Following 14,205 food and drink entries from 110 countries across the world, Great Taste, the world’s largest food and drink accreditation scheme based entirely on taste, has reached its grand finale for 2022 and the coveted Golden Fork trophies have been awarded.
The Great Taste Golden Fork trophy for Scotland has been awarded to Heather Hills Farm from Perth and Kinross for its Scottish Heather Comb Honey.
The honey was described as having “a wonderful deep rich caramel edge that lingers on the palate beautifully” and suggesting flavours of “lavender and subtle fruit alongside pure heather loveliness”.
The Scottish Heather Comb Honey is only available in limited supply after each heather honey harvest season which occurs at the end of November of each year.
Impressing the Great Taste judges with its “rich golden colour, and remarkably floral aroma with the character of sweet alyssum”, the Scottish Heather Comb Honey made an impression at every stage of the blind-tasted judging process across the 90 days.
Chosen from hundreds of other entries from Scotland, this “delightful, rich and pleasing” Comb Honey was celebrated as the best tasting product in its region at the ceremony.
John Farrand, managing director at the Guild of Fine Food said of these awards: “Unveiling the Great Taste Golden Fork winners is a huge honour.
"After months of rigorous blind-tasting and judging, it is fantastic to reveal the award-winning products and celebrate the producers' hard work and innovation. It’s been an exceptional year for creativity and inspirational food and drink entries.
"Huge congratulations from all of us at GFF to all the award winners, it really isn’t easy to do what you do - I have the utmost admiration for you all. And thank you to everyone who was involved in Great Taste 2022.”
For more information on Heather Hills Farm, visit their website.
The Great Taste Golden Fork from Scotland was sponsored by Scotland Food & Drink.
Also nominated this year were the Great Taste 3-star Orkney Akvavit from Orkney Gin Company based in the Orkney Islands and Scotch Reserve Pure Royal Filet from St James Smokehouse based in Dumfries and Galloway.
Recognised as a stamp of excellence and actively sought out by food lovers and retailers alike, Great Taste, organised by the Guild of Fine Food, values taste above all else.
All products in the line-up for judging are blind tasted: every product is removed from its packaging so it cannot be identified, before entering a robust, layered judging process.
This year, the judging took place over 90 days across two judging locations (Dorset and London).
Great Taste’s prestigious judging panel is made up of over 500 food & drink professionals, including critics, chefs, recipe creators, buyers, retailers, journalists, broadcasters, and experts in the field.
This experienced panel, each with trusted palates, have together tasted and re-judged the 3-star winning products to crown the Golden Forks trophy winners as well as the Great Taste 2022 Supreme Champion.
This year, food and drink products from 110 different countries were entered into the Great Taste accreditation scheme.
Only 5,556 products – that’s 39.1% of the total products entered this year – received either a Great Taste 1-, 2- or 3-star award, and of the 2,344 winning companies, 27% are based outside of the UK.
The full list of this year’s winners can be found at www.greattasteawards.co.uk and a wide range of the award-winning products are available to buy in delis, farm shops and independent retail outlets.
