What’s the deal with Raw Rare Real?
Let us put it this way.
It’s thirty years of friendship with the van de Winckel family, the green-thumbed wonders who grow our organic herbs at the base of Mount Roland.It’s the colour of their healing calendula; an orange so bright it makes your eyes water, grown in soil so red it glows.
It’s six weeks over high summer, deep in wild takayna, when the native Leatherwood trees erupt in white blossoms.
It’s the sound of millions of bees feasting in the rainforest canopy creating the world’s rarest honey and beeswax; sweetness they share with us.
It’s the slow, steady movements of third generation beekeeper Ewan Stephens who knows that calm humans don’t get stung.
It’s the swoosh and slap of Bull Kelp in a swell, an undersea forest off the wild coast of Marrawah.
It’s the storms that wash it onto the beaches, and the locals who collect it mindfully from the shore.
It’s purple crocus flowers with their faces to the sun, precious crimson filaments waving in the breeze.
It’s the painstaking process of plucking each one by hand, harvesting saffron the slow way. (Ask Terry and Nicky Noonan about the love and pain that involves!)
It’s the furthest south you can source green tea.
It’s the cleanest air dairy cows can breathe.
It’s our island’s floral emblem, nesting holes for endangered swift parrots, and a scent so uplifting it makes the Roaring 40s look tame. It’s Tasmanian Blue Gum.
We could go on, but you probably get the picture.
Our products aren’t so much made with Tassie ingredients as they are parts of Tasmania itself.
They evoke the people, places, colours, textures, sounds, scents, nectars, rains, soils, traditions and untamed nature that make our island both world famous and determinedly shy.
They can never be scaled up, mass produced or substituted with anything else; we only take what Tassie can give.
And they reveal the Raw, Rare and Real parts of you too.
Yours in wild beauty,
Jill and the Bees x
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