Last updated 05:38, Friday, 15 August 2008

Recently, the winners of this year’s ‘food Oscars’ were announced. A clutch of the hard-won, much-desired Great Taste Awards went to Cumbrian producers, two of them picking up the top three gold star award.That shift from field to fork started with the BSE crisis of 1996 and was spurred on by the disaster of the foot and mouth epidemic which devastated Cumbria in 2001.

The surprising thing about the honours is that there was no surprise.

We now expect the county’s name to appear alongside national and international winners.

In fact, some local producers were disappointed they did not fare better.

Last week also saw a beer produced by Beckstones Brewery, near Millom – one of the county’s smallest microbreweries – come second in this year’s Campaign for Real Ale Champion Beer of Britain awards.

Cumbria has long-established food producers that are respected by celebrity chefs and who regularly crop up in glossy weekend supplements – Woodall, Gott, Burbush, the Village Bakery, the Old Smokehouse...

But Cumbria’s most famous and iconic product is the humble sausage – the unlinked, coarsely chopped, well-seasoned Cumberland sausage, to be precise.

A campaign by county producers for European ministers to grant it the same status enjoyed by Parma ham and champagne to protect it from inferior copies has won the backing of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Full EU protected status is expected to be granted late next year which will ensure Cumberland sausages cannot be made outside the county and impose strict rules to guard quality.

Austen Davies, chairman of the Cumberland Sausage Association which launched the campaign sees the sausage as an emblem of the quality of food from the county.

He said: “We are very well perceived as a county for producing quality food which is why we are pushing for protected status.

“It shows that the region is good for food, as Tuscany is in Italy.”

But the reputation of Cumbrian food today does not just rely on a sausage.

There is a range of small producers responsible for cooking up a whole range of award-winning foods, from meats to cheese, pies, pates, jams and pickles.

Some producers last longer than others, some win more awards than others.

Burbush’s duckling with honey and marmalade pie was one of only 72 food or drink products out of 4,700 in the UK to receive a Three Star Gold award in the 2008 Great Taste Awards organised by the Guild of Fine Food.

Martyn and Melanie Reynolds took over the Penrith company three years ago and the hand-made baked to order pies have won honours every year since.

Mr Reynolds, 46, of Great Salkeld, said: “Throughout the specialist food industry we as a county have a high reputation.

“We just take care of what we do and that makes what we do special.

“The food industry is important to the county, it is keeping people employed, which has got to be good and hopefully on the back of these awards we are winning it will make it easier for us to ride out the credit crunch.”

But, he says, local producers can’t fail to cook up quality food: “You can’t make something good out of something bad. If local producers use local ingredients they will do well. We have such good local ingredients.”

Mr Davies, who breeds rare pigs on a farm at Roweltown and runs Border County Foods selling meat and game is in no doubt about the importance of food to the county.

“We have more food producers per head of population than anywhere else in the country.

“If you take food production and food manufacture out of Cumbria, you will have an awful lot of people out of work.

“Financially it is as crucial to the region as farming and more and more agricultural operators are becoming food producers.”

Farmers were encouraged to diversify and ‘add value’ to the raw materials of meat and milk and kitchen tables have become the hub of small businesses; cottages turned into companies, if not industries.

There are 12 farmers markets in Cumbria where farmers and small producers can sell their food direct: Brampton, Brough, Carlisle city centre, Carlisle Borderway, Cockermouth, Egremont, Kendal, Keswick, Orton, Penrith, Pooley Bridge and Ulverston.

A whole network of farmshops is now firmly established and well-used and even our M6 service stations make a point of stocking up on local produce made in small batches by local people.

Plumgarths farmshop stocks 250 different lines of Lakeland goodies and acts as a hub to collect and supply products to Asda stores throughout Cumbria and Lancashire.

“We started with 80 products from 18 suppliers in 2002, now we have 250 products,” said boss John Geldard.

“It has been really inspiring to me to see how things have moved on.

“It is not so much our dependence on food production as how important it is to preserve jobs and in some cases, local communities.”

The Kendal business, which brings together small suppliers in order to help them market their produce, is itself an award-winner and picked up an honour for the Outstanding Contribution at the Food Northwest Awards 2008.

As much as the variety of our produce, it is the quality that is striking – because of the care that goes into sourcing ingredients and making the food.

Mr Geldard added: “It is no good just putting a label on saying ‘local’ and thinking that is enough, it has to be a quality product and to please the customer.

“The majority of these local products are good quality and are made with affection and passion.”

A spokesman for Cumbria Tourism said: “Over the past five years, food has become an essential part of why people come to the area.

“They expect good food and we have to meet that expectation.

“It all adds to the distinctiveness of the area.

“When you go to Italy you don’t eat fish and chips and when you come here you should have locally produced food, it is all part of the experience of coming here.

“It is not just a question of us blowing our own trumpet, people like Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver, Jean Christophe Novelli and Clarissa Dickson-Wright have all praised Cumbrian food.

“And we are not producing it in vast factories or giant sheds.”

The quality and variety of food in Cumbria has long been championed by Mawbray cook Annette Gibbons.

Her book: Home Grown in Cumbria is a portfolio of some of the best producers in the county.

For the past four years she has organised “foodie safaris”, driving groups of people round the county to visit producers and get a real taste of the Lakes and fells.

The food lovers come from across the UK, the US, Australia and Hong Kong.

“Reading my guest book and the comments people make, they don’t realise the range of food we produce,” she said.

“And they are so impressed by the commitment and enthusiasm of the people they see.

“I wrote an article eight years ago about the importance of local food and people were not really listening.

“But it has really turned a corner. I think from a consumer’s point of view, we have become so much more aware of how we produce our food and its quality.”