Mannes DesertHoney

The Mannes family have kept bees across the north-western Mallee for the better part of two decades, and their Red Cliffs shop on Ilex Street is where that work reaches the public. The signature is a honey tap: customers bring their own container and fill it from a vat of raw, unblended honey, mostly Mallee with a little red gum, in a nod to both provenance and less packaging. Jars of varietal honey sit alongside house-made preserves, sauces and chutneys. It is a small, genuinely local operation rather than a tourist set-piece, drawing on the eucalypt country that rings the irrigation blocks. Worth the short run south of Mildura for anyone interested in single-region Australian honey.