Taste of Dorset 2010

Taste of Dorset Awards 2010
in association with Humphries Kirk

Nominate your local food heroes We all love food - and we live in an area where some of the country’s finest food is produced. So let’s celebrate it!

This is our third annual Taste of Dorset Awards, and with your help - by nominating your favourite pubs and restaurants and your local food heroes - we will discover more great restaurants and pubs, farm shops and independent food shops and specialist food and drink producers.

There are 15 categories for the awards - two are new and several have been revised, to encourage more nominations of an even wider range of good businesses.

We are very grateful to all these businesses and organisations, led by our principal sponsor, Humphries Kirk. Without the generous help of all of them we could not run the awards.

The new categories are:

Innovation: We want to hear about some of the brilliant new foods and products from Dorset’s great food producers; it could be a sweet or savoury biscuit, or a savoury sauce or salad dressing, a delicious new recipe for sausages or pies, new ice-cream flavours or a new selection of spiced nuts and nibbles! The product must have gone on sale within the past 12 months (ie from the beginning of June 2009).

Best Stallholder at a Dorset Farmers or Producers Market: Tell us who you think has the best stall at Dorset's farmers or producers markets, selling locally sourced, grown or produced food, with helpful and knowledgable staff. The class is open to any stallholder at a Dorset market, including those whose businesses are based outside the county.

Revised categories - these have been expanded to include more specialised businesses:

Best Independent Food Shop: This will be selected from the finalists in three classes, best butcher, best greengrocer, and best independent store or delicatessen.

Dorset Dairy Champion: This will be selected from the finalists in classes for the best cheese and the best other dairy products.

Best Dorset Drinks Producer: This will be selected from the finalists in two classes for alcoholic drinks and non-alcoholic beverages.

Best Bakery: With the winner selected from finalists in best artisan baker and best biscuits and cakes.

Best Seafood Business: You can nominate your favourite seafood cafe or fish & chip shop, and the best fishmonger, stall or mobile fish business, and the winner will be selected from the finalists in both sections.

All you have to do is fill in the names of your favourites on the form, and your own name and address, and send the form to us at: Taste of Dorset Awards, Blackmore Vale Magazine, High Street, Stalbridge, Dorset DT10 2LH.

In each category, the finalists will be the three nominees with the greatest number of votes. Finalists will be judged by a Taste of Dorset panel drawn from sponsors, the awards organisers and local food experts.

The winners will be announced at the Taste of Dorset Awards presentation evening at Herrison Hall, at Charlton Down near Dorchester, on Tuesday 7th September.

The dinner for the awards evening will be sourced, as far as possible, from local ingredients and products.

Only one nomination form per person will be accepted. Please include your name and address. The organisers reserve the right, in the case of obvious multiple nominations for the same business, in the same handwriting, or from the same fax or email, to treat such nominations as one single nomination. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Closing date for nominations: Friday 16th July.