Blaisdon Red Plum Jam from The Artisan Kitchen is awarded top accolade for taste in the South West AND the Great Taste Small Artisan Producer of the Year award

Following a record-breaking 14,205 food and drink entries from 110 countries across the world, Great Taste, the world’s largest food and drink accreditation scheme based entirely on taste, has reached its grand finale for 2022.

Announced last night at the Great Taste Golden Forks ceremony held at Southwark Cathedral, the Great Taste Golden Fork trophy for the South West has been awarded to The Artisan Kitchen from Gloucestershire, for its Blaisdon Red Plum Jam, described as having “utter deliciousness all bound together by plums and sugar” with a “perfect balance of sweetness and acidity which leaves a tart, plummy succulence dancing on the palate”. The product also received the Great Taste Small Artisan Producer of the Year award which celebrates the best-performing Great Taste 3-star award-winning product entered by a micro business, regardless of how long they have been trading.

The Artisan Kitchen Blaisdon Red Plum Jam is homemade and handmade in small batches in the heart of a small Gloucester kitchen.

Impressing the Great Taste judges with its “deep stone fruit flavour and a perfect level of acidity that works to make your cheeks flush with happiness”, The Artisan Kitchen Blaisdon Red Plum Jam made an impression at every stage of the blind-tasted judging process across the 90 days.

Rising to the top among hundreds of other entries from the South West, this “dreamy jam full of plum loveliness” was celebrated as the best tasting product in its region at the highly anticipated ceremony – the culmination of Great Taste – the largest and most trusted food and drink accreditation scheme on the planet – dubbed the ‘Oscars’ of the food & drink world and attended by food industry experts and influencers.

John Farrand, managing director at the Guild of Fine Food comments: “Unveiling the Great Taste Golden Fork winners is a huge honour. After months of rigorous blind-tasting and judging, it is fantastic to reveal the award-winning products and celebrate the producers’ hard work and innovation. It’s been an exceptional year for creativity and inspirational food and drink entries. Huge congratulations from all of us at GFF to all the award winners, it really isn’t easy to do what you do – I have the utmost admiration for you all. And thank you to everyone who was involved in Great Taste 2022.”

For more information on The Artisan Kitchen, see here: www.theartisankitchen.co.uk

Also nominated this year were the Great Taste 3-star Blood Orange Marmalade Vino De Naranja also by The Artisan Kitchen and Lypiatt Cheese from The Old Cheese Room based in Wiltshire.

The Great Taste Small Artisan Producer of the Year is sponsored by Speciality & Fine Food Fair.

What is Great Taste?

Recognised as a stamp of excellence and actively sought out by food lovers and retailers alike, Great Taste, organised by the Guild of Fine Food, values taste above all else. All products in the line-up for judging are blind tasted: every product is removed from its packaging so it cannot be identified, before entering a robust, layered judging process. This year, the judging took place over 90 days across two judging locations (Dorset and London).

Great Taste’s prestigious judging panel is made up of over 500 food & drink professionals, including critics, chefs, recipe creators, buyers, retailers, journalists, broadcasters, and experts in the field. This experienced panel, each with trusted palates, have together tasted and re-judged the 3-star winning products to crown the Golden Forks trophy winners as well as the Great Taste 2022 Supreme Champion.

This year, food and drink products from 110 different countries were entered into the Great Taste accreditation scheme. Only 5,556 products – that’s 39.1% of the total products entered this year – received either a Great Taste 1-, 2- or 3-star award, and of the 2,344 winning companies, 27% are based outside of the UK.