Rush Munro's icecreams scoop national awards

Rush Munro's Corina Ghio and icecream maker Graham Copp with two of the award winning icecreams, Maple and Walnut and Green Tea.

Hawke's Bay's top icecream maker continues to scoop the national awards for Rush Munro's.

Rush Munro's icecream maker Graham Copp has been creating the company's icecream for 16 years and is proud to have served up six more medals for the company at the 2018 New Zealand Ice Cream Awards.

"It gets more competitive every year with 385 icecreams entered into the awards this year. For a small company, Rush Munro's does exceptionally well. We have won medals every year that I can remember."

This year Rush Munro's won six silver medals. These were for the Maple Walnut and Salted Caramel flavours in the premium category, Coconut and Coconut Rough in the Best of Coconut Category, Green Tea in the Export Category and Coconut and Strawberry in the non-dairy category.

Rush Munro's has taken home medals every year since the New Zealand Ice Cream Awards started 22 years ago.

But Graham says this year was the first time he had tried making an icecream with coconut milk, which he entered into the non-dairy section.

"I've always loved working with coconut and have been keen to try a coconut milk icecream. This is becoming a popular alternative to dairy and there is certainly a demand for non-dairy icecreams. I did some experimenting with the coconut and Hawke's Bay strawberries and thought it was spot on, but you never know how the judges are going to rate your icecream."

Graham was pleasingly overwhelmed to receive a silver medal for his non-dairy creation.
"Our team works hard to create the icecream and it's great to have our efforts recognised on the national stage. The Ice Cream Awards are the night of all nights for icecream producers around the country."

When asked what his secret is, Graham says the award-winning icecream has stayed true to its 90-year history and is fundamentally the same, just tweaked slightly.

"Making icecream is complicated and every icecream is unique in taste, flavour, texture and density. There is a real art to getting it right.

"There are generally just six ingredients in Rush Munro's Ice Cream including milk, cream, sugar, egg yolk, gelatin and whatever the natural flavour is — whether it be strawberries, coconut or feijoa."

Graham says he is proud to have kept Rush Munro's natural because many of the other icecreams on the market have a lot of 'E number' ingredients, which include colourings, preservatives and sodium nitrate.

"Our other main point of difference is that the icecream is still batch churned. This means we can only make one batch at a time, so it takes longer. We also do everything by hand without a lot of machinery. So, we physically pour all the ingredients into the icecream and hand prepare the fruit."

Rush Munro's general manager, Vaughan Currie, was delighted with Rush Munro's medal tally at the awards.

"We are a very traditional ice cream producer in what is becoming a very sophisticated and competitive market. There were a record number of entries into this year's awards and to take home six medals was well beyond our expectation. It was wonderful to see all the hard work from our dedicated and talented team here in Hastings rewarded."

It was a record year for the awards with the highest number of entries to date, 385, from 37 manufacturers.