The International Marmalade Awards launched their 13th year with a reception at Australia House in the glorious and beautiful surroundings of The Downer Room.
The evening buzzed with marmalade energy, fuelled with marmalade sausages, marmalade popcorn and marmalade bitter sweet cocktails. His Excellency The Honourable Alexander Downer AC spoke of the tremendous success of the Australian Marmalade Festival, now in its second year, which took place in Riverland, the centre of the citrus industry on the Murray River.
The marmalade flag is flying high with extraordinary and exciting combinations of citrus fruit from all over the world stimulating an ever increasing range of high quality entries that are changing the face of what people think about marmalade! As well as raising standards and awareness in well over 40 countries world-wide, the Awards have raised over £200,000 for hospice care and other charities including The Hands Up Foundation which make marmalade to raise money for Syrian charities.
An exciting new category was unveiled: the ‘Commonwealth Marmalade’, a competition to develop international links in which every person from a Commonwealth country is eligible. Dalemain Marmalades are working closely with the Commonwealth office and the winning jar will be commercially produced by Thursday Cottage and will be sold online at www.royalcollectionshop.co.uk. Edward Harley, formerly the president of the Historic Houses Association and long standing supporter of the Marmalade Awards, spoke of the fantastic legacy the competition has created.
The competition includes an Octogenarians class; last year these entries included a community effort from the Hiroshima province in Japan. A new category for 2018 is Legal Marmalade – for anyone in the legal profession guilty of making good marmalade!
The Homemade Double Gold winner will be sold at Fortnum & Mason which stocks the most marmalades of any grocery store in the UK.
The Marmalade Awards & Festival will take place on 17th & 18th March 2018 at Dalemain Mansion in Cumbria, and in the nearby town of Penrith, which has enthusiastically adopted the competition and will be ‘Going Orange’ for the weekend. The competition will open and entries can be sent from January. For more information visit www.marmaladeawards.com.
