FOOD & DRINK SUPPORTED BY
REPLENISHING THE LARDER
Hebridean Food Company
S u m m e r h o u s e D r i n k s Great Glen Game
2015’s Year of Food & Drink showcased some of the best that Scotland’s producers, brewers and distillers had to offer. Donald Reid and Louise Stoddart
pick out a few of the notable new arrivals
Plan Bee’s Honey Beer Together with Beehive Brae, these guys launched their honey beer in April last year, just before the bees got busy for the summer. The honey gives the beer a smooth texture and light, l oral taste; but that wasn’t their only aim. Plan Bee was created for the betterment of bees, so every bottle they sell goes towards protecting the decreasing honeybee populations. Their other innovative honey products include Elderl ower & Rose Mead, edging one of the oldest alcoholic drinks back into fashion.
Tonic Water – to go with all that gin It’s been hard not to notice the surge in new gin distillations all across Scotland – we’ll mention Isle of Harris, Rock Rose and Porter’s in passing, but they’re by no means the only ones. With so many newbies, Summerhouse Drinks cleverly i lled that obvious gap in the market, offering a small batch of Scottish-made tonic water to make the ultimate Scottish G&T. Walter Gregor’s Tonic is an addition to Summerhouse’s already popular collection of soft drinks made using natural ingredients on their family’s farm in Aberdeenshire. Hebridean Food Company Scotland’s beef and lamb carries a well-established reputation, not least when it’s held up as a product of the country’s clean, green, rough and tough landscape. Douglas Stewart from North Uist graduated from the Scottish Agricultural College, launching his Hebridean Food Company website and countrywide delivery service in 2015. It provides an opportunity to sample blackface lamb and pedigree Highland beef that migrates between the machair grasslands of the uninhabited tidal island of Vallay and the heather grazing of North Uist. It’s an emblematic example of a traditional, low-impact, semi-wild system of stock management that’s unique to its Hebridean location and apparent in the cooking and eating qualities of the meat.
46 THE LIST 4 Feb–7 Apr 2016
Cream o’ Galloway Cheese While cheesemaking in Scotland has its adventurous side – there’s even some halloumi happening – there is also a lot of respect paid among the nation’s small band of cheesemakers to traditional methods. Wilma Finlay and Sarah Haworth at Cream o’ Galloway, better known for its ice-cream and go-karting, have been delving back to the styles of cheeses made on their own farm up to the 1970s. Look out for Carrick, a hard cheese that has already picked up a couple of admiring awards, Laganory and a new blue cheese that’s in its i nal stages of preparation for the market.
Curing our charcuterie miles In Scotland, many of us are pretty fond of European charcuterie, and we make short work of sharing boards piled high with the stuff. However, locally produced charcuterie is increasingly available: Borders-based Hammond’s crowdfunding campaign is aiming to help them move to a larger site, while organic charcutiers at Peelham Farm and Highlanders Great Glen Game have been picking up awards for their Scottish take on cured meats. Joining in are Highland Wagyu, with Scotland’s i rst-ever Wagyu salami, bresaola and pastrami. And for dessert . . . Ice-cream is always fertile territory for unusual l avours, but offering something pleasantly unusual are Stew’n’Drew’s in Hopeman, Moray. Wanting to give something back to the locals, the ambitious duo took inspiration from butteries (or rowies), that breakfasty-brunchy staple of the north east, and turned it into ice-cream. Wowee Rowie is one of many l avours that these two have concocted, along with wasabi and cask-strength whisky, plus a few more conventional options, including strawberry and espresso.
Find out more at food.list.co.uk