The region's beer, meat, cider and ice-cream are quietly winning an army of new fans all over Britain. What is the reason behind its extraordinary culinary renaissance?
Atkinson's Cornish Orchards … at the heart of the region's food revolution. Pleasingly, Deli Farm in north Cornwall has been called Deli Farm – or something recognisably like it – since around the time of Domesday; the fact that Jean and Martin Edwards now make award-winning English charcuterie there is sheer coincidence. But making it they are: a dozen air-dried salamis plus powerful, lip-smacking coppa, bresaola, venison, pancetta and prosciutto, all from locally reared meat, that have won a raft of Great Taste awards and this year saw the six-year-old firm reach the finals of BBC Radio 4's Food & Farming awards.
The Edwards are among a growing number of small, high-quality producers who despite the obstacles – the extreme seasonality of local demand; distance from market – have helped Cornwall establish itself, over the past few years, as a county making and consuming some very good food.
"The fundamentals have always been here," says Ruth Huxley of Cornwall Food and Drink, which helps local food companies identify and develop market opportunities. "Grass grows year-round. Livestock is out year-round. Cornish produce tastes fabulous. It just wasn't very widely known beyond Cornwall."
Several factors have combined over the past few years to change that, Huxley says. EU funding has bolstered Cornwall's economy, allowing local businesses to evolve, grow, and create more and better jobs. "There are many more £30,000-a-year jobs here than there were before," she says. "That's encouraged more energetic young families to come here, essentially for the quality of life; this is a wonderful place to bring up children. And that, in turn, has allowed chefs who believe passionately in the quality of Cornwall's produce to really flourish, which rounds off the circle."
Before Rick Stein, the godfather of Cornwall's burgeoning food movement, first started in Padstow, many restaurants simply shut down outside the main tourist season. That made it hard for them to attract permanent staff, and for their suppliers to build quality businesses. Now, the combination of a healthier local economy and an almost year-round season – driven at least partly by Cornwall's newfound status as a foodie destination – has created a kind of virtuous circle in which high-profile chefs like Stein, Nathan Outlaw and Paul Ainsworth, and top local producers can prosper.
"Quality local produce is massively important," says Ainsworth, who won a star at Number 6 in Padstow this year, "and Cornwall is now second to none. The last couple of years, artisan producers of all kinds have really come into their own here. Once, for example, I'd use peaches from France. Not now. Cornish fruits and berries are exceptional."
Seasonality does still affect producers though. "You think you're prepared for it, but it still hits you," says Eddie Lofthouse, who runs a small craft beer start-up called Harbour Brewing Company as well as a longer established, award-winning ice-cream firm, Treleavens, both supplying leading local chefs.
Rhys Powell, brewer at the Harbour Brewing Company. Photograph: James Ram In summer, Lofthouse says, Harbour Brewing sells "50 or 60 barrels a week in Cornwall. That falls to 30, pretty much overnight." He offsets this seasonal slump by seeking out the same kind of people who in summer drink his artisan ales in north Cornwall ("the rock crowd"), but in their urban habitat: London gastropubs and bars such as the White Horse in Parson's Green, the Worship St Whistling Stop and the North Pole in Islington.
Harbour Brewing isn't doing so badly: opened last February, it met its first-year target in four months. But other producers must overcome more than just the seasonality hurdle: Treleavens, whose premium handmade ice creams – flavours include blue cheese & pear, vodka & pink grapefruit and mango & parma ham – have won more Great Taste awards than any other Cornish producer, depends on the weather.
"If it's sunny, everyone wants every flavour every day," is how Lofthouse sums it up. "And if it's raining, no one wants anything." The producer tries to mitigate this by offering a winter range – Christmas pudding, and mince pie and clotted cream – and cultivating the upmarket restaurant trade (it recently came up with a rather spectacular lime and Tabasco sorbet, to be served with oysters).
Some newcomers are now planning their businesses to avoid the seasonality trap. The Edwards opted for charcuterie not only because of an obvious gap in the market. "There was just no tradition of air-dried charcuterie in the UK, quite simply because of the damp, cold weather," says Jean. But the couple, who also sell to the big-name Cornish chefs, also grasped that as vacuum-packed cured meats can travel easily and don't need refrigeration, the business's future sales would not be confined to Cornwall.
Deli Farm Chacuterie The sheer distance remains an obstacle: delivery costs, says Martin, "are 30% higher than they would be if we were in Bristol". But by using only prime cuts of fresh, local meat, experimenting with innovative new cures, and delivering a product that can rival the best of Italian or French charcuterie at a comparable price, Deli Farm is growing fast; this summer it won a contract to supply half a tonne of cured meats for the London Olympics.
Meanwhile, Andy Atkinson was a fed-up dairy farmer until the 15-acre orchard he planted with traditional Cornish apple varieties – Manaccan Primrose, Chacewater Longstem, Scilly Pearl, Trenance Cooker – at Westnorth Manor Farm began bearing fruit in the late 1990s. A decade later, the cows have gone and Atkinson's Cornish Orchards employs 25 people, producing more than 1m pints a year of award-winning ciders and juices. "It was a big step," he says, "dropping 30 years' dairy experience, a college training. But the timing was perfect. We've benefited from the cider boom, the regional food boom, and – over the last few years – the success story of the Cornwall brand."
The company has seen a 40% increase in business this year and last, and with 70% of sales in-county is tackling seasonality by developing internet shopping, negotiating a distribution deal and even shipping to Australia.
This, says Huxley, is the kind of tactic Cornwall's quality food and drink sector is going to have to adopt in future. She points also to Trewithen Dairy, which has turned itself from a local farm into a successful dairy, processing 40m litres of milk a year from 23 local farms."There is absolutely fantastic stuff coming out of Cornwall now; this really is not just a gimmick," she says. "But to survive and grow, producers are going to have to be quite creative. Things have improved, but it's still a tough environment."
Jon Henley The Guardian, Wednesday 20 February 2013 19.00 GMT
However, you would do well to consider the flavour of the comments at the foot of the article, what kind of taste does that leave?