TILLMANS ‘Arctic Gold’ - Cloudberries

If you have recently seen the article on cloudberry jam in House & Garden, we are sorry to have to inform you that we cannot supply this item this year due to an exceptionally bad wild berry harvest in Scandinavia this late July / August. The article went to print before we knew the full extent of the cloudberry failure. We now have to wait until the next harvest, August 2012, for new supplies. Please contact us on 08453 017 685 if you would like to order the jam once it is back in stock.

The Daily Telegraph Magazine has produced a feature on Tillmans Swedish berry products including Arctic Cloudberries. It appeared in July ‘09.

Six years ago Tillmans UK agent Roy O’Shea was invited to the wedding of a Swedish friend in Darlana, northern Sweden. Roy loved the lakes, freedom and family-orientated lifestyle and bought a holiday home near the village of Grangärde (pron.’Gron-yaird’). Most of the arable land there is cultivated by the local Tillman family for blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries, the other fruits being bought from organic Scandinavian producers. They sold fresh strawberries and their delicious organic cordials and jams to Swedish retailers. Roy hadn’t heard of ‘Arctic Cloudberry’ or ‘lingonberry’ before, and had never seen organic rhubarb, strawberry, cherry or raspberry cordials in British shops. Tillmans use only carefully chosen berries prepared with care to strict Swedish organic standards. Roy was very impressed with how they are able to control the quality of the product from their own fields to the retailer and started Swedish Juice Ltd to introduce these delicious products onto the UK organic scene.

We would like to introduce you to one of Sweden’s best-kept and most delicious secrets, the Arctic Cloudberry. Cloudberries grow in northern Sweden, Norway & Finland. Once the peaty upland soil thaws in the spring small bog plants appear each plant producing one flower at most, and of these only the females turn into cloudberries, the ratio being 3:1 in favour of males. What is uniquely amazing about cloudberries is that they ripen under the midnight sun – only the arctic phenomenon of 24hr daylight allows this delicious fruit to develop its distinctive flavour so far north.

To flourish the plants need a precise range of temperatures and a late frost can knock out a whole crop: bumper harvests happen only once every 10 years. They are a great source of vitamins A and C the levels of the latter being so high, (100g / 100g berries) Scandinavian sailors took barrel loads on board ship to prevent scurvy. At the end of August harvesting must be done quickly before the berries become too soft, and temperatures plummet.

Cloudberries are extremely hard to find and, because they cannot be cultivated, hundreds of workers must go searching thousands of square km of dangerous and inaccessible country in Sweden’s mountainous north. Traditionally highly prized for their flavour, cloudberries were known as “The Scandinavian gold” because small farmers could boost their incomes by selling them at the manor houses of the iron ore mine owners. Within families the locations of cloudberry grounds and safe routes across the dangerous terrain were handed down through the generations - land dry in the winter can become a mired, mosquito-ridden bog in the picking season and a days walking was required to find enough berries to fill a couple of buckets. Today it is no different: they are so exclusive because they are still so hard to find.

Try the following serving suggestions or click here for more recipes

At the Tillmans family owned concern in Dalarna the berries are mixed with a little organic sugar (35%) and, as they contain the natural preservative benzoic acid, no artificial preservative needs to be added.

Some serving suggestions:

· It is traditional in Sweden to gently warm it up and serve with chocolate or vanilla ice-cream
· Mind-blowing warm over camembert.
· Cold it makes a new golden friend for brie, gruyere, chevre or manchego.
· Wonderful on patisseries or with desserts.
· Try glazing a baked gammon with it, delicious.

Feel free to visit our website www.swedishjuice.com where you can see a wide range of Tillmans organic products such as the increasingly popular rhubarb cordial or “delicious.magazine” editor’s choice cordial for September ’08 : organic strawberry.