Pascal Lac and Philippe Coste, beekeeper – Les Ruchers de Cipières
Pascal Lac, established since 1995 as the head of 6 shops in Nice and the surrounding area and member of RD since 2006 shares his recipe for calisson and reveals to us an exceptional honey produced by Philippe COSTE, professional beekeeper of the “Ruchers de Cipières“.
Philippe COSTE has been a beekeeper since 1998, when he placed his first hives on their family estate in Cipières in the Maritime Alps, a village located in the Loup valley, opposite Le Cheiron.
Born into a family of farmers going back several generations, Philippe for a long time had devoted himself to the breeding of horses before taking the plunge entirely into beekeeping.
” Les Ruchers de Cipières” is a beekeeping operation specialized in the production of monofloral and polyfloral honey from environments typical of Provence (Alps, scrub, scrub, forests…) as well as the
Aveyron region. At the present time Philippe has 300 hives and practices transhumanism. The hives are regularly moved within pollution-free natural sites
In the winter, the hives are set up on the Mediterranean coast where they can enjoy maximum sunshine. First blooming takes place in March/April with a harvest of garrigue honey (white heather, and maritime lavender).
Then the process of transhumance or nomadism begins again and several hives are set up in the Alpes Maritimes, the Alpes de Haute Provence and Aveyron.
In Cipières,the blossoming of the thyme, hawthorn, linden, cherry, fine lavender, savory, hyssop, and thistle…provides for harvests of polyfloral honeys from wild flowers and/or monofloral honeys from fine lavender or savory.
In the Alps of Haute Provence, Philippe harvests only monofloral honey from lavender or lavandin.
In Aveyron, other flowers such as chestnut, linden, buckwheat provide a different range of honeys.
With his variety of different locations and seasonal blossoms, Philippe produces a wide variety of honeys, with distinctive taste characteristics.
The rich abundance of wild flora guarantees honey of exceptional quality with a unique taste.
He sells to individuals directly from his domain as well as on selected small local “farmers” markets. Pascal Lac got in touch with him after several people vaunted the quality of the honey of the Ruchers de Cipières.
Pascal uses wild flower honey to make his calissons and is keen to develop a recipe using Sariette honey of Sarriette whose citrus notes he really appreciates. This meeting between Philippe and Pascal could be the start of a beautiful gourmet collaboration, and our greatest pleasure!
Marie Loones for relais Desserts
