Joint favourite
Welsh Lamb has made it onto the top table. In the past decade or so, it has crashed the fine dining rooms of the world, making a new, branded name for itself with global gourmets from Canada to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. taste.blas reveals more about what makes Welsh Lamb a true jewel in the Welsh crown. More than a third of all premium lamb produced in Wales is exported - a £133m business - and every day its influence strengthens with the chattering connoisseurs of elite dinner parties in emerging economies. In Wales, of course, we’ve appreciated our lamb’s unique flavour for centuries - but even here, the lamb of our fathers has now metamorphosed from the caterpillar years of scullery staples like cawl and chops to the butterfly joints, the naughty noisettes and the minxy medallions that sit comfortably on the plates of chefs and cookery programme cognoscenti alike. So why are discerning diners seeking out our saddles and cultivating a taste for our cutlets?
The Brand Richard and Helen Roderick
10
Welsh Lamb has some pretty damn good branding. It is nearly 15 years since Hybu Cig Cymru (Meat Promotion Wales) pulled off the coup of earning
www.taste-blas.co.uk
Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status from the European Union’s posh product club. (PGI status means it does what it says on the marble slab - that it comes from a farm in Wales.) It now sits alongside mighty indigenous brands like Champagne and Parma Ham.
The Hill Farmer: “We give back; we don’t clock in.” Every day across Wales, holidaymakers delight in “hero picture” landscapes and how the ravages of time have miraculously produced such precious yet random resources. Well, in truth, they haven’t. Each view is often more due to farming nurture than good old nature and it’s largely family-made, over generations of arduous, back-breaking, agricultural activity.
