Big plans afoot to keep up with international demand for Clonakilty's own Black Pudding.

There was a time when restaurateurs wouldn't have dared.  Now they do, and they know how to charge for it too.  The lowly Black Pudding has attained a higher status.

Once the stuff of the common man, it has now arrived, Black Pudding is big business, particularly in Clonakilty, Co. Cork.  And a secret recipe has everything to do with it.  That's why German and British publicans are storming the Clonakilty Black Pudding Company with request for the town's famous delicacy.

The company does not have an export licence, so it cannot fill the waiting export orders.  But t will have one in the near future and when that happens, the fruits of the secret recipe will be brought to a wider audience.

The company produces its Pudding in a factory that is 10 times too small for the amount of business on its books.  The decision has been made to relocate to Little Island near Cork city, where a 50,000 sq. ft factory is available.  However, the owner of the company Mr. Edward Twomey, does not wish to move the business away from Clonakilty and he plans to build a new plant, eventually, in the town with enough capacity to supply the growing demand.

This is good news for Clonakilty.  In this relatively small town, a company with the ability to generate an annual turnover of £2 million is not insignificant.  The move to Little Island will help to keep the business expanding in the short term; up ahead there will be construction jobs for the town, major new investment, the creation of new employment and an opportunity for a local company to respond to the unprecedented demand for its produce.

It all started with the purchase in 1977 by Mr. Edward Twomey of a butcher's shop in the town.  With the shop came the secret recipe dating back to the 1800's.  The shop had been owned by the Harrington family of Clonakilty whose most trusted employee was the elderly Mr. Paddy Allman.  He was the one who could make the Black Puddings.  But he died six months after the transfer of the ownership and Mr. Edward Twomey decided to discontinue this side of the business.

He soon found out, though, that he had made a wrong decision.  People came to the shop first and foremost for the Puddings.  After that, they bought meat.  No Puddings, no meat sales.   There was nothing for it but to revive the Black Pudding business.  He did, using the old recipe, and the business never looked back.

The Pudding doesn't need much marketing.  The influx of visitors to West Cork does it all.  The tourists get to hear about it, usually take some Pudding home and then the return orders follow.  It has bee a source of frustration not to be able to fill those orders.  Soon it will be possible.

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Red tape threat to Black Pudding
by Miriam Lord, Dublin.
Ireland's butchers and chefs are sharpening their negotiating skills for a battle with Brussels over their Black Puddings.   If they lose, hundreds of cottage industries could be banned from producing the traditional delicacy.

An EC directive that comes into effect in January will bring all domestic meat plants under European rules, replacing a 1977 regulation that applies only to plants exporting to other Community members.

The new measure has angered the food industry, which fears that the Black Pudding may succumb to red tape.  Only eight manufacturers in the republic were approved under the existing directive.

The Irish Puddings, consisting of steamed blood, oatmeal and spices, are usually made by village retailers who follow secret recipes.  Once seen as a poor man's food, they have recently soared in popularity following their rediscovery by top chefs and restaurateurs, who are joining the fight against the EC bureaucrats.

John Howard, chef-proprietor at the Le Coq Hardi, one of Dublin's top restaurants, said he promoted Irish Puddings where ever he went.  "It's one of the few dishes we can claim as being truly Irish", he said.

Howard said he had served Black Pudding from Clonakilty, in Co. Cork at a recent banquet in Monaco hosted by Michael Smurfit, the honary counsel for Ireland.   "Prince Rainier was guest of honour and there were no complaints from him about the Black Pudding".

The Clonakilty Black Pudding is made by Edward Twomey who said he would not be frightened off by Europe.  "The EC won't stereotype us - let them try.  My product is hand-mixed from an old recipe and the Puddings have no standard size or colour", he said.

The Irish Master Butchers' Association said it was still negotiating the directive with its European colleagues.  Eugene Kierans, its spokesman, is confident that the regulations would not be applied too rigidly.  "Hygiene is the most important factor, and Irish butchers are ahead of EC rules in this regard".

Kierans believes that smaller manufacturers might be allowed to operate outside the regulations.  "Subject to hygiene laws, a man making a product in his own shop and supplying his own customers would be deemed a craft butcher", he said.

George Herterich, the association's president said it would fiercely oppose attempts to Europeanise his industry.  "Legislation is coming out of Brussels all the time.  We still aren't clear on what exactly the directive will mean for the Black Pudding industry, but if it affects our traditional butchering ways, then we will be on the next plane to Brussels and fighting".

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Clonakilty Black Pudding is about to break into Europe from its base deep in south-west Cork.

The irony in this new departure for one of Ireland's most prized traditional foods is that the clearest threat to it for years came in the form of stringent EU regulations, suggesting there was no place for unique foods found in tiny areas of Europe.

It seemed raw-milk cheeses and foods such as Clonakilty Black Pudding would be bludgeoned out of existence by regulations hatched by tasteless Eurocrats.   But Mr. Edward Twomey, owner of Clonakilty Black Pudding Ltd., has shown he can live with such hindrances.

The Minister for Agriculture, fellow Corkman Mr. Joe Walsh, announced yesterday his small manufacturing plant has been approved for exporting within the EU.

The granting of veterinary control number P780 under EU legislation would lead to increased availability of the Pudding on international markets, Mr. Walsh said.

It signalled the successful transition from a family-run business to a state-of-the-art food manufacturing facility.  "This represent the future for the Irish food industry", he said.

The future is bound-up in food traceability and HACCP, an internationally accepted system of monitoring all stages of production to ensure the highest food safety standards.  But the past is most important; a recipe dating from the 1880's which Mr. Edward Twomey, in effect, bought when in 1976 he acquired Harrington's butcher shop on Pease Street, originally Sovereign Street.

A long-serving employee who made the Black Pudding died shortly afterwards.  It was decided to stop making it.

The only problem was that he began losing customers.  "It was my first lesson in marketing", Mr. Twomey said yesterday.

The business has grown rapidly since, culminating in a plant employing 25 people making Black and white Pudding and low-fat sausages.

Their perception was of an almost constant "threat from EU directives which raised their head" - though in latter years the EU has moved to protect Europe's most precious foods.

The other opposition not so easily appeased came from the Germans, who could not reconcile adding cereals to meat, he said.  But the roughage meant a beautiful texture and, with spices, it made Clonakilty Black Pudding very special.

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Fine Irish food scoops awards at London Fair.
By Ray Ryan,

The proof of the Pudding was certainly in the tasting for three Irish companies who won gold at a prestigious fine food fair in London.   They were licking their lips after top British food writers and speciality food retailers award gold and bronze medals to Clonakilty Black Pudding from West Cork, in the UK Great Taste Awards at the week long Islington Fine Food Fair.

Bord Bia chief executive Michael Duffy welcomed the recognition being given to the quality of the Irish products, particularly with this Sunday's award for the Best Irish Speciality Food.  "Our high quality and innovative speciality food sector is making strides in the UK market".  He said.

Food Minister Ned O'Keeffe, who opened the Irish stand, organised by Bord Bia, said the scale of the Islington event and its importance in terms of exposure to European buyers provided an ideal opportunity to exhibit Irish speciality foods.

Britain is Ireland's largest market for speciality foods and 22 Irish firms are taking part in the fair.

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They say the proof of the Pudding is in the eating.  The huge demand for Clonakilty Black Pudding here at home has prompted businessman, Edward Twomey to acquire an export licence to sell his Pudding rings abroad.

Within the next three years, Edward Twomey plans to develop a range of added value Black Pudding products and develop the brand in the UK.

The tale of exactly how the 100-year-old recipe made it's way onto shop shelves is an interesting one.

Born in Minane Bridge outside Carrigaline, Co. Cork, Edward Twomey grew up on a family farm.   At the age of 25 he was one of three sons each of whom wanted to make a living from the family's two farms outside Clonakilty.

"It was clear that one of us would have to go into something different.  So I bought a butcher's shop.   In some ways it was something I could relate to.  I didn't want to get into anything that I hadn't got a clue about", he said.

The butcher's shop had been in the Harrington family since the 1880's.  Perhaps unknown to him at the time, was the fact that in buying the shop and its assets, he also acquired a recipe for Black Pudding.

Since the 1880's the Harrington's had manufactured and sold their own Black Pudding to the people of Clonakilty.

"Within two weeks it became clear to me that without Harrington's Black Pudding there would be not butchering business."

"The fact that there were so many big players in the Pudding business was irrelevant.  Within two years there was such a demand for the Pudding that I knew I couldn't continue manufacturing in the shop, so I purchased a small farm and converted some of the farm buildings into a small factory.   I took to the roads and presented the Black Pudding to butcher shops, restaurants, hotels and select food outlets".

"What I had done unknown to myself was to create a brand of national potential of out of a personal belief in the quality of the Harrington's recipe.  I soon had a van on the road full-time and three people working in the factory."

"People were travelling to Clonakilty just to buy it.  Some were driving quite a distance.  Others had it posted to them in all parts of the country.  So there was certainly a demand for it", he recalls.

The ingredients for it were quite easy to get - blood, meat, onion, spice and pin head oatmeal.  And Edward Twomey had the traditional recipe.

In the beginning he made mistakes - but as with most businesses, particularly small businesses, the learning curve is fairly steep.

"It was my stubborn nature enabled me to survive", he recalls.

"At the time that I was developing I learned a lot.  I knew nothing about money, nothing about marketing, nothing about debt collection.  I made an awful lot of mistakes, but I learned from them".

"Initially we worked on the smaller outlets - the butcher's shops, smaller supermarkets, anywhere that we could avoid large exposures.  I needed cash and the larger outlets required huge credit periods and this would not have helped my business at all, particularly at that time", he added.

Edward Twomey started off with one person working in the plant.  But as demand grew for this product he has had to put more people on the pay-roll.

Today there are 12 staff at the Black Pudding plant.  In addition the original butcher's shop which he bought, almost 19 years ago, is still going strong.

He has never received any form of a grant from the IDA.   However, he does have a lot of time for another stage agency CBF, which is now part of An Bord Bia.

"They gave us every help.  They included Black Pudding on many of their menus and put it on the tasting stands", he added.

Through word of mouth, through consistently high quality, through availability and also through the fact that some of the country's most successful chefs and restaurants were putting it on their menus, Twomey's business prospered.

By the end of the 1980's the multiples, like Superquinn and Dunnes Stores were interested in the product as well.  Today Clonakilty Black Pudding has four vans on the road as well as three distributors.

"Perhaps at the end of the year we will be exporting our famed Pudding.   There is a lot of potential yet however in Ireland", he said.

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Very Black Clonakilty Black Pudding is now available from Superquinn and is a really delicious version of the traditional food.  The Pudding has a coarse, loose texture, made with oatmeal.  It is good for a typical breakfast "fry" or you can serve it as a first course with apple.  Try it also as a stuffing or garnish for poultry.

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Isabel Healy discovers that Edward and Colette Twomey have the perfect mixture for making their Black and White Puddings in Clonakilty a prize-winning combination.

Edward Twomey makes Black and White Puddings in Clonakilty.  He mixes and seasons and cooks pork meat and onions, oatmeal and spices, for the White Pudding, beef blood and meat for the Black Puddings, and packs them into the lining of ox stomach, readily agreeing that "It is not exactly the most glamorous job in the world."

Glamorous the process may not be, but Edward Twomey and his wife Colette - both are from farming families in Minane Bridge - have given Clonakilty Black Pudding a cachet amongst gourmets, and respecting the pure natural ingredients and with a good eye for style and presentation, have preserved all that is good about this traditional product.  Clonakilty Puddings, to Harrigton's original recipe, were IMO national prize-winners in their class two years running.

There is a tradition of Pudding making in West Cork, with three producers around the Clonakilty/Timoleague area.  Philip Harrington began his business in Pearse Street (then Sovereign Street) in the 1880's.  It stayed in the family until 1968 when it was transferred to Patrick McSweeney.  He passed it on to his nephew Edward Twomey, and Edward Twomey is producing Puddings to the same original recipe today.

The Twomey's victuallers in Pearse Street is a joy, with its tiles, its plaque on the wall, its hand-painted signs and for Christmas, sprigs of fresh holly in the window.  It is a Tomas Toipear special; painted and decorated by the artist who has given West Cork shop fronts a place in the Bórd Fáilte guidebooks.  Edward Twomey began making the Puddings at the rear of the shop in 1976.  He does not slaughter his own cattle, but buys them in, finishes them and waves them off to the abattoir down the road.  He dismisses the small acreage at the home farm in Baile an Aifreann on the hill outside the town as "hippie size farm".  "We don't do any intensive farming, we have a few sheep and ponies for the kids, but I know the seed breed and generation of all the beasts used up here in the factory".

When Edward Twomey began making the Puddings at the back of the Pearse Street shop the business was already established, with a special order book for all those outside the area who always had their Puddings posted to them.  Then the business began to grow, and desperately trying to move towards exporting.  Edward Twomey endeavoured to acquire a custom-built, and empty, IDA plant in the town.  All his efforts so far have been unsuccessful, however, so he now works from a small purpose built unit across the yard from his home.  "We also do home-made low-fat sausages under our own name, and the other products go under the brand name "Carbery Meats".  We have two vans on the road covering Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford, and send Puddings to restaurants as far away as Moycullen House in Galway and the Coq Hardi in Dublin and to Kilkenny.

There is such an interest in the Puddings that we are very anxious to expand and export as the time and the product is right.  "We have great ideas.  The problem is that you cannot export without and EC approved plant, but we have found that you cannot get grant-aid for an EC approved plant without an export licence, and so it goes round in circles.  The money is there to buy a suitable premises, which would be preferable to building, but for the past few years we seem to have been locked in red tape with the IDA no matter how good the intentions are on both sides.  It is very frustrating when the will and the potential are there for employment and the market is there to be exploited.  Really the home market is the most difficult, and we feel we have cracked that.  As well as being made under precise and stringent rules, the manufacturing end of the business is physically hard, but I don't mind that.  The tough part is trying 6to combine production with marketing.  Colette is a great manager and does the promotional work, telephone and accounts."

The Twomey's employ nine people together, and still honour the traditional postal lists from the old ledgers.  "It seems strange in this day and age, but the post is the fastest and most reliable way of sending our product internally, though I know a lot of it leaves the country in suitcases for emigrants as it has done for over a hundred years!".  The Twomeys are involved in a lot of local events (one suspects for the craic as much as the promotional value) and the Clonakilty Black Pudding ring adorns T-shirts and baseball hats for busking festivals and rallies.

According to Edward Twomey, Clonakilty Puddings are hand-made, the white Puddings are pork based and use pinhead oatmeal, onions and spices.  The Black Pudding is a meat and blood sausage with oatmeal and spices, and is slightly fattier than the white.  "No reconstituted meat is used, no artificial additives and the casing is natural ox runner, it's the old recipe," says Edward Twomey.  The Puddings are boiled for 25 minutes, are cooled for at least two hours, go out on the road the day after making, and will keep for about a week in the fridge.

The two young Twomey boys, like their Da, are interested in tractors and boats and food, so any excuse sees the family taking off to food fairs and boat shows in England and Europe.  They have exhibited at the Cork Summer Show and Kinsale Food Forum, but if the buyers at the food fairs of France and Germany could see the home of Clonakilty Black Pudding - the rolling green pastures where the West Cork cattle laze and graze in view of the sea, the small factory beside the haybarn and neat farmhouse where the signs read "An fheoil is fearr" they would want to buy the lot, not just the Puddings, but the whole shebang: fields, cows, lazy dog, Twomeys, secret recipe and all.

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Whilst the destination of the Sam Maguire Cup was the main topic of conversation in Clonakilty very few were aware that the town had captured two All-Ireland titles and that two locally produced products had been declared outright winners.   Organised by the Irish Butchers Association, two All-Ireland competitions, one for Black Puddings and one for White Puddings, were held in Limerick and if the proof of the Pudding is in the eating the proof of the winning was to be seen over the week-end in Edward Twomey's Pearse Street, where the two plaques and two perpetual cups were on display while Mrs. Bridget Hunt dispensed refreshments in honour of the occasion.  Although this is the first time that Edward Twomey's Black Pudding has won national recognition it has long been highly placed on the market throughout Cork and Munster and that goes back to the days when it was known as Harrington's Black Pudding made from a special recipe of which the late Paddy Allman was especially proud.  On taking over Harrington's butchering business, Edward Twomey also acquired the secret of the recipe and is now producing both Black and White Puddings at his premises at Baile an Aifrinn Cross.   Whilst it would not be strictly correct to say that the black Pudding has, and had in the past, a place in the world market it is probably safe to say that today some of its being eaten in London, New York and San Francisco because Clonakilty people returning to the country of their adoption after a holiday at home always take some of the product with them for themselves and their friends.  With the present emphasis on foodstuffs of a high standard, it is a good to see Clonakilty to the fore.  (A local with remarked that Clon would not have won the two competitions if Dinny of Glenroe had entered his own black Puddings for the contest)

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...Mr. Edward Twomey of Clonakilty Black Pudding said the British market held huge potential for his company, which employs 20 people in West Cork.  He hopes to obtain an export licence before Christmas and is already talking to one major hotel chain which is interested in stocking Clonakilty's Black and White Pudding.

Mr. Edward Twomey said the trip to London would be worthwhile even if he only make one useful contact.  "One contact is all you need... and the opportunity is here in England."

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I walked down Pearse Street past shops with notices in English and Irish - Clonakilty is bilingual - and in the window of Edward Twomey, the butcher, I found an historic legend: Níl aon rud choimh blasta le putóg dubh Cloich na Cóillte - There is nothing as flavour some as a Clonakilty Black Pudding.  When Edward Twomey bought the shop he found a 90 year old recipe for Black Puddings.  He tried it on the town and it was a winner.  Now Kinsale gourmet restaurants feature it and Carmel Kelly-O'Gorman, my splendid hostess in the Lighthouse guest house, Kinsale, would not let a breakfast out of her kitchen without it unless, of course, guests order another of her specialities, smoked salmon with scrambled eggs.  When it comes to breakfasts, Carmel beats most five-star hotels out of sight.

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