Hampshire Food Festival has tasted success after another mouth-watering month of wine and food events across the county.
July has seen a whole host of events in and around the Basingstoke area, as the Hampshire Food Fare highlights the importance of using produce grown and reared in the county.
This year was the tenth anniversary of the festival and included activities that ranged from wool spinning demonstrations in Whitchurch to a farmer’s market in Andover and a beer festival in Eastleigh.
Tylney Hall got the month off to an excellent start with a sell-out afternoon tea that was organised to coincide with the hotel’s open garden day in aid of the National Garden Scheme charity.
Mark Ashton, General Manager at Tylney Hall said: “We have supported the food festival for many years and our chef, Stephen Hine, is a keen ambassador for local produce. In recent years there has been an increasing interest in regional, seasonal food that can be traced to the producer and the festival gives Hampshire the opportunity to turn the spotlight on the fantastic variety of food and drink that is available on our doorstep.”
“We are now looking forward to our festival showcase event on Saturday July 31, which is a four-course dinner featuring some of the county’s finest produce and a talk by Hampshire’s supreme sausage champion, Martin Martindale.”
Basingstoke’s Festival Place also got involved with a Food Event held at the beginning of July. The two-day extravaganza was a huge triumph that saw twice as many out-of-catchment visitors turning up to take part. 88 percent of customers also rated the event as ‘great’ or ‘excellent.’
Steven Connolly, the Centre Director of Festival Place, said: “Our Food Event in July this year was a fantastic success. We had two really popular chefs, Ed Baines and John Burton-Race, plus Olly Smith with his great wine knowledge and our customers really enjoyed the shows that ran each day during the weekend.
“As a corporate sponsor of Hampshire Fare, we’re obviously more than happy to support local producers within the area and contribute to the Hampshire Food Festival as it’s such a great event for the region.
“Our footfall and sales were up during our food event weekend and our retailers were delighted with the customer response. We’re already looking forward to putting on another great food event next year!”
As this delicious month of gourmet food and fine wines draws to a close, Sophie Boxall of the Hampshire Fare team said: “The huge variety of events across the county during this year's Hampshire Food Festival has gone down very well with Festival visitors.
“The fact that it is the Festival’s 10th anniversary this year has attracted lots of publicity, including the generous support given by top chefs James Martin, Raymond Blanc, Atul Kochhar and Alex Aitken, which is really positive in terms of getting the message across about the importance and value of local food and farming to the Hampshire economy.
Sophie continued: “The Festival has enabled people to visit farms, learn about cooking and enjoy tasting locally produced food and drink. Hampshire has such a wealth of great food that is grown, reared or produced in the county, and the aim of the Festival is to highlight this, and encourage people to support local producers and farmers by buying locally.”
