Category Archive: Makers and Producers

Food producers

Review: Jolly Nice, nr Stroud

We found Jolly Nice three years ago. Someone had bought a defunct petrol station on the A419 and turned it into a bit of a farm shop. Only it was a surprising little farm shop because they made a really good flat white, astonishingly gorgeous salted caramel milkshakes with their own ice cream, and sold …

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Wine tasting in Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a wonderful city, with plenty of lovely looking shops and a limitless number of eating options. And with the most significant wine AOCs scattered around it like spokes on a wheel (Graves/Sauternes to the south, St Emilion/Pomerol to the east and Medoc to the west) there couldn’t really be a better base for …

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Wine tasting in the Loire

The Loire is a big river in a big valley, and so the wine region of the Loire is – you’ve guessed it – big. We didn’t quite appreciate this and probably set out to explore too much of it in one long weekend. So that’s my first piece of advice: if you’re here for …

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Review: Ludlow Kitchen, Ludlow

The Ludlow Kitchen wins at local produce, don’t even try to compete. This is because it is the new restaurant attached to the successful Ludlow Food Centre, farm shop extraordinaire. Let’s see… the beef, lamb and pork is all from their own farm and butchered on the premises, they also make their own cheeses, cream …

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Take a trip to Champagne

Jump in the car, drive down to Dover, get on the ferry and go champagne tasting. Don’t blame me if you come home with three cases of great champagnes your friends have never heard of. And they’ll have cost less than the next eighteen bottles of froth you won’t have to buy in the UK, …

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