Food Innovators Combine to Create a Deliciously Different Yoghurt
Two artisan food leaders have combined to create a new taste experience for consumers across Northern Ireland and further afield.
Clandeboye Estate Yoghurt in Bangor, Northern Ireland’s only significant producer of the popular dairy dessert, has linked up with Portrush’s Irish Black Butter to create a novel product that’s already been listed by Tesco Northern Ireland.
The new product, developed by the Clandeboye team under the leadership on commercial director Patrick Black with assistance from Black Butter founder Alastair Bell, is a Madagascan vanilla yoghurt with Irish Black Butter sweet/sour sauce that’s crafted from Bramley apples, treacle and spices.
“We are delighted to have worked with Alastair Bell on an original and different taste for our range of fruit flavoured yoghurts,” says Patrick.
“It is such a rich and distinctive taste from Armagh Bramleys and other ingredients, It’ll fit well with our existing and successful yoghurt with Bramley apple topped with granola.”
Alastair Bell says: “It’s a real pleasure and privilege to be working again with Clandeboye, one of the UK’s most successful and respected yoghurt makers with the unique flavouring of our Irish Black Butter. It’s great to see Tesco Northern Ireland listing the new product. This should help to increase sales across Northern Ireland of Clandeboye Estate Yoghurt and the new product which will help to increase the overall awareness of Irish Black Butter,” adds Alistair.
Clandeboye Estate is a multi-award-winning producer of yoghurt that’s naturally crafted with quality milk from the estate’s premium cows. The business was founded in 2008 by Lady Dufferin, the late Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava as a farm diversification project and soon proved to be one of the most successful ever undertaken in Northern Ireland.
The company uses a carefully selected blend of the milk from the 2,000 acres with Holstein and Jersey cows, creating the unique taste of Clandeboye Yoghurt. All the yoghurt is made by hand in the small artisan dairy, no milk powder or other thickening agents are added thus ensuring a 100 percent natural taste.
Greek Style Yoghurt is strained in a traditional way through cheesecloth, to create delicious and thick Greek Style Yoghurt.
Clandeboye’s extensive range of yoghurts is now on sale in most supermarkets, convenience stores and delis across Northern Ireland and in into the Irish Republic, where Aldi is a major customer.
The company has won a host of awards including UK Great Taste, Blas na hEireann Irish National Food Awards and Irish Quality Food and Drink Awards, making Clanebeboye one of Northern Ireland’s most successful food enterprises.
Alastair Bell is the first to admit that starting an artisan business is a tough and often lonely existence. While he has an immensely supportive family around him, the Portrush entrepreneur still spends his time behind the wheel and on the phone in pursuit of sales for a product that was once new to the UK and Irish markets.
He’s driven the length and breadth of the island of Ireland and much of Britain in building up a customer base for an idea he came up in 2017 and was helped to turn into a commercial product by chef Paul Clarke, the managing director of En-Place Foods in Cookstown.
He’s had to explain to potential customers just what Irish Black Butter actually is and that it certainly isn’t a dairy spread. The product is a sweet/savoury spread made from Armagh Bramley apples, treacle and spices with a touch of brandy.
“Creating awareness of what the product is was quite a challenge in the early days,” he says. “And there’s still a lot of work to do to improve understanding.
“There’s no easy way to success, no magic solution in artisan food,” he continues.
“There’s just no alternative to hard work on the road. My role involves organising and managing stock, sales, distribution, following up leads, marketing and finance especially chasing up invoices. Added to these are content creation and dissemination on social media, attending meetings and trade events.
“I also conduct sampling of Irish Black Butter at events and in highly supportive local delis like Arcadia, Sawers, both in Belfast, Indie Fude in Comber, Warkes in Portstewart and The Dairy, near Larne,” he adds. “Sheridan’s, the leading cheesemonger in the Republic, has also backed the product with great enthusiasm.”
And it’s a story shared by dozens of artisan food and drink enterprises here. While many are content to work the local marketplace, Alastair always had a wider vision for a product he describes as ‘The new taste of Ireland’.
As well as developing sales in Britain, Alastair is also now fielding inquiries from delis in the US and Germany for the unique spread he launched in November 2017 on the back of a trip to the Channel Island where he sampled an apple spread.
