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7 Great Taste Awards!

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We achieved a massive 7 Great Taste Awards from the Guild of fine Food this year – a personal best!

Our Raspberry cream ice received the Guilds highest award of 3 Gold Stars, the judges praising the ‘excellent fresh raspberry taste, creaminess and wonderfully ripe fruit’.  Only two other products received top marks in the ice cream and frozen dessert categories, putting usfirmly among the very best in the country!

The Great Taste Awards, run by the Guild of Fine Food is the recognised mark for excellence in fine food.  Of a total of over 8,800 products entered across all categories in 2012 only 123 were awarded the coveted 3 stars.

Judges this year included Masterchef winner and restaurateur Mat Follas, restaurant critic and Masterchef judge Charles Campion, food writers Lucas Hollweg and Xanthe Clay and over 300 food buyers from leading food halls, delicatessens and farm shops, including Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason.

Guild of Fine Food chairman Bob Farrand said that each of the food and drink products entered into Great Taste undergoes the most rigorous scrutiny. “To achieve a 3-star grading involves at least 25 experts blind-tasting and unanimously agreeing that the product tastes divine,” he said. “These products all deliver the most extraordinary taste.”

Our Gooseberry & Elderflower, Damson, Toffee Apple & Blackcurrant also received a ‘faultless’ 2 stars and ourTayberry and Morello Cherry received a ‘perfect’ 1 star. Giving a personal best of 7 Great Taste Awards, and 13 stars.

We have been smiling all week!

 

Audrey’s Looking Very Smart!

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Really excited to see Audrey looking all shiny and new yesterday in her new county cream and burgundy livery.  We should be picking her up from John Newell & Sons on Monday (once shes got all her windows back in), so look out for her around Stowmarket, Needham Market & Mickfield on Monday as she heads off to have her kitchen fitted.

 

 

 

 

Off on a jolly…

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This year we didn’t attend Feast East as exhibitors as we are busy bees at Alder Tree HQ working on top secret stuff (read the blog next week for insider info!).  Luckily for us, Tastes of Anglia, who worked with the organisers on this event, agreed to hand out some samples and be our temporary sales team from their stand!  It’s a win-win situation, although I wonder how many samples were handed out and how many were, um, “sampled” by the Tastes Team.  No problem with that as whenever Stephany and I are out and about we find that we work just as hard at sampling as we do at selling.  Call it a perk of the job.

Anyway.  I managed to sneak out of the office and pop over to Feast East for a couple of hours, which was great!  These events are where we catch up with old friends and I love seeing my old stallholders from when we had the Farmers’ Market here at Alder Carr, some of whom have gone on to great things and win lots of awards too.

The Artisan Smokehouse were on great form, as always.  What a lovely pair of foodies they are!  The smoked garlic bits that Tim suggested that I try might have been a mistake at 10am though as they were really potent and lingered somewhat!

Lucinda and Zara at Munchy Seeds are always a delight to see.  I am especially addicted to their Choccy Munchy Seeds.  Despite being coated with some rather delicious chocolate, they are seeds, so they must be good for you?!  Zara gave me a pot of the new honey coated seeds to try as a sprinkle on our ices which I think will work really well.  We have since had to hide the tub from Graham though as he is already addicted and has somewhat depleted the samples.  oops.

 

Claire at Breckland was celebrating the company’s 3rd birthday and had a lovely big cake which she was keen to cut into – but I desisted, as having just eaten Tim’s garlic chips I wasn’t sure about the flavour combo…

I also said hello to Jules and Sharpie, Hadley’s dairy, the Chilli Co, Hillfarm Oils and loads more.  It was lovely to have the time to do that, rather than being behind our cream ice cart smiling and handing out our own samples, although that is often fun too!