Food & Drink Gift Guide 2020
Relish Coffee
Relish Coffee has a cafe in Whitley Bay and the main roastery is just up the road in Monkseaton. You can find a range of roasts – including single-origin beans or a house blend. Polat is excellent at helping you find the best roast for your tastes, and also has a lot of kits to make coffee at home so much easier – from the HLN favourite the AeroPress, to pour-over filter coffee machines and techy espresso machines as well. You can pop in for a takeaway coffee and a chat, and come away with armfuls of beans, filters, and even a mug if you’re wanting the real Relish experience at home. We really recommend popping by and seeing for yourself, before a bracing walk along to St Mary’s Lighthouse.
The Corbridge Larder
The Corbridge Larder is passionate about food and strives to provide its customers with an enticing range of fresh and food cupboard must-haves; its produce is premium quality and locally sourced wherever possible and the team works tirelessly to establish long-term relationships with their suppliers.
The Larder has made its name through the provision of superb local products, especially fine cheeses, and by establishing The Larder as a true food destination at which customers can shop, dine and enjoy a coffee in the presence of food expertise. With new ownership in 2015 (read our interview with Jennifer Horton, here) The Larder has rediscovered itself as a Premium Food Hall, offering an excellent shopping and dining experience; alongside an e-commerce destination where our customers can enjoy the Larder experience from the comfort of their own home!
Corbridge Gin Gift Set – from £125
A Taste of Northumberland Family Hamper – £90.00
Cheese Hamper Made to Order – £22.50
Hepple Spirits
The Hepple Spirits Company was founded to reveal the true, invigorating taste of wild juniper. To do this, they combine the wonders of nature with cutting edge science. Hepple, located high up in the remote Northumbrian hills, has one of the purest environments in Britain and as a result, juniper thrives. Hepple Spirits handpick the green juniper berries that grow wild in their sanctuary as the centrepiece to their gin. Nature then meets science in the form of their pioneering distilling system; The Triple Technique, where a meticulous copper pot distillation smooths the spirit, low-temperature vacuum distillation captures fresher, more delicate flavours and supercritical extracted juniper oil adds an exceptional depth and texture.
Hepple Gin – £16.50-£38.00
Hepple Sloe and Hawthorn Gin – £32.00
Douglas Fir Sherbert – £12.500
The Careless Collection
The first-ever Masterchef dish that was created for the show and brought to life for retail. David Crichton reached the Masterchef final in 2018 and was tasked with creating a dish for an idol. He chose George Michael and decided to do a take on the title of his song, “Careless Whisper” with a famous UK chocolate bar, the Cadburys Wispa.
He presented two different bars on the show. One filled with a rich chocolate mousse and balsamic vinegar, and the other with salted butter caramel. After careful research, he’s adapted the recipe to bring these delicious bars to the retail market.
His delicious flavours include Caramelised White Chocolate, Milk, Dark and Ruby, as well at limited edition Botanicals and Great Taste collections.
Baristocracy Coffee
Baristocracy is a family business bringing Australian speciality coffee expertise to the heart of the North East. Alex Forsyth was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and has been roasting and preparing coffee for more than twenty years, learning at his father’s knee in what is considered the centre of coffee excellence. He is a Speciality Coffee Association of Europe and World Barista Championship judge and holds the SCAE Barista Level 2 qualification.
His wife Kate Hudson is a Geordie girl who met Alex when she was travelling 10 years ago. They decided to return to the North East in 2017, bringing their extensive coffee knowledge and expertise to the North East.
An ideal gift for the coffee aficionado in your life, Baristocracy offers a range of speciality coffee roasted by Alex himself, with bags starting from £7.50.
The Conscious Candy Company
The perfect gift for vegans or vegetarians in your life, The Conscious Candy Company all started when founder Laura Scott was struggling to find delicious and exciting vegan sweets.
She noticed a gap in the market and now she delivers vegan pick & mix across the UK. The huge 1kg pouches contain over 50 varieties of vegan sweets (we always have one on the go at HLN HQ).
But that’s not all you can choose from – check out the chocolate bars and buttons, vegan marshmallows and more. Her Christmas shop is filled with cute gingerbread men, prosecco jellies, champagne and strawberry marshmallows to make your festive season extra sweet.
The Travelling Bee Company
Based in Gateshead, Mark at The Travelling Bee Company believes that happy bees make the best honey. That’s why he bundles his busy bees into his bee-mobile and travels the North East and Scotland, setting up beautiful hives to give them access to the widest variety of flowers and trees in every season.
The Travelling Bee Company has a wide range of natural and unprocessed honey in a range of flavours, dependant on where the bees have harvested their nectar. Every jar on the online shop has harvesting information, tasting notes and food pairing suggestions so you can choose the perfect flavour.
He also sells jars of bee superfoods – Bee Bread and Bee Pollen – both on team HLN’s Christmas list.
Chai Karak
Perfect for lovers of chai, you can’t get more authentic than Chai Karak. This family-run business travelled to Asia to search for the best chai karak on the market to create an authentic premix using 100% natural ingredients.
After three years of testing and refining, Chai Karak brings its sweet and spicy milk tea in both dairy and dairy-free options for customers that are vegan or lactose intolerant. Flavours include classic cardamon to sweet saffron or spicy masala.
So relax and enjoy a chai-tastic evening at home with UPM CHAI KARAK.
Geordie Gin
The brainchild of two Geordie schoolfriends, Geoff Graydon and Stu Lamb, Geordie Gin was born in 2014 with one goal in mind: to create a boutique spirit that Newcastle gin drinkers can be proud of. They’re confident (and we can agree) that they’ve created the Toon’s tastiest gin. It’s putting Newcastle on the map already, winning silver at the World Gin Awards 2020.
Using all ingredients and distilling (where possible) from the local area, they produce small batches of handcrafted gin which is themed on our traditional colours of the area – black and white. It contains juniper, liquorice root, white pepper, lemon peel and a hint of vanilla as its primary botanicals, resulting in a deliciously smooth gin with a distinctive lemon aroma. Prepared in Portuguese Alembic Copper it is then distilled under vacuum at room temperature to preserve the delicate flavours and ensure a smooth texture.
So smooth in fact, that it can be served on its own with ice and a slice of grapefruit, or add tonic for a sumptuous GG & T.
Will you give it a gan?
Laneberg Wine
The Winery by Laneberg Wine is the first urban winery in the North East and the furthest north in England, based Gateshead. Founder Elise Lane grew up in Newcastle and moved away to study Chemistry at Oxford. She then moved to London and was working for a big four accountancy firm but was always drawn to winemaking and its chemistry. After their first son Max was born she quit her job and studied a PGDip at Plumpton College before working as a winemaker in their commercial winery. They moved back up to the North East to be near family in 2017 and Elise set up the business whilst pregnant with their second son Reuben.
2018 was their first vintage and since then, they’ve gone from strength to strength, with their wine winning Silver at the WineGB Awards, Bronze at the IWSC Awards and their Bacchus 2019 crowned the Best Regional Wine for Midlands & North by WineGB.
Choose from:
This Mortal Angel – a sparkling white.
Pinot G – a dry white wine.
Maximilian 2019 – a fresh, fruity and light English red.
The Corbridge Farmhouse
The Corbridge Farmhouse is a small family business run by Duncan Brown producing bespoke, handmade chopping boards. He caters for all shapes and size requests, from the small and practical, to the big and beautiful.
Regularly supplying items to James Martin’s Saturday Kitchen and his online market shop, the demand for Duncan’s unique boards with traditional waney edges has been huge. He regularly works with oak, beech and ash but has also created pieces in cherry and olive.
The products are available via the James Martin website, but message Duncan directly on Instagram or Facebook to create a bespoke board and have a much more personalised buying experience.
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