One afternoon in our shop, a gentleman walked in with a very specific request. He didn't speak English, so he held up his phone with the translator running. The screen read: "Do you have honey for sex?"
Sound travels in that store. Within about thirty seconds, half the building had quietly materialized near the front counter, trying to piece together what was happening. As it turned out, his friend was getting married, and as part of their wedding tradition, honey played an essential role in the first night of married life. He wasn't looking for something unusual. He was looking for something ancient.
That moment sent me down a rabbit hole I've never quite climbed out of. Because honey and romance have been intertwined for a very, very long time — across dozens of cultures, on nearly every continent, going back thousands of years. If you've ever wondered why honey carries such a romantic reputation, or where the word "honeymoon" actually comes from, you're in the right place.
What Makes Something an Aphrodisiac?
The word aphrodisiac comes from Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty. Historically, an aphrodisiac was any food, drink, or substance that cultures associated with desire, romance, or the celebration of love. That definition is important: it's rooted in symbolism, ritual, and tradition — not a modern pharmaceutical claim.
Throughout history, foods became associated with romance for all sorts of reasons — their rarity, their sweetness, their sensory experience, or their role in ceremonies that celebrated love. Honey checked every one of those boxes. It was golden, precious, intoxicating in aroma, and deeply tied to wedding ritual across cultures from Persia to India to medieval Europe. That's a story worth telling.
Honey and Romance in the Ancient World
Long before anyone could explain why honey felt like a luxury, civilizations understood that it was one. A cave painting from roughly 8,000 years ago in the Arana Caves in Spain shows a human figure harvesting honey from wild bees — one of the earliest recorded images of our relationship with this golden substance. From there, its significance only deepened.
In ancient Egypt, honey was considered a divine gift, woven into religious rituals, royal life, and beauty practices. The Egyptians documented honey's uses in more than 900 remedies across ancient texts — a testament to how thoroughly it permeated daily life. Its durability only added to the mystique: archaeologists excavating Egyptian tombs in 2015 found 3,000-year-old honey that was still perfectly preserved. A substance that never spoils felt, to ancient minds, like something sacred.
Ancient Greek physicians, including Hippocrates, associated honey with vitality and vigor, recommending it in various traditional preparations. To the Greeks, honey was also linked to Aphrodite herself — the goddess of love was said to favor it, which is part of why honey became associated with romance, desire, and celebration across the ancient Mediterranean world.
In Persian wedding tradition, honey was — and in many communities still is — an essential element of the ceremony. Couples exchange honey with one another as a symbol of the sweetness they wish to bring to their shared life. The tradition persists in modern Iran today. In other parts of the Middle East, honey has long been used to mark important life milestones and sacred unions, representing the sweetness that should characterize a loving marriage.
Indian mythology holds honey as one of the five sacred elixirs of immortality. The Rigveda and the Upanishads both reference the relationship between bees and humans, and Ayurvedic texts document honey as a valued ingredient in traditional preparations tied to celebration and ceremony. To this day, honey is traditionally offered at Indian weddings as a symbol of life's sweetness.
In traditional Chinese medicine, honey has been written about for centuries as a food associated with vitality and balance. The highly influential Compendium of Materia Medica, written during the Ming Dynasty by the physician Li Shizhen, recommends daily honey consumption as part of a balanced approach to well-being — a recommendation that has made this text one of the most referenced works in traditional Chinese medicine for generations.
The Origin of the Word “Honeymoon”
Here's where things get really interesting — and where honey's romantic reputation is most firmly rooted in documented history.
The word "honeymoon" traces back to a medieval European tradition, likely originating around the 5th century. Newlyweds were gifted enough mead — a fermented beverage made from honey and water — to last them a full lunar cycle following their wedding. A month of mead. One moon of honey. Hence: honeymoon.
Mead is widely considered one of the oldest fermented beverages in human history, with evidence of honey fermentation dating back to roughly 7,000 BC in China. Ancient civilizations across Asia, Europe, and Africa each developed their own versions of this honeyed drink, and in many of these cultures, mead carried a powerful symbolic association with celebration, fertility, and the sweetness of new beginnings.
The Babylonians had their own version of this tradition: the father of the bride would supply his new son-in-law with a month's supply of honeyed beer following the wedding ceremony. Because the Babylonian calendar was lunar — one month equaling one full moon — this period became known informally as the "honey month." It's one of several competing origin stories for the modern word, and one of the most historically grounded.
The word "honeymoon" itself first appeared in English writing in 1552, in a dictionary by Richard Huloet, who used the spelling Hony Moone. The "honey" referred to the sweetness of early marriage; the "moon" to the passing of time — and perhaps a subtle acknowledgment that even the sweetest things can change with the seasons.
Today, June is still one of the most popular months for weddings — and it happens to align with peak honey harvesting season. That overlap between celebration and harvest is not entirely a coincidence.
Honey in Wedding Traditions Around the World
The Persian honey exchange we described above is just one example of how honey has been woven into wedding ceremonies across wildly different cultures. In ancient Greece, honey was offered in wedding rituals to invoke sweetness and harmony in the new marriage. In some African traditions, honey has historically been used in birth celebrations as well as union ceremonies. Buddhist texts describe honey as a sacred offering, with the Honey Full Moon festival (Madhu Purnima) celebrating an ancient legend in which a monkey gifts the Buddha a honeycomb during his retreat in the forest.
In the Jewish tradition, honey takes on profound significance during Rosh Hashanah — the New Year — when apples are dipped in honey as an expression of hope for a sweet year ahead. It's also a popular element of celebration and gifting at Jewish weddings and joyful occasions. The Catholic Church has long used beeswax candles as a symbol of purity and divine light, with beekeepers historically supplying candles to churches across Europe as part of a deeply rooted relationship between the hive and the sacred.
The Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian text on love and intimacy written somewhere between 400 BCE and 200 CE, mentions honey as part of the practices surrounding celebration between partners — a cultural footnote that reflects just how naturally honey found its way into the language of romance across civilizations.
Why Honey Feels Romantic
Set aside the folklore for a moment, and there's still something undeniably sensory about honey that earns its romantic reputation. It's deeply golden, viscous, slow-moving — there's an almost theatrical quality to watching honey pour. Its aroma is warm and floral, varying dramatically by varietal: a light Tupelo carries delicate magnolia sweetness; a dark Buckwheat brings something almost molasses-rich and complex. The experience of tasting honey side by side with someone is genuinely pleasurable in a way that a packet of table sugar simply isn't.
Honey also carries rarity. When you're drizzling a single-varietal raw honey harvested from a specific farm or region, you're tasting something that can't be exactly replicated — shaped by one season, one set of blooms, one ecosystem. That's the kind of thing that makes a meal feel like an occasion.
And then there's the gift of it. Honey has functioned as a luxury offering for most of human history — a jar of golden sweetness that required significant labor to produce and carried real cultural weight. Giving someone a beautiful jar of raw honey today echoes thousands of years of that same gesture.
Incorporating Honey into Romantic Occasions
If you want to bring some of that ancient sweetness into a modern celebration, honey is one of the most versatile — and genuinely delicious — ways to do it.
Build a Honey Charcuterie Board
A well-composed board with aged cheeses, honeycomb, seasonal fruit, toasted nuts, and a drizzle of a quality raw varietal honey is one of the simplest luxuries you can put together for two. The combination of salty, sweet, creamy, and crunchy creates a tasting experience that naturally slows you down and invites conversation. We love pairing our Tupelo Honey — with its famously smooth, buttery finish — with a good sharp aged cheddar or a creamy brie. For a bolder contrast, reach for Sourwood Honey instead: its burnt-caramel finish and faint spice notes hold their own against stronger cheeses in a way that makes both things better.
Try a Honey-Sweetened Cocktail
Mead is the most historically apt choice, of course — and if you want to try making your own, our Wildflower Honey Mead recipe is a great place to start. But honey works beautifully as a cocktail sweetener in everything from a classic hot toddy to a bourbon smash. It adds complexity that simple syrup never quite manages.
Give Honey as a Gift
A curated honey gift set is one of those presents that feels both personal and genuinely thoughtful. Our honey collection spans everything from the mild and floral to the bold and complex — and there's something quietly meaningful about sharing something that took an entire season and thousands of bees to produce. If you're shopping for a couple, a wedding, or Valentine's Day, explore our raw honey collection for ideas.
Use Honey in a Skincare Ritual
Honey has been used in beauty preparations since ancient Egypt — Cleopatra's legendary milk and honey baths are among the most enduring examples of honey in personal care history. Today, our Original Honey Body Scrub brings that same single-ingredient simplicity to your routine: one ingredient, crystallized honey, nothing else. The natural crystals gently exfoliate while the honey leaves skin feeling soft and conditioned. There's something undeniably indulgent about it — which is probably why Cleopatra was onto something.
The Sweet Thread That Runs Through History
What's remarkable about honey's romantic reputation is how independently it developed across cultures that had no contact with one another. Persians, Greeks, Babylonians, Vikings, Ayurvedic practitioners, Chinese physicians, and Buddhist monks all arrived at similar conclusions about honey's significance in love, celebration, and ceremony — not because they compared notes, but because honey, in its golden abundance and sensory richness, simply lends itself to moments of sweetness.
That's the truest answer to whether honey is an aphrodisiac: it may not operate the way a modern supplement claims to, but its connection to romance is about as well-documented as anything in human history. Thousands of years of wedding rituals, honeymoon traditions, and sacred offerings don't happen by accident.
If you're curious about honey's deeper cultural significance, we explore its role in sacred traditions across world religions in our post on honey in religions around the world. And if you want to go even deeper into the history of how ancient cultures valued and used honey, our piece on honey's rich heritage through history covers the full arc from cave paintings to traditional medicine texts.
In the meantime — consider picking up a jar and sharing it with someone. It's one of the oldest romantic gestures in the world, and it still works.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is honey really an aphrodisiac?
Honey has been associated with romance and love across dozens of cultures for thousands of years — from ancient Greek wedding rituals to Persian honey exchange ceremonies and the medieval tradition that gave us the word "honeymoon." Whether that qualifies as aphrodisiac in the modern sense is a matter of folklore and cultural tradition rather than clinical claim. What's well-documented is that honey has been a symbol of sweetness, celebration, and desire across human history in a way very few other foods can match.
Where does the word "honeymoon" come from?
The word "honeymoon" traces back to a medieval European tradition, likely originating around the 5th century, in which newlyweds were gifted enough mead — a fermented beverage made from honey and water — to last a full lunar cycle after their wedding. One moon's worth of honey: honeymoon. The word first appeared in English writing in 1552, spelled Hony Moone, in a dictionary by Richard Huloet.
What cultures use honey in wedding ceremonies?
Honey has been used in wedding and union ceremonies across an extraordinary range of cultures. Persian tradition involves couples exchanging honey as a symbol of sweetness in married life — a practice that continues in modern Iran. Ancient Greek wedding rituals included honey offerings for harmony. Babylonian tradition involved a month-long gift of honeyed beer to newlyweds. In India, honey is traditionally offered at weddings as one of the five sacred elixirs. Jewish celebrations also incorporate honey as a symbol of sweetness and new beginnings.
What is the best honey to give as a romantic gift?
For a romantic occasion, look for a single-varietal raw honey with a distinctive flavor profile — something that feels special and intentional rather than generic. Tupelo honey, with its famously smooth and buttery finish, is a particularly elegant choice. A quality raw honey paired with a piece of honeycomb on a simple board makes one of the most thoughtful and historically resonant gifts you can give.
