37 Irish products scoop coveted three-star Great Taste awards

Laura and Tom Sinnott from Wexford Home Preserves in their garden with their blackcurrant jam and three stars.

Food industry celebrations are happening across the island of Ireland after 37 foods and drinks made it into the coveted 3-star category in the Great Taste 2026 awards organised by the UK’s Guild of Fine Food.

Only 306 of the 15,038 entries from around the world were rated 3-star. There were also many Irish entries among the 1,598 products rated 2-star, and the 4,286 rated 1-star.

Six 3-star winners, three each from north and south of the border, will represent Ireland among 33 Golden Fork nominees.

Known as “the Oscars of the food world”, the 11 Golden Fork trophies will go to the best products from the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, during an award ceremony on Tuesday, September 15. in London. There, the Supreme Champion of Great Taste 2026 will be decided in a live judging session.

Representing Munster in the ceremony in the Battersea Arts Centre will be the Cashel Farmhouse Cheesemakers of Beechmount Farm, Fethard, Co Tipperary.

Already one of the most decorated Irish food companies, they are one of three nominees for the Golden Fork from Ireland, sponsored by Bord Bia.

This time, it’s their Organic Cashel Blue in the limelight, which the Great Taste judges described as "a fabulous cheese that takes you straight to a freshly-mown hay field and on to the milking parlour”.

“Sweet and creamy with a gentle note of pear drop, it has a soft, buttery mouthfeel, velvet on the palate", added the judges.

The makers are also celebrating their Crozier Blue’s 2-star rating, and Cashel Blue’s 1-star accolade.

Jane and Louis Grubb started the Cashel cheese enterprise in 1984 in their farmhouse kitchen. The cheeses are still made on the same 200-acre family farm, with the second-generation artisanal business now led by the founders' daughter, Sarah, and her husband Sergio.

Joining them in London will be a family with a similar food production history.

In 1988, Tom Sinnott’s aunt Ellen O’Leary started making jams at home in Our Lady’s Island, Co Wexford, to use up surpluses of fruit.

Tom and his wife Laura eventually took up the reins, and their Wexford Home Preserves is an artisan maker of multiple award-winning jams, marmalades, savoury preserves and speciality preserves, based in New Ross, and now supplying more than 350 shops nationwide.

Their handmade blackcurrant jam is the second nominee for the Golden Fork from Ireland.

They are also celebrating two stars for their Handmade Lemon & Lime Marmalade and Seville Orange, and 1-star accolades for their Strawberry Jam, Red Onion Relish, and Clementine Marmalade.

The team said they are “still pinching” themselves, winning prestigious awards with the same recipes since 1988, the same small batches, and the “same love in every jar”.

“This one’s for everyone who’s ever stirred a pot or told a friend about us. Couldn’t do this without our team, and we couldn’t do it without you either”.

A 25% Sour Cream from Green Pastures, Convoy, Co Donegal, is Ireland’s third Golden Fork nominee. Green Pastures is also a family-owned business, founded in 1989.

Contending for the Golden Fork from the Northern Ireland award (sponsored by Invest NI) will be two products from the multi-award-winning Hannan Meats of Craigavon, Co Armagh, their buttermilk dry cure bacon rack and buttermilk bone-in pork chop.

Hannan Meats won the Great Taste Awards Supreme Championship in 2012 and 2016, and is now in with a chance for a hat-trick.

The third Golden Fork nominee from Northern Ireland is the coppa dry-cured pork from the outdoor Mangalitsa pigs farmed by The Curly Pigs, an artisan charcuterie producer in Co Fermanagh.