Food and drink champions from across the UK travelled to the far South West for the first-ever Great Cornish Food Safari. The event showed how Cornwall has carved a reputation as the UK’s hottest food destination beyond London and is now breaking new ground, with innovation driving a highly sustainable food and drink economy.
Over three sunny days, Truro-based Great Cornish Food hosted 20 delegates from as far afield as northern Scotland, Wales, the Cotswolds and Sussex as part of its Raising the Bar programme and introduced them to a wide variety of the county’s pioneers in food, drink, farming and fishing.
The visitors discovered how Cornwall’s £2 billion agrifood sector is reducing waste, repurposing ingredients and using the latest science to retain its leading edge.
Delegates were also able to share thinking and ideas with the people behind some of Cornwall’s most successful products to ensure the visit was much more than a promotional event.
Great Cornish Food Managing Director Richard Bain said: “Our first-ever food safari showed how Cornwall is growing a resilient agrifood ecosystem and highlighted a wealth of stories of transformation, sustainability and innovation. These are the factors that will set Cornwall apart as these things become more and more critical to the success of the agrifood sector – one of the pillars of our economy. It’s also been great to see our local food businesses swap experiences and ideas with our visitors as well as generating new trade contacts. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Among the furthest travelled was Katrina Reynolds, from Berwick, Northumberland, who said: “Our visit has been totally inspirational. It’s given me confidence in what we are offering at the other end of the country.” Katrina, who runs an emerging food tours enterprise and a small hotel, added: “We’re a proud, hard-working and creative people in a rural area just like the food and drink businesses we’ve met in Cornwall, who are doing a great job of shouting about what’s on offer. We all need to celebrate what’s on our doorstep.”
On a tour of Lynher Dairy near Ponsanooth the group saw premium cheese-making up close, sampled the range and heard that milk for the intensely-flavoured Cornish Kern comes from the dairy’s own Ayrshire herd less than two miles away. The dairy has put sustainability at the heart of its development strategy in recent years, making huge strides in reducing its impact on the environment and becoming one of Cornwall’s many B Corp enterprises.
Down the road at Falmouth, they were shown how high-grade chocolate is made at Chocolarder, the South West’s only bean-to-bar producer. As well as renovating and repurposing equipment discarded as outdated by other chocolate manufacturers, Chocolarder’s most recent innovations include a range made using ingredients that would otherwise be wasted by other food businesses, including orange peel and gin-soaked figs.
At Fentenfenna Farm CIC near St Columb Major, a thriving small enterprise hub, Managing Director Luke Berkeley told how they process more than 30 tonnes of waste apples a year and produce a range of drinks aptly named Wasted Apple.
Walking round the multi-purpose council-owned farm, delegates met one of the several eco-friendly enterprises, Mushlove Cornwall, who have responded to the emerging scientific and market interest in the wellness benefits of speciality mushrooms. They grow and sell a selection of mushrooms including the eye-catching Lion’s Mane and turn some into powders and tinctures.
In similar vein but at a very different scale, the group saw how Phytome Research on the Roseland’s Trelonk Estate is using science to create plant-based pharmaceuticals. The same science can potentially be used to understand and explore the nutritional qualities of plants.
At Cornish Premier Pasties in St Columb Major, each delegate got the chance to hand crimp a Cornish pasty and learn about its special PGI status, before enjoying one for lunch.
At internationally-acclaimed Camel Valley Vineyard at Nanstallon, second generation wine maker Sam Lindo hosted a tour and demonstrated how, even at the quality, artisan end of the market, producers can embrace technology to enhance productivity. Engineering and robotics are used increasingly at Camel Valley to reduce some of the most labour-intensive tasks and improve consistency.
At Colwith Farm Distillery near the River Fowey the group learned from Steve Dustow how the family’s potato farm has added value to a commodity product by building Cornwall’s first plough to bottle distillery. Their Aval Dor vodka has since become one of the most highly awarded vodkas in the world.
At Newlyn, one of the UK’s busiest fishing ports, collaboration has driven a new approach to fishing sustainably, helping secure a future for the next generation of fishers.
Over lunch at Argoe with the Cornish Fish Producers’ Organisation the group discovered how the restaurant is raising the profile of lesser-known cuts of fish and got to try hake throat – one such speciality which is typically discarded in the UK but regarded as a delicacy in parts of Europe.
The jam-packed tour also featured visits to Flora on the Trelowarren Estate near Mawgan, Four Boys restaurant in Rock, and Nancarrow Farm near Truro. The group met an extended range of Cornish food producers and sector specialists at each of these venues for wider discussions and exchange of ideas.
The safari started and ended at the Great Cornish Food Store in Truro, home to Great Cornish Food’s Raising the Bar programme.
The programme was created to develop the resilience and success of Cornwall’s agrifood sector and is part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Visit greatcornishfood.co.uk for more details.
(Main image – Delegates from across the UK and members of the Great Cornish Food team on the first-ever Great Cornish Food Safari.)
