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theinternetfarmshop.com

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Sands Lane Nursery

This summer make your barbecue really special with a hog roast as a spectacular centre piece

Organic Sales

Ernst & Young have predicted that sales of organic foods will fall as consumers tighten their belts. The organic food market is estimated to be worth £1.5bn double its value at the turn of the century. While their is some evidence of people switching to discounting supermarkets as a way to reduce food bills companies such as Rachel's Organic do not believe the organic market will be necessarily be affected. Founder Rachel Rowland said 'If its a quality product people will keep buying is' she said. Rachel's Organic like Green and Blacks have focused their marketing and promotion on the taste of their products rather than its organic status. Amarjit Sahota director of marketing consultants Organic Monitoring said 'that has added stability to the market. People won't stop buying those brands because they feel the price tag is justified.'.

For fresh organic produce the Soil Association says it has not noticed any downturn in purchases of organic. Crucially surveys by Kent Business school and reports from marketing consultancies such as O & F consulting show that people buy fresh organic produce because of a believe in the cause rather than for any conviction of improved flavour. In addition the gap between the cost of organic and non organic fresh produce has narrowed in the past few years.

Source The Grocer

Look our for the first garden peas and mage tout. Use home grown aubergines, peppers and tomatoes in pasta dishes, lasagnes and other Mediterranean style cooking. The choice of salad leaves now availale is fantastic and the latest trend for micro leaves means you can get a really intense flavour into your salads. Typically available in bag of mixed leaves is celery leaves, red basil, red veined sorrel and thai basil.

This is the month for currants. Blackcurrants are the most commonly available and are fantastic with their sharp flavour and full of juice. Don't forget to look out for less popular red and white currants. Red currants have a larger seed inside but are lovely cooked, strained and poured over good ice cream. English cherries come into season this month and are delicious eaten just as they are, but for a special dessert add to the top of a cheesecake with low fat cream cheese, eggs and double cream. Make the base with a mixture of digestive biscuits, butter and ground almonds, bake for about 45minutes.

English Wine

Wine was brought to England by the Romans, but it isn't know if the wine they drank was produced here. However it is certain that by the time of the Norman conquest, vines were grown in England and wine was produced mainly but not exclusively by the monasteries. In medieval England the normal ale allowance in monasteries was one gallon of good ale per day. At this time the daily ration for the Black Monks of Battle Abbey in Sussex was one gallon of wine a day. In 1466 a banquet to celebrate the installation of George Nevile as Archbishop of York in 1466 300 barrels of ale and 100 barrels of wine were drunk.

In Tudor England Henry VIII owned vineyards as did larger households and monasteries. During this time wine was drunk only by the wealthy and in the monasteries. The more common drink being beer. After the Tudors vineyards declined partly perhaps because of the dissolution of the monasteries and it wasn't until the 19th century that wine production became popular again and the 20th before wine production became an industry.

Development of the English wine industry in the twentieth century is down to people such as research chemist Ray Barrington Brock and Edward Hymans who was a gardening writer and who planted a vineyard for a book he was writing on the history and practice of vine growing . By the 1950's Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones planted a vineyard in Hampshire. He planted 4,000 vines on a 1.5 acre site in 1952 and in 1955 the first English Wine to be made and sold commercially since the First World War went on sale.

However it wasn't until the late 20th century that production on a commercial scale became popular.  The English Viticultural Association (EVA) was founded in 1965 and an EVA seal on a bottle is a sure indication of quality and consistency.

Most wine production in England today takes place in Kent, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, Berkshire, Surrey and Somerset. The main Welsh counties are the Vale of Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire. The wines produced are mainly white produced from vines of German origin including Müller-Thurgau, Schönburger, Ortega, Reichensteiner, Huxelrebe, Bacchus, Gütenborner, Seyve Villard, Morio Muscat, Riesling, Sylvaner and Seyval Blanc. The wines are typically dry and flavours of elderflowers are typical.

There are however some reds and roses produced from the Pinot Noir, Zweigeltrebe and Gamay grapes and sparkling wines are available made using the champagne method.

Fancy trying some? The Three Choirs Vineyard in Gloucestershire s England's leading and most awarded, single estate vineyard. Visit the Three Choirs Vineyard online shop where you can browse and select from a wide range of superb English wine. For a wider selection try English wines online