Global gold for Wairarapa marmalade

Sally Duckworth and Alisdair Ross with a gold-medal winning marmalade from last year. PHOTO/ANDREW BONALLACK

A marmalade company from Wairarapa has won seven medals -- including two golds -- at the World's Original Marmalade Festival in Cumbria, Britain.

Sally Duckworth and Alisdair Ross are the founders of Marmalada, an artisan marmalade company finding global recognition along with online success.

At Saturday's Dalemain Marmalade Awards -- effectively the Olympics of marmalade-making -- Marmalada reached gold-medal standard with two typically quirky creations: a lemon and vodka marmalade and another with mandarin, kirsch (cherry liqueur) and vanilla.

They also took home five bronzes among a host of other recipes that included lime, coconut and gin. The couple live at Whareama and work in Wellington; Ms Duckworth in a research and evaluation company and Mr Ross as a criminal barrister.

Their property has 400 fruit trees producing oranges, lemons, grapefruit, kumquats, and other fruits, and the marmalades are handmade in a pot that belonged to Ms Duckworth's grandmother.

This year's success takes Marmalada's haul of gold medals to five.

Last year, they won with a kumquat and vanilla marmalade and one with grapefruit, mint and white rum.

Their wins have been in the Marmalades with Interesting Additions category.

"It takes 100 hours to develop a recipe," Mrs Duckworth said.

"It's all that trial and error, and the taste tests [by qualified foodies], and trying to get the sugar content down as much as possible, and exploring different textures."

Besides these awards, the company has found major success in the past year with its products included in recipes developed by TV chef Nadia Lim for online food delivery business My Food Bag.

One of their marmalades was used as a glaze on a Christmas ham, which meant they had to provide 5000 jars -- which they did with the help of a group of international UCOL students.