Here at Cuisine we just love to discover the people who pour their energy, ideas and sheer hard work into turning New Zealand’s fresh, top-quality produce into innovative, artisan products.

There’s still time to enter the Cuisine Artisan Awards 2019 (partnering again with the New Zealand Food Awards) for your chance to showcase your unique products. Go to foodawards.co.nz and enter by 31 May 2019.

We’re looking for craft food and beverages that are made with skill and care by a real human being, not rolled off a mass-production line. We want to know about you whether you are a small producer, or even micro or nano; making at your kitchen bench or in your garage; and selling through local stores, farmers’ markets or online.

The awards salute all the craft cheesemakers, olive growers, chocolatiers, distillers, butchers, ice-cream makers, bakers, picklers, smokers, fermenters, preservers, brewers, confectioners and bee-keepers. To all those talented people in tiny companies, we honour your commitment. We admire your dedication to your craft, your creativity and attention to the important things, whether that’s respect for the provenance of your ingredients, researching traditional methods or simply making up your own way as no-one else has done it quite like this before.

Helen Dorresteyn of Clevedon Buffalo Co., winner of the 2018 Cuisine Artisan Awards, says, “Richard and I knew we had something unique and very special when we developed our fresh marinated buffalo cheese in 2018. Entering the 2018 New Zealand Food Awards and winning the Cuisine Artisan Award put our product on a national stage and in front of industry leaders throughout the country. It is significant to us that we won an award as part of this forum, given that we are still a family-run farmhouse cheese and yoghurt-making operation. We believe that artisan producers can compete and flourish in the larger food sector, if their product is afforded the recognition of quality and integrity inferred by these awards. Cuisine has always championed artisan producers in this country and this has helped to ensure we inhabit a varied and better quality food landscape than we have ever had before in New Zealand.”

So, if you’re a dedicated maker take this chance to bring your products to the table. If you know someone who is pouring their enthusiasm into a craft product that you love, give them a nudge to enter.

Let’s celebrate the taste-makers.
foodawards.co.nz