A New Logo For Fine Food

Provenance, traceability, trustworthiness, excellence in food and above all, great taste. At last a logo you can trust! It stands for ‘Proven Fine Food’. The Great Taste Awards is the recognised mark standing for excellence in fine food, provenance and great taste.

All food and drink bearing this logo have undergone intensive ‘blind-tasting’ by up to four groups of independent expert judges, providing consumers with the most thorough and robust food accreditation available. The Great Taste Awards are independent from government or professional ‘traffic lights’.

From August 2007 consumers can look for this prestigious mark on proven fine food, they can trust what they buy. The Great Taste Awards benchmark is a far cry from the clever marketing and packaging of supermarket ‘super premium’ own-label foods which are rarely, if ever, independently assessed. Small food producers are fighting back at last.

About the Great Taste Awards

Now in its 14th year, the Great Taste Awards has gained widespread recognition among the country’s retailers and consumers and is now seen as the benchmark for fine food in the UK. Those products fortunate enough to receive an award cannot only claim to be of the finest quality, but prove it too. All entries undergo rigorous tests by a specially selected panel of experts, including leading chefs, buyers, food critics and deli owners. But the Great Taste Awards is more than just a competition; it’s an accreditation scheme. Products bearing the logo have been independently proven to be of origin, quality and excellence. So if a product achieves gold standard, you can be certain it has done so on merit.

Changes for 2007

This year sees a major change to the awards themselves. Bronze and silver have been discontinued. Instead, The Guild will be presenting one, two and three-star gold awards. Like their Michelin equivalents, these will give retailers and producers a real point of difference from the multiples – and give consumers an accessible and authoritative standard to help guide their purchasing decisions.

As a rough guide, one-star awards will go to products that fully meet the judges’ rigorous standards. Two-star products are the ones that set those standards. But to earn a three-star grade, an entry needs that indefinable ‘something extra’ - the little bit of magic that sets it apart not just from products of the same type, but in the world of fine food as a whole. In response to feedback from producers and retailers, 2007 also sees new classes for dairy products (cheese, milk, cream, butter and yoghurt), bake-off bread, bottled beer and a special category for any product that falls outside the listed classes. This is designed to enable the widest possible range of producers to enter and strengthen the awards’ position as the benchmark for ALL fine food.

Entry and Judging Process

A team of fine food retailers and buyers, speciality distributors, highly regarded restaurateurs and chefs, food critics and food writers were given the role of identifying the country’s finest food in the Great Taste Awards 2007. The preliminary round of blind judging took place at the Pillar Hall, Olympia on May 15th and lasted for four days. Foods that made it past the initial stage were re-submitted and judged for a second and third time at the Guild HQ in Wincanton, where judges delved more deeply into ingredients and where producers source their raw materials.

The one, two and three-star golds were awarded at this stage with a final, fourth round in London on 5th July which decided upon the major winners, including the ‘Supreme Champion 2007’ which will be announced at the Great Taste dinner in September, at Kensington’s Royal Garden Hotel. This means the finest foods are judged by four different, independent judging panels, providing consumers with the most thorough and robust food accreditation in the country. For those that don’t progress beyond the initial judging phase, entrants will receive a report from the judges, offering expert, impartial advice and opinions to help producers develop their products further and make an even stronger entry in 2008.

Amongst the products tasted and deliberated over will be smoked fish, cured meats, puddings, biscuits, cheese, cakes, jams, ice creams, oils, jelly and sausages. With traceability, regionality and local sourcing all regularly highlighted as important in our food culture, it is encouraging that each year a growing number of artisan British food producers are awarded Gold in the Great Taste Awards; products that tick the environmental and provenance boxes.