South West seeks Butcher of the Year.

 

The Cotswolds is searching for its Food and Drink heroes in the annual Cotswold Life Food and Drink Awards.

 

With a brand new category of ‘Butcher of the Year’ introduced for this year, sponsored by Hartpury College, the award aims to champion local butchers and everything they do for the Cotswolds.

 

The Cotswolds is an agricultural area and its food producers have wonderfully tasty cheeses, wines, fruits, vegetables, juices, biscuits, beers, meat and fish widely available from local shops in towns and villages. Farmers' markets are also held regularly in many of the market towns in the area.

 

With nominations now closed, 35 different butchers’ shops have been put forward for the award from a range of establishments from all over the Cotswolds. Some of the nominations received included reasons such as:  “The service and quality of produce is always of the highest standard”, “unbelievably helpful but beyond everything else they understand food” as well as “his produce is always top quality and fresh and served with good humour, he will even deliver produce to my door – the best and friendliest butchers I've ever been to”.

 

The difficult task of short-listing now starts. The aim is to come up with a shortlist of outstanding butchers who will then receive a “mystery shopper” style visit in the next month. The judging panel will be looking for a range of criteria including what they do to improve their meat quality including maturation, if it can be traced to a local farm; whether the staff are friendly, knowledgeable and helpful; if the butcher plays a key role within the local community and if they stock anything unusual or unique.

 

Those lucky few establishments who make it through the first round and on to the shortlist will then be invited to the Awards Dinner in July at Cheltenham Racecourse, where the name of the winner will be revealed. Watch this space!!

  

For further information please contact:

 

Helen Brain
Marketing Assistant

Hartpury College

 

T: 01452 702428        F: 01452 700629        E: helen.brain@hartpury.ac.uk