standing alongside his helicopter. Photo / File

A former agriculture pilot, McMillan flies his hives into some of the most remote parts of the country where a high concentration of mānuka trees leads to the production of some of the purest mānuka honey in the world.

"Working across the North Island, I identified that there were large expansive areas of pristine mānuka in areas that were very difficult to access with no roads or tracks," he says.

"We're able to put the hives right into the centre of the some of the most highly concentrated areas of mānuka to limit gathering of nectar from other sources."

McMillan says that while it might seem extreme to fly a helicopter into these areas, it's simply the most un-intrusive way to access the areas.

"You can't access those areas with ground vehicles without carving up the country-side with big bulldozers, which is something we didn't want to do."

In the seven years that he has operated his business, his product has regularly registered high UMF ratings (the scale of mānuka purity), but the batch set to sell at Harrods caught him off guard.

The honey came in with a UMF rating of 31, which, according to UMF Honey Association spokesman John Rawcliffe, is the highest ever recorded accredited result since testing first began.

The honey registered the highest UMF rating since local recording started. Photo / Supplied

UMF testing focuses on identifying three chemical markers in the honey – leptosperin, MGO and DHA – and this honey scored off the charts in each case.

McMillan describes this particular batch as a "vintage," saying that a number of environmental factors combined to make it possible.

He won't reveal the exact location from which this batch came, but says it was a coastal location where the mānuka trees were exposed to the elements.

Just as a grapevine under stress creates a better vintage, McMillan says challenging conditions in 2017 drove one single windswept, remote mānuka block to produce particularly potent nectar, resulting in this harvest.

"You've got the locality, the management element in terms of how the hives are placed and then the seasonal element that all combined to cause the plant to stress in a particular way that produced much higher levels than we've seen."

McMillan says he has already sold around 100 jars of the limited batch to exclusive retailers, who cater toward wealthier clientele.

Kiwis with a few spare thousand dollars lying around are able to purchase a beautifully presented hand-signed jar of this special edition honey online for a slightly more affordable $2170.

The cost of this honey may be high, but it's far from unique in the strange world of high-end food. The price of McMillan's high-end honey is, for instance, dwarfed by the mammoth US$34,500 ($55,132) charged for 1kg of the Almas brand of Iranian Beluga fish caviar produced from the eggs of a rare albino sturgeon. Equally outrageous is the rare black-skinned Densuke watermelon, which has previously fetched more than US$6000 ($9584) at auction.

McMillan says there's more to exclusive food than simply harvesting something and selling it in a jar. He says the story behind the company and the trust in the authenticity thereof play a big role in determining whether customers are willing to pay such excessive prices for products.

"From our perspective, we really want to play a role in building the integrity of mānuka not only for the True Honey Company but for all stakeholders in the industry."

The limited batch of 1000 jars comes in specially designed packaging to ensure safe transporting abroad. Photo / Supplied

McMillan says that it's incredibly important to ensure that the more unscrupulous operators aren't given the opportunity to degrade the trust that's been established in the standards created by the government.

"We'd like to play a role in educating honey lovers around the world about the importance of the definition of [mānuka honey] and show them why it's something they should really look for when purchasing honey," he says.

"If you're purchasing honey and you want to know if you're getting the real deal, then you should ensure it's been packed in New Zealand in accordance to MPI regulations."