Feature: In celebration of Great Taste 2025

The Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Awards are renowned for highlighting outstanding food and drink. Here’s what really hit home with the judges in 2025.

Great Taste, the prestigious awards programme run by The Guild of Fine Food, remains the world’s largest food and drink accreditation scheme, celebrating speciality food and drink producers from around the world and across the culinary spectrum. It’s one of the most coveted stamps of approval a product can hope to bear. And for good reason: the names and faces behind the iconic gold stars represent the who’s who of the British food scene. If they’re not impressed, few will be.  

The 2025 judging process took place over 110 days and involved the blind tasting of a staggering 14,340 products, each one rigorously assessed by an extensive panel of food and drink experts – 500 in total.

Overall, just 3,899 entries were awarded one star for ‘food and drink that delivers fantastic flavour’, 1,508 were given two stars for being ‘above and beyond delicious’ and 273 received three stars for ‘extraordinarily tasty food and drink’ (representing just 39.6% of total products entered).

Dutch crisp brand Trafo took home accolades for both its Organic Olive Oil Fried Potato Chips and Organic Coconut Oil Fried Potato Chips, while Ossa Organic was awarded for its Organic Ghee – Grass Fed Clarified Butter, and Organic Tallow – Grass Fed Beef Fat, alongside its Raw Honey. 

Crunch time

Tim Elsinga from FZ Organic – which owns the Trafo label – shares that it was ‘a very proud moment’ for the team when the stars were announced, particularly since he recognizes how highly esteemed the panel of UK judges was.

“We have been developing healthy tasty snacks for years and to get this recognition now really means everything to us,” he said. “This gives us as a team a boost to keep innovating, and innovating outside the existing products, so that we can make many more tasty products for everyone.”

The judges’ comments included praise for subtle flavour, appropriate salt levels, ‘unusually good crunch’, notable potato aftertaste, soft notes of olive oil and the healthy use of coconut oil. Overall, Trafo’s ‘perfectly cooked’ crisps were summarized as ‘very moreish’, with judges continuing to snack on them while completing their notes.

“​​It is very nice to hear that the feedback from the judges was so good. Especially the compliments on the crunch and salt. This is because it is always very difficult to find the right dosage that everyone likes. We thought we had cracked this formula and this feedback proves it,” says Elsinga. 

Among Trafo’s staff, he divulges, Paprika Hummus Chips is a firm favourite of the many varieties the brand has released in the past few years. “My personal favourite, by the way, is the Olive Oil Crisps,” he adds. “This is because I personally don't like chips that are too spicy and this one is perfectly balanced for me with the flavour of olive oil and a little bit of salt.”

Responding to the judges’ positive comments on the use of coconut oil, Elsinga says the decision to innovate with this alternative oil was to cater to those who cannot consume seed oils. “We want to develop products for every consumer and we like to try new things. In this, we consider ourselves a pioneer in organic food and we want to remain so.” 

Elsinga adds that although the brand recognized coconut oil as healthier than most oils commonly used in crisp production, innovating with it presented challenges. “Coconut oil is very different for making crisps than the oil we normally use,” he says. “The temperatures the oil can handle are very different from sunflower oil.”

After a year in R&D, Trafo’s Coconut Oil Fried Potato Chips are now enjoying ‘a big increase in sales’ here in the UK, proving that the juice was worth the squeeze. “In previous years, the Olive Oil chips were the best-selling of the two variants, selling 35% more than the Coconut Oil crisps. According to the figures we have now, both variants are already ahead of last year and Coconut Oil is 25% behind the Olive Oil crisps. I personally expect that with this recognition, this would be 20% by the end of the year.”

Liquid gold

Equally delighted by the stars bestowed upon her brand, Ossa Organic founder Catherine Farrant says the review of her Organic Ghee product was ‘absolutely remarkable’ since the brand has always referred to its ghee as ‘liquid gold’ and the judges agreed word for word. They praised its ‘beautiful, deep egg yolk-yellow’ colour and ‘thick, unctuous’ mouthfeel. 

“Liquid gold. A very clear ghee with a real dairy aroma, which is echoed in the flavour,” their feedback read. “So pure and clean, with a hint of grassy citrus notes. A fabulous nuttiness reminds us of beurre noisette. Not greasy; a smooth mouthfeel. A characterful ghee with good length and depth of flavour. Faultless. It hasn't been adulterated in any way. Full to the brim with buttery grass notes.”

“This is very fresh and creamy, pure and natural. The clarification is pure and allows a good deal of flavour to emanate, with an almost toasty brown butter note. The creamy richness is sublime; there is little else to say. Buttery perfection.”

Ossa’s Organic Tallow was also lauded by the panel for its ‘amazing colour both in solid and molten form’ and ‘rich aroma of savoury beef’ – although some judges noted that ‘a more intense beef flavour [would] merit a higher award’. “The flavour is clean, rich and full of umami – a testament to the quality of beef this has come from. This would be excellent for cooking chips or roast potatoes.”

“We are very happy about this review for our tallow, especially as we are so proud of its colour,” says Farrant. “The more yellow the tallow, the clearer the sign that the cows are grass-fed and we’re really, really proud of that! We also love the subtle beefy smell as we never deodorize or bleach our tallow. We simply filter and render it, which can leave it less beefy. It’s funny how preferences of people vary – if you’re using tallow to make chips, bake or use it as shortening, some prefer a milder beefiness. We are absolutely delighted with what the judges had to say, and we extend a big thank you to them.”

With feedback for Organic Raw Honey centring mainly around its ‘unashamedly’ crystalline texture and ‘touch of waxiness’, Farrant says the judges recognized its authenticity. “It comes from farms local to the London area, so you can be assured that … its potency – including its anti-microbial and anti-bacterial properties – is much stronger when the bees are from an area local to you. We were delighted to hear that the judges … realized that it is raw and natural honey, unlike the fake ones sadly being sold to us in many supermarkets.”

By Rosie Greenaway, editor