The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
Entries for the Irish Food Awards, Blas na hÉireann, in which Clare producers have enjoyed significant success, will close on Friday May 20.
This year’s awards ceremony will be the first in-person event in two years and will take place as usual in Dingle over the last weekend in September, kicking off on Friday the 30th.
Regarded by many as a key event in the Irish food industry’s calendar, Blas na hÉireann, like so many others, celebrated their finalists and winners online over the past two years leaving a significant gap in the food and drink calendar.
“We’re absolutely delighted to be planning our awards in Dingle this year,” says Blas na hÉireann Chairman, Artie Clifford. “We were lucky to have been able to move quickly in 2020 and while we were in a position to run our judging throughout the summer months in the last two years, we weren’t able to welcome everyone together for the networking and awards.
“We are proud of the celebrations that we hosted online, and the awards were a huge success, managing to highlight the best of Irish food and drink during a really difficult time. However the one thing that was said over and over to us was that people really missed being in Dingle, so we can’t wait to welcome our Blas family home this year and celebrate our 2022 finalists in person.”
This year is the 15th year of Blas na hÉireann with last year seeing a huge increase in entries and many new producers entering the food awards for the very first time.
The blind- tasting judging system which was designed by The School of Food and Nutritional Science at U.C.C. under the supervision of Prof. Joe Kerry and the team at Blas is now recognised as an industry gold standard worldwide.
Winners are always the best Blas ambassadors. Something 15 years worth of small producers, farmers, growers, bakers and artisan food makers who have won Blas awards can attest to. Research has shown that the Blas accreditation has the highest recognition among Irish consumers and having the coveted winner’s sticker and award logo on products really does encourage shoppers to buy – it is a recognised guarantee of a top-quality Irish product.
Entries for Blas na hÉireann 2022 are open until Friday May 20 and the entry fee is €80 per entry (ex VAT). For more see the Blas website.
