Is there anything quite like biting into a lovely ripe peach? So sweet and so juicy you have to eat it leaning over the sink! That burst of fresh, aromatic sweetness is exactly what we wanted our peach jam to taste like, and we feel like we've come pretty close!
This year, we've made ours with Amarillo Peaches, in collaboration with Natoora. If you don't know them, they work with growers across Europe and America to bring exceptional, hard-to-find produce to the kitchens that will appreciate it most, and it's exactly how we found our grower, Oscar.
Meet Oscar
Our peaches come from Oscar, who farms in Lleida, in western Catalonia. He grows an indigenous late variety of Amarillo peach, thin-skinned with firm, crunchy flesh. These delicious peaches also carry a naturally high concentration of sugars, which is where that deep, almost tinned peach nostalgia comes from, except here it's in its purest, most vibrant form. Their season runs from July right through to October, so this preserve is only around while Oscar's trees are producing.
Why Natoora
We were introduced to Oscar through Natoora, and if you don't already know them, they're worth knowing. Franco Fubini founded Natoora back in 2004 to fix a food system that had lost sight of flavour, transparency and seasonality, and since then they've built a network of growers across Europe and America who supply some of the best kitchens in London, Paris, New York, Copenhagen and beyond. They work directly with people like Oscar, often with varieties that would never make it to a supermarket shelf, and they care as much about seed selection and traditional growing methods as they do about the end result on the plate.
That's exactly the kind of sourcing we want to put our name behind. We're a small team in Bristol who care a lot about where our fruit comes from, and Natoora share that, just on a much bigger stage. Working with them meant we could get to a grower like Oscar directly, rather than settling for whatever peach variety happened to be available in bulk.
And as part of this collaboration, 20p from every jar sold will go to the Natoora Farm Fund. The fund raises money to support young farmers using more sustainable, planet-friendly ways of growing food. The money goes towards grants that help them invest in things like new land, equipment, crops and infrastructure, helping build a more resilient food system for the future.
Our Limited Edition Amarillo Peach Preserve
We've cooked the peaches down in small batches so you still get proper chunks of peach in every spoonful. Brilliant spooned over yoghurt or good vanilla ice cream, stirred through porridge, or served alongside a strong cheese. If you fancy something a bit more indulgent, it's also the star of our Bouji Banana Split recipe: caramelised bananas, vanilla ice cream and a generous spoonful of Amarillo Peach Preserve on top.
These peaches are in season from July to October, so we’ll keep making the preserve as long as you want it (no super-fast sell-outs with this one!)
