Classic Preserves Ltd - Brogdale Horticultural Trust

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Classic Preserves Ltd - Brogdale Horticultural Trust

With a grandfather who was a farmer and childhood summers spent opposite a farm in rural Worcestershire, Theresa Watkins, has had the variety and seasonality of farm produce in her blood from an early age. She started her career with a course in Art and Design, but her passion for food soon led her to a job as a home economist at Bejam. A move to Kent followed in the early '90's when Theresa accepted her ideal job in product development at a family firm near Ashford, creating jams, chutney and bottled fruit. In her research for new varieties of fruit and vegetables to test she first made contact with Brogdale Horticultural Trust, near Faversham. Established in 1990 as a charitable trust it is the home of the National Fruit Collection, the world's largest living collection of fruit trees and soft fruit bushes, with more than 2300 varieties of apples alone!

After developing her skills Theresa decided to take control of her destiny and established her own company, Classic Preserves Ltd, in the kitchen of the successful Macknade Farm Shop, also located in Faversham. She started out simply, producing just strawberry jam, however its popularity was immediately established in Easter 2000, when her jam sold out even though it was in competition with 11 others in the farm shop. Building on this success she added another 12 jams and 3 chutneys to her product list over the following two years. As well as her work experience she still draws on information gathered from books on the history of food and agricultural production to re-introduce long forgotten ingredients and recipes. Word spread about her using traditional methods and local produce to such a degree she was able to negotiate with the Brogdale Horticultural Trust to move production to their premises in 2002. The partnership benefits both parties; Theresa is able to experiment with a wide variety of fruits and nuts from the Trust, whilst selling her produce through the Trust's shop provides income for both.

Theresa now has over 60 different products including jams, marmalades, jellies, chutneys and savouries. Some of the more unusual jams include apricot and amaretto, and raspberry and almond, whilst the chutneys range from hot to sweet to spicy. She only uses one variety of fruit for each batch of jam for a more intense flavour and at the start of the process measures the natural sugar content of the fruit so the final product isn't overloaded with sugar. Some jellies incorporate ingredients used long ago, such as the medlar, a fruit similar to the rosehip, which grew in Kent when the Romans arrived. When ripened the medlar tastes similar to a toffee apple.

Now assisted by her brother Nick, Theresa's aims are to concentrate on quality and bio-diversification enabling customers to experience for themselves the taste of ingredients which are no longer commercially grown. With some of her more popular products she can even see the possibility of involving Kent fruit farmers to plant new fruit tree stock. Theresa's growing reputation has made her a silver award winner at the Great Taste Awards 2004, winner of the Kent Life "Food Producer of 2004" and winner of "Innovation & Excellence in Business 2004" from Technology and Enterprise Kent.

Classic Preserves range of produce is available from the gift shop at the Brogdale Horticultural Trust and through mail-order on Classic Preserves Ltd website. Brogdale Horticultural Trust encourages visitors to view the work of the trust and to buy fruit trees and fresh fruit in season from their garden centre.

To make a day-out in the locality there are several walks along the estuary near Faversham.

Classic Preserves Ltd
Brogdale Horticultural Trust
Brogdale Rd
Brogdale
Faversham
Kent, ME13 8XZ
01795-520393
www.classicpreserves.co.uk

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