Butcher strikes gold at Smithfield awards

Sausage and bacon proves to be the winning combination for Tilehurst couple

A TILEHURST butcher has come away with a golden haul from a prestigious industry award ceremony.

Tilehurst Village Butchers, in The Triangle, pocketed three gold awards at the 2017 Butchers Q Guild Smithfield Awards, for its Welsh dragon pork sausage, pork and Marmite sausage and dry-cured black treacle back bacon.

The director of Tilehurst Village, Chris Watts, said: “We have a wide range of home-made sausage, the classics plus some which are a little bit different, like wild boar and apple or pork and Marmite – either you love it or you hate it.”

Mr Watts’ wife Jane, a co-director, makes home-made pies and the shop also stocks exotic meats such as zebra, bison and alpaca.

The shop, which has been in Tilehurst for more than 25 years, beat off the 600-strong competition to scoop the awards, which were presented at the Ironmongers Hall, London, by British food writer and critic Tom Parker Bowles.