Many people (and at least one small bear) are mad for marmalade. But few will go to the extremes that Tom and Laura Sinnott have.
Especially at this time of year, there can be few things better than a spoonful of bittersweet, intensely citrusy marmalade on thickly buttered toasted brown bread. It can bring a ray of sunshine to even the scutteriest grey morning.
At my house we might go through a jar every couple of weeks. The Sinnotts go through 3,000-4,000 a day.
They own Wexford Home Preserves in New Ross. And though their products range across all sorts of jams, chutneys, preserves and sauces, it’s marmalade that has pride of place, especially during the winter months.
I feel we’re close now, Meghan, so I can speak freely. The right pitch is crucial in lifestyle hucksterism like yours
As Fergus Finlay and Tom Clonan’s spat escalates, Sarah McInerney relishes the radio gold
No, the Irish who come to Australia are not the ‘worst’
An Irishman in Spain: ‘Salaries are much lower here, but my mental health is far better’
On a recent trip to Ardkeen Quality Food Store in Waterford, I found no fewer than a dozen different types of marmalade from them. There were the expected – orange, three-fruit and pink grapefruit. Then there were those flavoured with poitín, Irish whiskey and even one with spiced whiskey. Some more were made from oranges from Seville, and others made with blood oranges, from lemons and from clementines from Sicily.
And that’s just a sampling.
Each is made in small batches as close to the traditional way as possible – the fruit is seeded by hand, the peel shredded and left to soak overnight, The next day it is simmered to soften further before the sugar is added and the cooking is finished. The seeds are collected and cooked to make pectin to set the preserves.
Taking that kind of care has paid off. Last year Wexford Home Preserves’s Seville Orange Marmalade won gold at the World Marmalade Competition held at the Dalemain Mansion in Cumbria, competing against artisan makers from as far away as Japan. The Three-Fruit and Sicilian Orange won silvers, and the basic Orange took bronze.
Closer to home the producers have a raft of awards from Blas na hÉireann and Great Taste.
“There aren’t too many people doing this the way we do, I suppose,” says Tom Sinnott. “Our ethos is shooting for the best at whatever we do. That’s not going to change.”
In fact, not that much in their production method has changed since the business was started back in 1988 by Tom’s aunt Ellen O’Leary. Working on the family farm in Broadway near Rosslare Harbour, she began making jams in her home kitchen from leftover strawberries they grew.
These sold so well that she began buying blackcurrants, blackberries and rhubarb from her neighbours and even making regular trips to the produce centre in Dublin to pick up more fruit, including oranges for marmalade. Eventually the business grew to the point that she had to build a commercial kitchen in her garden.
When the economic crash happened in 2008, Tom’s building business suffered and Laura was made redundant from her job in pharmaceuticals, just as Ellen was reaching retirement age.
The solution was readily apparent. Ellen stayed on for a year to teach the Sinnotts the ropes and make sure they absorbed all the lessons she had learned that made the products so great.
Chief among these was selecting the best-quality suppliers for raw materials. Although that was fairly easy to do with most fruits – indeed, most were sourced from within Co Wexford – there isn’t a lot of citrus grown in Ireland.
“It was a big thing for us that we get our produce locally from small farmers, so we decided, right, why don’t we have the same kinds of farmers for our marmalade?” says Tom.
After much searching they found Jose Manuel Bautista and his wife, Amadora, at Gaspo Citrus near Seville and Giangiacomo Borghese and his wife, Virginia, at Il Biviere farm in Sicily, both small, family-owned companies.
“They were just what we wanted,” says Tom. “We wanted that connection. We didn’t want fruit from just anywhere. We wanted that lovely connection with family growers. They’re a family business, we’re a family business.”
It has certainly proved a winning combination. When the Sinnotts took over, they were making 800 jars of jam and marmalade a day. Now this has been ramped up to 3,000 to 4,000 jars daily.
With a full range of more than two dozen products marketed under their own brand, Wexford Home Preserves products are sold all over Ireland by grocers including SuperValu, Tesco and Dunnes. They also make a large range of different products for Dunnes Stores under its Simply Better store label.
In the past, marmalade was popular mainly with the older demographic, but Laura says that’s changing now. “Younger people are more willing to try different things,” she says “They travel more, and food is a big thing in everybody’s lives.
And, of course, there is the Paddington effect. “We run a competition and give away tickets when a new movie comes out,” says Laura. “That gets the really young people. They see Paddington eating it, it must be good.”
