Producers and foodies embrace Provenance Festival | ONE

A new festival, to celebrate food and drink at source has been welcomed by food and drink producers with more than 100 visitor experience events taking place across the region from Laurencekirk in the south to Huntly in the north and many places in between.

Led by Opportunity North East, Provenance Festival will start on Friday 24 September with events taking place over ten days to 3rd October and include well-loved and new experiences that celebrate regionality, provenance and authenticity.

Since launch at the end of August, 17 food and drink producers have embraced the opportunity to welcome visitors to their venues to learn and experience how local food and drink is produced and to meet the people behind the region’s most recognised brands and exciting new businesses.

People across north east Scotland have been quick to seize the opportunity for in person, hands on visits to farms, factories, breweries and distilleries with a number of venues offering additional sessions to meet demand.

Peter Cook, ONE's Director of Food Drink & Agriculture said: “The level of interest and speed of sign up from both producers and consumers has been fantastic. The passion of the business owners to share their story is evident in the quality of experiences being offered.

“We are delighted to have such a wide range of events for individuals and families to learn about and support local businesses, to hear how they are working to make our food supply more sustainable and, most importantly, to enjoy trying out expectational local produce.

“The uptake is great news for the businesses involved who can expect to benefit from increased footfall and consumer spend over the ten days. Ultimately the ambition is for Provenance Festival to grow beyond this year’s pilot to become an annual celebration of the heritage, innovation, quality, provenance and sustainability of food and drink production in the region and to attract visitors nationally and internationally.”

William Willis, Forest Farm “We are passionate about connecting our customers with the origins of our artisan dairy range. We’ve had huge interest in our ’Behind the Scenes at Forest Farm’ tour and look forward to welcoming visitors to the farm to meet the cows on a guided tractor and trailer ride, see how the gelato is made and sample our products.”

Provenance Festival 2021 will offer something for all tastes and appetites; new experiences running exclusively for the festival include:

• A cuppa with Bill Dean at Dean’s of Huntly
• What’s for Tea Tonight? Farm Festive Food Fair near Laurencekirk
• An exclusive ‘sky to scoop’ tour of Mackie’s of Scotland, Rothienorman, to see how ice cream is made
• A festival exclusive ‘Behind the scenes’ visit to Esker Spirits distillery on Deeside

To find out more and start your Provenance story visit provenancefestival.com and follow #ProvenanceFestival2021 for updates and details of event listings as they are added over the coming days.