The Great Taste awards: how to find the best food in Britain

Bob Farrand is feeling smug. "Never mind Jeremy Clarkson," he laughs, "I have the best job in the world." With my mouth full of a delicious honey and pistachio cake, I'm inclined to agree. Farrand runs the Great Taste awards and this year helped test nearly 9,000 speciality foods and drinks including the supreme champion winner – a meltingly good guanciale (Italian-style bacon prepared with pig's jowl or cheeks) from Hannan Meats in Northern Ireland. Scores of volunteer judges take 45 days to compare the products, ranging from Iranian nougat to smoked salmon, teas, coffees, beers and ciders. The best carry the distinctive round, black-and-gold logo with stars; this year just 123 got the top three-star rating, including the distracting M'Hencha cake, whose curls of rosewater scented pastry I was so busy wolfing down, and plump morsels of duck with such an intense flavour and luxurious texture they deserved a better name than gizzards . Farrand was running a food magazine when he set up the Great Taste awards in 1994, championing small producers at a time few did. "I conducted a survey in 1987 and found we had fewer than 2,000 delis in this country," he explains. "In 1993 when I did it again the figure had fallen quite dramaticallyThe awards' credibility has always rested on its conscientious approach. According to Darren Williams, food buyer at Fortnum & Mason, what sets it apart is the "rigorous blind-tasting process ... winning a Great Taste award is a guarantee of quality, taste, provenance and real passion for food". Ah, yes, those tasters. "I try to look for a spread of palates," Farrand explains. "The Women's Institute will pick up a biscuit and tap it and say, 'Oh that oven was a little high.' Or they will work a spoon over the top of a jar of jam and say: 'Hmm the setting point was a bit wrong there.' Alongside them would be a chef and a deli owner, who could reflect if the taste has commercial appeal." Each product starts with 25 points, which are only deducted for flaws that the judges can explain how to rectify, so producers get expert feedback. Products deemed worthy of a star then work their way around other tables for confirmation. To win three stars the 25 or so judges must agree the food is faultless. Each product is, therefore, judged on its own merit, rather than compared to other products. Regional winners and the supreme champion are chosen from those products. Although not yet a household name, the awards have serious commercial clout, with the winner catapulted into major shops and restaurants. George McCartney, whose corned beef was supreme champion in 2011, described the win as life-changing. McCartney is a family butcher whose business stretches back 150 years; the increased trade has allowed him to treble his staff and open a deli. Farrand keeps the entry-costs low - £35 for the smallest businesses, and although this meant the awards were run "on a shoestring" at first, the large number of entries today makes it feasible. Increasingly, entries are coming from outside the UK and, perhaps inevitably, supermarkets. This has, Farrand says, caused problems for artisan producers who don't want customers to know they sell their products under a supermarket label. And success can bring its own problems. I try a delicious Kentish cobnut oil that won in 2010 – the company sold its entire stock the next day. "You can't just plant more cobnut trees, Farrand points out. Other producers have expanded after gaining stars, only to find they have lost something in the process, he tells me. "They wonder why they get nothing the next time … you see they have a bigger factory, it's more automated." Not everyone enters to change their fortunes, however. I try a beautifully light sourdough made by Patrick Moore, 2009 supreme champion ("he has that baker's pallor that lets you know he is up at 2am baking"), who has resisted the temptation to expand. As Farrand says, "some people just want to know their food is good".