APULICA / HONEY AND DAIRY
Meadow honeys of the Matese mountains
Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Honey and dairy · Campania
In brief
- Wildflower honey made above 600 m in the Campanian Matese, in the provinces of Caserta and Benevento. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese)
- The spring harvest is golden and tastes of thyme, oregano and savory; the summer one is darker, with notes of chestnut and thistle. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese)
- Wildflower honey from the Matese mountains is on Campania's list of traditional products. (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))
History and origin
The Matese is a mountain massif on the border between Campania and Molise, with peaks ranging from the thousand metres of Monte Crocella to more than two thousand on Monte Miletto. It is a land with a strong pastoral tradition, where the ancient practice of transhumance survives, and beekeeping has been practised here for centuries: honey has long been both food and remedy.
The Slow Food Foundation also describes recent hardships. Livestock farming and agriculture are going through a crisis, farmers and shepherds move down to steadier jobs in the valleys, and the small villages are losing people. Some municipalities have responded with research and promotion projects, recovering local seeds at risk and encouraging practices such as beekeeping, which protect biodiversity and help communities stay.
From this effort came the Slow Food Presidium for the meadow honeys of the Matese mountains, supported by the municipalities of Castello del Matese and Letino, in the province of Caserta. Matese mountain wildflower honey is also listed among Campania's traditional food products.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese · Regione Campania — Miele millefiori dei monti del Matese (prodotto tradizionale) · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)
Area and method of production
The Presidium area is the mountain zone of the Campanian Matese municipalities above 600 metres, in the provinces of Caserta and Benevento. Here the limestone soils are fertile and rich in springs, and karst plateaus alternate with sinkholes, creating a highly biodiverse environment with wide permanent meadows. The area lies within the Matese Regional Park, and the regional record notes that the park's protection has kept the wild mountain flora intact.
Bees forage on thyme, savory, oregano, marjoram, thistle, dandelion and other meadow herbs, but also on shrubs such as holly, wild cherry, bramble and hawthorn and trees such as spruce, black pine, holm oak and beech. Harvests are short, because the weather changes often between sudden rain and sunny spells, and later than in the valley, since flowering lasts well into summer.
Presidium beekeepers keep their hives in unspoilt surroundings, limit moving them and use practices that respect bees and other pollinators.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese · Regione Campania — Miele millefiori dei monti del Matese (prodotto tradizionale)
How to recognise it
Matese meadow wildflower honey changes with the seasons and reflects the karst landscape it comes from. Spring honey is golden and gathers the scents of the season's flowers, mainly thyme, oregano and savory. Summer honey is darker and carries notes of chestnut, daisies and thistle.
The Campania Region describes it as always fluid, slow to crystallise, sometimes darker and always very aromatic, with a mainly floral bouquet. Between July and August it often includes some honeydew, produced above all from oaks, beech and high-altitude conifers. Where old Matese fruit trees or wild cherries and sour cherries remain, the wildflower honey carries their trace.
If summer has been kind and September and October are not too cold, the bees also make honey from the late blooms of ivy, traveller's joy and savory, common on the uplands.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese · Regione Campania — Miele millefiori dei monti del Matese (prodotto tradizionale)
Where to taste it
The Presidium honeys come from the Campanian Matese municipalities, between the provinces of Caserta and Benevento, and especially from Castello del Matese and Letino, which support the project. The Matese Regional Park is a ring of limestone massifs, rocky peaks and high-altitude beech woods, with Lake Matese at its centre, one of the highest karst basins in Italy, which can be crossed by canoe in the warm season.
It is a land to enjoy outdoors: trekking, canyoning, climbing, mountain biking, horse riding, snowshoeing and skiing. Many bird species live among the lake's reed beds, and wolves, roe deer and eagles roam the surrounding mountains.
A visit to the Matese is a chance to taste the honey alongside other mountain produce, starting with the local caciocavallo, fresh, semi-aged or aged. Spring and summer, when the meadows are in bloom and the bees at work, are the seasons when the bond between honey and landscape is easiest to see.
Sources: Italia.it (Ministero del Turismo) — Parco Regionale del Matese · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese
Protection
- Slow Food Presidium — mieli-dei-prati-dei-monti-del-matese (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Mieli dei prati dei Monti del Matese)
- Traditional agri-food product (PAT) — Campania, n. 602, 26th revision (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))
When
- The sources consulted give no months.