Speciality Food Magazine June 2024

6 @specialityfood According to accountancy group, UHY Hacker Young, which carried out the research, the rise is largely due to British drinkers’ continued favouring of niche, limited-run spirits over traditional, mass-produced offerings. England in particular has emerged as a hotbed for new independent brands, with data showing 48 new distilleries registered last year – a 20% increase. Scotland, renowned globally for whisky production, has also seen a resurgence in launches, as three new distilleries registered in 2023. James Simmonds, partner at UHY Hacker Young, said, “The premium prices consumers are willing to pay for higher margin, luxury brands is seeing both entrepreneurs and bigger spirits companies continue to rush to capitalise on the market. Spirits, including whisky, have been one of the UK’s success stories. “The expectation is that, longer term, there is muchmore growth to come in the UK’s heritage spirits brands.” UK drink exports increased by 13% in 2023 from£8.3 billion in 2021/22, to The independent spirit sector in the UK is raising a glass as it has been revealed 54 new distilleries launched in the last year. The figure takes the number of registered distilleries in Britain to nearly 400 – 42.8%more than pre-Covid, with whisky worth a quarter of all UK food and drink export value. UK spirit makers toast success £9.4 billion. Success stories include Stirling Distillery, which launched in 2023, reviving whisky production in Stirling for the first time since 1852. The company will release a limited- edition whisky biannually from 2026. Last year, Edinburght’s Port of Leith Distillery unveiled the UK’s first vertical whisky distillery in the city, while Ad Gefrin launched a £14million whisky distillery andmuseum in Northumberland, andMutley Distillery launched its premium rumproduction in a former bank vault in Plymouth. “Strong levels of demand are seeing new distillers continue to enter the market, while savvy entrepreneurs in the business are also taking advantage of additional revenue streams such as distillery tours and tastings,” James added. “During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, people found themselves looking to recreate a bar experience at home and treat themselves to artisanal spirits. Interestingly, this taste for luxury has not tapered off - it’s only got stronger.” T he usual, seasonal conversations in food shops up and down the country at this time of year, just as the sun starts to really grip the sky, are kicked off by the heavy thump of delivered Christmas catalogues…. ahhhhh…landing on counters. Enough! I am not here to be the first to herald in the inevitable flow of our commercial year, but rather champion a focal point that, left unleashed and at arm’s length, illustrates the worst of our climatic trashing consumption, but at its pinnacle shows us for our collective best. I am now into mid-May, just a week from my mother’s early, summer birthday, and I have nibbled the final piece of our family Christmas cake. The joy this brings is profound. It may well have lasted this long due to my eldest’s distracted nature, resulting in half the flour going into the mix. Essentially it is a packed array of sugar-enrobed, dried fruit… bomb proof. As I have written before, consumption is the great ill of our age. For me, the beauty in our Christmas cake is the social currency that goes into making it. The moments of awe in which it is enjoyed during celebrations, and its subsequent ability to be savoured for months - a reminder of all that has gone into to it, both literally and metaphorically. The importance of this cake, nestled in the corner of the kitchen, sealed shut in the evermore battered tin, the wrapped branded sweets once held within years gone, is that it reflects the very best of our family, past, present and future. It captures the essence of celebration, preservation and respect for food. The joy of a little luxury that not only delivers its immediate, easy-pleasing sugar rush, but also contemplative, deep satisfaction, reminding us of those we love and good times shared. My mother uses the recipe that she learnt from her grandmother, and makes the cake every year with her grandchildren. The process is learned through annual repetition (mistakes made, bonds cemented) and is started way before the month of December. The social importance of generations sharing the kitchen, STEFANO CUOMO MACKNADE We need to consume less, wemust consume better, andwe need to return to the embedded joy of the community creation of what we eat Cake inMay keeping family narratives alive, is energising. It maintains the bedrock of our community. It is the prosaic continuity of life, the individual experience shared, generation by generation, becoming the collective reality. It affirms our family in the way that shared, positive nostalgia affirms our communities, small and large, from the market square to the state. This is no throw-away- able, supermarket-bought, overt consumption. This is real! What the cake represents, as it sits beautifully on the sideboard, an ornament to its seasons, is the importance of managed consumption, the importance of no waste, all wrapped up in the luxurious package of celebration. The reflection that the easy focus may be on one day, but that actually the whole year has gone into it, and indeed the joy that comes not from momentary gluttony, but the evolving satisfaction of our produce in the months that follow. Fruit and spices from across the year are cropped, enjoyed when fresh and then dried to keep. This is artistry in the banality of the daily need – precious, fresh produce cannot be wasted and so we convert it into something still more delicious. The cake demands to be enjoyed as such, not simply as another seasonal appendage, like the tag on a lesser aunt’s gift. The cake is brought to the table at the most important celebratory day of the year. Whether your inclination is sacred or profane, there is no reason that it has to be added to the black-hole consumption that ensues. Rather let it play its part in reflecting our year as a whole. The family coming together, the care and respect we have for our land and the bounty we enjoy and preserve from it. An icon that we can enjoy day after day, once the gluttonous feasts of winter are long behind us. What that mid-May bite of Christmas cake jolted, was the knowledge that we need to consume less, we must consume better, and we need to return to the embedded joy of the community creation of what we eat, filling each and every product with meaning and social bonds. Truly reflecting on what our food says of us, not just how it sustains us. The true joy of life is not just a speckled horizon of disparate events, rather the intertwining periods between them, so often captured through our food culture, and nothing brings this warm glow of humanity home better than Christmas cake in May.