Fordhall Farm Shop wins Great Taste 2025 Golden Fork for Sustainability

On Tuesday evening, at Battersea Arts Centre in London, the Guild of Fine Food hosted their annual Golden Forks award ceremony. Bringing together some of the best food and drink producers in the world, as well as key figures from across the industry, it was a true celebration of flavour and artisanal talent.

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Award Winners for the Golden Fork!

We are absolutely delighted to announce that Fordhall Farm Shop won the Golden fork for the Golden Fork for Sustainability award 2025. The Golden Forks are the culmination of the Great Taste judging season, with the highest-rated entrants from this year’s cohort being celebrated. Fordhall Farm Shop were awarded three stars for our pasture fed Gloucester Old Spot Pork Shoulder. This award is particularly coveted as you must be invited to enter, and only those winning Great Taste 3-stars are eligible. This year Great Taste 2025 saw 14,340 products entered from 110 countries, judged across 110 days by a panel of more than 500 judges. From these only 273 (1.9%) were awarded a Great Taste 3-star ‘extraordinarily tasty food and drink’.

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Fordhall Farm was placed into community-ownership in 2006, when siblings Charlotte and Ben fought to save their family home and its organic heritage. The landowner wanted to sell for development, but Charlotte and Ben’s sheer passion and determination resulted in a national community of over 8,000 people purchasing the farm and placing it into community-ownership for perpetuity.  Whilst Great Taste is judged primarily on taste, the Golden Fork for Sustainability award recognises entrants doing good things within their business through sustainable practices.

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As the tenant farmer, Ben and his team have continued to build the farm and farm shop business, putting initiatives in place including a whole carcass nose to tail butchery ethos, reduced single-use plastic, green energy, biodegradable packaging, and of course a wide range of biodiversity across the farm through their core farming principle foggage farming.

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Words from tenant farmer, Ben Hollins:

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"As a producer, we are often recognised for the food we make, but this is something entirely different. This award for us acknowledges our long history with organic farming; being one of the first certified farms in the country with over 75 years of heritage started by my late father, Arthur Hollins. Our Foggage Farming system of grazing cattle and sheep year-round on diverse pastures is an integral part of what we do and it’s great for everybody’s hard work to be acknowledged in this way. I am proud to be continuing Dad’s Foggage Farming system which celebrates the connections between soil health, our livestock, biodiversity and great tasting produce at the end. Farming at Fordhall is a privilege.”

“We passionately believe we should add value ourselves to everything we produce on the farm in the most sustainable way we can. Cutting out all the middleman is what makes our farm to fork ethos work for our family-run farm.”

“This nomination is a real celebration of the sacrifice and hard work that goes into every day on the farm. We do our best to explain to our customers what we do and to ensure transparency throughout, even bringing all these details to customers nationwide through our online shop. To have reached this level, and to have been independently verified and recognised by something much bigger than ourselves is so important.”

“Being a Golden Fork winner is truly the pinnacle of the Great Taste awards – and we couldn’t be prouder! We’d like to thank all our customers and community who support our approach to farming and I’d also like to thank Partridges, London who sponsored our award and presented to us on the night.”

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For more details about Fordhall Farm Shop and the award winning pasture fed Gloucester Old Spot Pork Shoulder, please visit their online shop. Discover seasonal meat hampers and find out why Fordhall Farm Shop is so special.  Fordhall Farm Shop- Fordhall Farm