Reveals the outstanding category winners at this year’s Taste of the West Awards

Martin Hesp

What do pear and ricotta flavoured gelato, canned cuttlefish, chicken, ham and asparagus pie, vanilla and blackcurrant fudge, and pork with pink peppercorn salami, have in common? The answer is that these extremely diverse products all won categories at this year’s Taste of the West Awards.

The gelato and the canned cuttlefish were named Supreme Product Champion and runner-up, respectively – but you could have chosen all manner of wonderful and thoroughly delightful treats and flavour combinations from the list of winners. The point being that there is an exciting and ever-expanding list of edible items being made here in the West Country – and the best of them tend to use local ingredients.

West Country food producers were pushing the envelope years ago – certainly when it came to quality – but the early flavoured burgers, sausages, pies, ice-creams and cakes of yesteryear were not quite as exotic or as adventurous, and perhaps not quite as refined, as the products you will find being made all over this region today.

There was a time when it could have been said that the West Country was a rural area, full of good, basic, traditional dishes, drinks and foods, but perhaps a little staid and old-fashioned But, as Taste of the West’s annual competition shows so eloquently, the produce and the hospitality being offered across our peninsula today has a startling quality and breadth of character that makes it a match for any region in any part of the world.

As a food writer who’s worked in the region for 25 years, I’d say the quality you find in both locally produced foods and within our hospitality industry has been improving steadily – but the increasing diversity of the foods, dishes and drinks has accelerated at an astounding rate of knots.

Taste of the West, with its regional know-how and expertise and its famous awards, has been nurturing and shining a light on this extraordinary growth for more than three decades. It is the UK’s largest independent regional food group and it promotes and supports the fantastic local food and drink of the greater South

West (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire). John Sheaves, the well-known CEO of the