Local cheese-makers Lyburn Cheese took home the Golden Fork for the best English product at this year’s Great Taste awards night
All images by Sam Pelly,
© the Guild of Fine Food
Battersea Arts Centre might not be an obvious destination for foodies, but for the second year this ‘centre for the extraordinary’, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024, hosted the Golden Forks evening, the annual presentation of the top Great Taste awards – the best tasting products from around Britain, Europe and the world. Arguably, it is one of the most important events of the year for artisan, specialist and fine food producers.
The building, originally Battersea Town Hall, dates from 1893 and was imaginatively restored after the Grand Hall was seriously damaged in a massive fire on Friday 13th March 2015. It provided an atmospheric and spacious setting for the awards, which featured the cream of this year’s three-star winners, ranging from sea salt made in a blackthorn-tower on the coast of Ayr to the Supreme Champion, a thyme honey from bees on the island of Crete.
The awards are run by the Guild of Fine Food, which started life in Wincanton and is now based in Gillingham, with a second home near Borough Market in Southwark. This year’s 266 three-star winners were selected over weeks of blind tasting by judges drawn from across the food industry – cooks, food writers, journalists, food buyers, restaurant critics, producers, instagrammers and more – from a total of 13,672 entries.
England’s Golden Fork
After further rounds of judging, the award-winners, including the supreme champion, are selected from the finalists. These included Lyburn Cheese, made by Mike and Judy Smales, using milk from their own herd at their farm on the northern edge of the New Forest, near Salisbury. Their three-star Stoney Cross, a mould-ripened semi-hard cheese, went on to be named the winner of the Golden Fork for England.
This is wonderful news both for artisan cheese-makers across the country and for our region specifically – and it had a special resonance for me. I grew up in the New Forest, and learned to drive at Stoney Cross – an RAF bomber and combat fighter airfield during the Second World War. In the 1960s it could still be used to practise your steering, reversing and other driving skills! Mike and Judy were thrilled: ‘We didn’t see that coming!’
The family has been dairy farming at Lyburn Farm since 1952, and started making cheese in 1999 to add value to their milk. Their other cheeses include Lyburn Gold, a washed curd cheese a little like Gouda, which is ripened for eight to 12 weeks; Winchester, a rich creamy cheese which has some of the nuttiness of Cheddar; Old Winchester (also called Old Smales), a harder, distinctively nutty and very versatile cheese which can be used in dishes where you would use Parmesan; Lyburn Lightly Oak Smoked; and Lyburn Garlic and Nettle, made to the same recipe as Lyburn Gold, but ripened for a shorter period.
Another local cheese-maker, Peter Morgan of The Book and Bucket Cheese Company at Cranborne, won three stars for his Cranborne Blue.
Other Dorset three-star winners were Baboo Gelato at Rampisham for their double chocolate gelato, Brassica Dorset, at Beaminster, for their organic chicken, leek and tarragon pie and Dorset Pastry’s all-butter puff pastry, made at Crossways.
The most important person
Food awards are generally rather formulaic affairs, with a guest presenter – often a celebrity from the food industry – and a lot of those reality television-style faux climaxes, when there is a heavily pregnant pause after the names of the finalists are read out “and the winner is …” These awards can feel as if they exist solely to make money for the organisers (which is often the case), rather than to reward quality and hard work.
The ethos of Great Taste has always been that the artisan producer is the most important person, and the awards are a way of helping them to reach a wider market.
Guild of Fine Food managing director John Farrand says: ‘It is important to understand that Great Taste is merely the process that identifies one, two and three-star winners and, in doing so, encourages makers to improve. In announcing the Golden Forks, we are celebrating the very best producers – those who take care to ensure their products hit the markers of trusted raw ingredients, simple production methods and food and drink that has personality … but ultimately, food that tastes great.
‘We’re particularly chuffed to be doing our thing for international trade and relations by welcoming entries from 115 countries this year. In addition, we’re bestowing two new awards: one to a company that demonstrates inspiring business acumen, and the other to an organisation showing genuine commitment to sustainability. These winners must, at the same time, be making outstanding food and drink.’
The Golden Forks is one of the most enjoyable food awards we have ever been to – informal but very professional, in a setting that has star quality of its own. The room was surrounded by tasting stations, where guests, including food journalists, chefs, buyers from leading food companies and shops, Great Taste judges and food and drink producers, could meet and talk to the finalists and sample their products. The award announcements, by John Farrand and food writer and industry commentator Malika Basu, were informative and warm, greeted by enthusiastic applause and almost invariably delighted astonishment by the winners.
A spicy bursary winner
The Great Taste awards are internationally recognised as the largest and most trusted food and drink accreditation scheme in the world. Of the 13,672 entries, 5,590 received one, two or three stars. There were 16 Golden Forks presented at this year’s awards, plus the two new trophies for sustainability and better business.
An innovation last year, marking 30 years of Great Taste, was the bursary programme, which gives 50 micro-producers the opportunity to take part in the awards scheme for free. This year, the single-estate spice trader Food of Gods received the Golden Fork for Outstanding Bursary Winner for its Kandy Heirloom Cinnamon from Sri-Lanka.
Award for a great campaigner
One of the most surprised winners of the evening was the Scottish food campaigner, broadcaster and investigative journalist Joanna Blythman. She was with friends and had no idea that she was there to receive the prestigious Guild of Fine Food Contribution to Food & Drink award. Joanna’s books include Shopped, Bad Food Britain, How To Avoid GM Food and The Food We Eat. Her writing and campaigning have been recognised by the Guild of Food Writers, the BBC Food and Farming Awards and five Glenfiddich Awards. She was a high profile supporter of Scotland’s Errington Cheese in their battles with bureaucracy over their delicious unpasteurised cheeses.
Dorset readers may recall that Joanna was actively involved in the successful battle to keep a giant supermarket out of Sherborne. She not only helped to get Sherborne into the national press and supported the Dorset campaigners but came to Sherborne and spoke to a packed meeting at Castle Gardens, before the welcome news came that the supermarket had decided not to proceed with the planning application.
A taste of the world
Throughout the Battersea evening there were opportunities to try many of the finalists’ products. There was the deliciously aromatic Lussa Gin, made by three women on the Scottish island of Jura; a delicate large-leaf Oolong tea – Smaller Green Leafhopper honey flavour black tea – from the Junjie Lin Tea Garden on Taiwan (winner of the Golden Fork for the rest of the world); a rich traditional Sri Lankan curry from one of this year’s Great Taste bursary winners, Rosheana Olivelle of Hop and Roll; an irresistibly moreish smoked duck breast from the Black Mountain Smokehouse in Wales, (which won the Golden Fork for Wales); the famous Cashel Blue cheese, currently celebrating its 40th anniversary (and winning the Golden Fork for Ireland); and Due Vittorie apple cider vinegar from Italy.
Honey is always a major product in the Great Taste Awards, with more than 400 entries from around the world – this year’s included honeys from Saudi Arabia and the Yemen, as well as Eastern Europe and Greece, where honeys reflect the mountains, forests and biodiversity of both the mainland and the islands.
Outstanding honeys this year were Louisa’s Bosco forest honey, made from pollen and nectar – and winning the Golden Fork for Italy – and Authentiko, a thyme honey from Melicreta-Leontarakis, based on Crete, which won the Golden Fork for Greece and was named Supreme Champion.
The other Golden Fork winners were: Scotland, Blackthorn sea salt flakes; Northern Ireland, Hannan Meats, porchetta; Spain, Cesar Nieto, Jamón de Bellota 100% Ibérico DOP Guijuelo; the Rest of Europe, Isigny Sainte-Mere, crème fraîche d’Isigny AOP 40%; Sustainability, Seabuckthorn Scotland CIC; Better Business, Dark Woods Coffee; and the Nigel Barden Heritage Award, Dà Mhìle Absinthe from Dá Mhìle Distillery in Wales.
You can keep up with news from the Guild and the awards with the new Great Taste podcast, taking you behind the scenes of the judging process.
