Tasting notes

The Isle of Wight’s Garlic Farm certainly knows its alliums

Garlic bred on the Isle of Wight

AT THE BOTTOM of Lime Kiln Shute, a spindly road that descends in narrow kinks from Brading Downs on the east of the Isle of Wight, a huddle of ginger cows observe a festive scene. An overflowing car park, twinkly lights and the pristine pillar-box-red uniforms of the Medina Marching Band are signs that Christmas has arrived at The Garlic Farm, where stalls sell decorations and spiced fudge, and where all year round different varieties of garlic are nurtured by the UK’S largest specialist grower.

The Boswell family have been at Mersley Farm since the 1960s – first as tenant farmers with a dairy herd, pigs, and crops of watercress and chicory, then as owners producing sweetcorn and eventually garlic. It is the vibrant HQ of a business that once supplied all the major supermarkets with bulbs, including tons of the peeled and puréed ones that fuelled Britain’s love affair with garlic bread and chicken Kiev in the 1980s and ’90s. For almost 20 years, however, Colin and Jenny Boswell and their children have sold only at farmer’s markets and through farm shops including their own, where the sweetsharp scent of fresh bulbs hits you strides before entering the shed. The largest of them is elephant garlic, twice the size of standard bulbs, whose mellow-tasting cloves can be sliced raw into salads or roasted whole. Next year’s crop has already been planted, along with Solent Wight and early Extra Wight – strains that thrive on the fertile land supplied by fresh spring water and sheltered from prevailing westerlies. So while hand-carved wooden reindeer find new homes with visitors stocking up on punchy mayo and oils, next summer’s harvest is in the making. thegarlicfarm.co.uk