Miels d'Anicet

Miels d'Anicet, a beekeeping farm founded in 2001 by Anicet Desrochers and Anne-Virginie Schmidt, produces a range of organic honeys in the Upper Laurentians. Their lifework is to produce a high quality product with the smallest possible footprint on the environment. Although Anicet was born into a family of beekeepers, he was not quite decided on this vocation. The spark came during a trip to Reunion Island where he met a family of Creole beekeepers harvesting lychee honey. This experience was a revelation for him and he decided to devote his life to bees. After bee biology studies in Vancouver he returned to Quebec where he settled in his homeland and created his own business producing wild honey and hives, as well as breeding queen bees. Two years later, Anne-Virginie, who is an accountant by training, joined him in the adventure. Located at the foot of the Devil's Mountain, this honey house offers raw honey, that is to say without filtration, which allows it to retain traces of pollen, propolis and beeswax. Raw honey also proceeds to a cold extraction which ensures the conservation of the aromas, and particularly nutritional values. The product is harvested with the greatest of respect in the 1500 beehives scattered in the countryside of Ferme-Neuve, a forested region that has preserved a diversity of wild flowers unique in Quebec. This location plays a big role in the exceptional taste of the product: surrounded by fields free of pesticides, the bees are free to roam and forage on a variety of flora: cherry and dandelion in the spring; basswood, clover, vetch, raspberry, cruciferous and sweet clover in the summer; eupatorium, goldenrod and aster in the fall. Miels d'Anicet produces between 60,000 and 75,000 kilos of honey annually and markets several varieties, each with its own particular universe of flavors. Discover this diversity of complex aromas that evolve seasonally with Autumn honey, which offers a delicate and fruity taste with notes of vanilla, apricot and beeswax, or Summer honey, which has a delicate and fresh taste, with floral and menthol notes. In all cases, the recipe is simple: limit human interaction and leave the honey in its pure state. At Édouard & Léo we love to incorporate Miels d’Anicet aromatic organic honey into the preparation of our products, as is the case with our pre-cooked chicken with lemon confit and rosemary, or our marinated beef flank steak from Prince Edward Island.