2012: 7 Great Taste Awards, Suffolk Carbon Charter Award and more

7 Great Taste Awards

We are delighted to announce that we have received 7 Great Taste Awards from the Guild of Fine Food including the Suffolk Food & Drink Awards, which are highly commended in the Suffolk Product Category! 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. Here are our stars for each flavour:

3 Stars

Raspberry.

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. 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.”

2 Stars

Gooseberry & Elderflower, Damson, Toffe Apple and Blackcurrant.  

1 Star

Morello Cherry and Tayberry.

This gives us a personal best of 7 Great Taste Awards, and 13 stars.

We have been smiling all week!

Silver Success!

We also recently received the Suffolk Carbon Charter Silver Award.  Suffolk is aiming to become “the greenest county” and we are proud to be doing our bit!

Here's how we got silver:

• We installed solar panels towards powering our production facilities,
• We changed our packaging to create less waste and more recycling (and it is prettier too – pretty is important!)
• Stephany worked with the Low Carbon Champions Programme by the Green Light Trust 
• We have a carbon reduction plan.
• We source everything we can as locally as possible; fruit from our own farm, and we use local services and suppliers wherever possible.

One of Suffolk's Green 100 Businesses

As well as this, we are delighted to tell you that we have been accepted as one of  Suffolk's Green 100 Businesses. We work hard at minimising our impact on the environment and source as many of our ingredients as locally as we can; in fact much of the fruit grows within sight of the cream ice kitchen.  

One thing that helped us to get into the Green 100 was the new solar panels that we installed last year. They have ticked over during the winter months and we are looking forward to the sun shining and the solar energy being generated. If you're down at the farm have a look at the roof by the courtyard to see them.