Champions of game

The Wild Meat Company’s game roulade (pictured), made from pheasant and wild duck, won the Best Added Value Game Meat Product category, sponsored by The Field, at the 2019 Eat Game Awards.

Former agricultural consultant Robert Gooch, who founded the company with butcher Paul Denny in 1999, said online sales have “gone through the roof” during the COVID-19 crisis. “We can’t keep up with demand,” he said, with venison mince overtaking wild rabbit as the most popular product.

Originally set up as a traditional game dealer, the company has tried every route of finding a market from delivering to restaurants to farmers markets but found online to be the most profitable.

All the game, apart from wild boar and grouse, is sourced locally and processed by the 10-strong staff at the company’s premises near Woodbridge in Suffolk. There are around 160 products on the company’s website, ranging from diced rabbit to squirrel and pigeon and quail ballotine.

“It means a lot to our customers and our staff to be recognised in this way and we will carry on trying to promote game as best we can,” said Gooch, who also collected an award last year when the company won the Small Retailer category.

Organised by Taste of Game and James Purdey & Sons, the Eat Game Awards, launched last year, has 13 categories. Businesses with the most nominations go forward to the next round where votes are cast by the general public.

“The Awards acknowledge wild game as a part of our heritage and there could not be a better time to support our small businesses, butchers, farm shops and game producers who are creating new ways for us all to enjoy wild game, particularly in these difficult times,” said Purdey chairman Dan Jago.

Winner of the Best Restaurant Regularly Serving Game was The Caddy Mann in Jedburgh; Best Pub, The Pheasant in Highclere, Berkshire; Best Chef, Tom Kitchin who owns The Kitchin in Edinburgh; Best Farmers’ Market, Hadrian’s Game Larder, Hexham; and Best Multiple Retailer, Waitrose, which included partridge canapés in last year’s Christmas range.

For a full list of winners, go to The Field’s website: thefield.co.uk