December 2010 Archives

It has been twenty years since I first had the idea, but at last I'm celebrating the New Year by planting an orchard soon at Le Manoir. This is a very special orchard. In the first place it's to be entirely sustainable. My role, my ambition, is to assure that Le Manoir remains a monument to sustainable excellence long after I have gone; quality must remain the goal of every aspect of Le Manoir, and this includes the cultivation of the land that belongs to it.

The orchard itself will be a culinary orchard, celebrating the wonderful distinction of British produce - and this is a subject to which I plan to return in a later blog. We have conducted hundreds of trials,  done tastings, cooked the fruit in every conceivable way,  and made notes on them for over four years, to find which is the best variety, and which translates best into each form of cooking. With my team we have spent half of Christmas choosing the best varieties of trees  to plant in March- not just apples, but pears, quinces, plums, peaches, apricots, figs, cherries and berries. We divided the 20 acres into three plots, with six acres for the orchard (plus 10 for livestock and 4 for vegetables - a story for another day's blog).

About six years ago I started working on the project seriously. It seemed ridiculously easy - find some land, choose some trees, plant them, pick the fruit. But it wasn't. The more I learned, the more complicated I realised it was to achieve the aim of creating one of the most beautiful orchards in the country. We've now engaged 20 of the British and French top specialists giving me advice and practical help, and celebrating further the culinary Entente Cordiale.

Initially I thought I'd create an orchard on the whole of the 20-acre parcel of land adjacent to Le Manoir. The start-up costs were staggering. Each acre could be expected to yield 2 tonnes of fruit - I asked myself, what are you going to do with 40 tonnes of fruit? I didn't want to start a commercial operation, but to respect the values of Le Manoir, keeping it small, beautiful and manageable. So I became sensible, and reduced the scope and my own worries- the huge orchard would not only have required a huge capital outlay, but there would have been my own daily worrying about it. But what really made me think again was when I made a trip to Scotland and saw heavy-bearing plum, apple and pear orchards with half the enormous crop lying on the ground, rotting. That rang alarm bells: I could not bear to place myself in such a position.

This Christmas I want to send all my readers some words of comfort and encouragement, although some of us in the hospitality industry will have to struggle to stay cheerful. It's been a tough year for most, made much worse by this bad weather at what should and often needs to be the busiest time of the year - the time when the shortfalls of the rest of the year can be made up. For most retailers, including hoteliers and restaurateurs, from the tiniest sandwich bar to the biggest department store, you depend on footfall. And this weather has inflicted real pain on an industry already under stress.

At Le Manoir we've been truly fortunate - and I'm pretty certain we're doing something right. Generally we have full occupancy for months to come, an increase on last year of 5.5-6%, and the restaurant is fully booked, with a noticeable increase in lunches. The spending power of some of our guests is certainly reduced, but people are still willing to save up for that special event; and we remain the special destination for many of these guests, who know from experience that we cherish them.

London's hotels seem to be in the same position: the 5-stars are flourishing, as are those businesses at the low-end of the market, the Travelodge and Sleep Inns. The middle market, those dependent on corporate business, are naturally being squeezed the most, as their customers are all trying to trim their own expenses. Still, my General Manager, Philip Newman-Hall, who sits on a couple of industry committees, feels that even this sector is picking up a bit more than it did in 2009. We have spoken to several of our colleagues in high-end London hotels, and they confirm our impression. Everybody says that the top London restaurants have been packed all year, the lower-priced chains seem to be faring well, and the recession is hitting hardest in middle-range hotel dining rooms.

In general, outside London, there has been a downturn in trade.

A few days ago I was appointed by the Board of Directors to be a Vice-President of Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. This is not just an honorary title, but comes with a proper operational role and responsibilities. My role will be to influence, sometimes create and design, new concepts for their various properties across the world. I'll be working alongside a team of the best professionals. It's a new job that fits like a glove with everything we are trying to do at Le Manoir.

Each hotel in is unique in style and rich in character, and Orient-Express is very careful to preserve the features that make them so special. The portfolio includes many famous names, such as the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, the Mount Nelson in Cape Town, the Copacabana Palace in Rio, the Villa San Michele in Florence, and vary from the Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg to the Maroma Resort & Spa on Mexico's Riviera Maya. In the portfolio you have of course the star of the crown the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express and many luxury tourist trains and two river cruises - one of them operating in
Burgundy under the name 'Afloat in France'; I had the most unique experience travelling peacefully across the canals of Burgundy aboard L'Hirondelle; a sleek barge equipped with pool, lounges, deck and the most cosy and luxurious bedroom - not a cabin.

What you may not know is that Orient-Express bought in to Le Manoir in 2002.  The fit has been natural, because both our brands aim at giving our guests an extraordinary experience.

There is a grand plan. Orient-Express, led by their CEO Paul White, wants the Orient-Express name recognised on the highest playing field of international excellence in each facet of its activities, of course including the food.  Orient-Express also wants to evolve the idea of responsible excellence throughout its businesses by responding to the modern guests' needs and aspirations. (Luxury is no longer about possessions, but about owning your own time and space.)

That entirely delights me. At Le Manoir we are one of the leaders in this. We have always embraced and championed all the values of traceability and sustainability; and we are serious about seeing that these values are propagated throughout our team. (I have even received a personal  "Good Egg" award from The Considerate Hotelier, who are giving us practical advice on achieving this.) Indeed, we've now established an "eco-brigade," a select committee of staff led by Andrew Foulkes, who regularly review and measure our progress, which I will report on in a few months. We also work with Oxford Brookes and with John Firrell from the Considerate Hotelier. We now have a detailed plan to deal with waste, recycling, water, and all forms of energy, etc. Orient-Express, Paul White, their CEO and his Chief Operating Officer Filip Boyen, want to implement these values in their own business, because they share completely the same vision and standards.

I have used Loch Duart salmon for many years, because I believe they are the gold standard in fish farming. I have always believed them when the guys at Loch Duart say they are committed to running their salmon farm on the northwest coast of Scotland sustainably. Their product is very good, the ownership is Scottish and they contribute a lot to employment in their local community. Their business is run on ethical lines, and their care for their surroundings has won them ISO 14000 certification, meaning that they are compliant with very high international standards for reducing their negative impact on the environment, and comply with all local and national legislation.

They employ an integrated aquaculture, cultivating a native species sea urchin that feeds on the beds below. They grow indigenous seaweeds that take out the nitrates and phosphates that the salmon put in. The salmon are farmed in low density in the open seas so they naturally swim against the currents, this provides a firm flesh similar to that of wild salmon. They employ a year-long fallowing system across their sites allowing the area to recover. The fish feed comes from sustainable non-GM sources.

They don't dose their salmon with antibiotics either for prophylaxis or for treatment. Their good animal welfare practices have been recognised by Freedom Food, the RSPCA assurance scheme - which means that their fish have enough space and food, and aren't subjected to unusual stresses.

On top of this, the quality of Loch Duart salmon is attested to by the reputations of their customers - top restaurants all over the world, including Le Manoir and Brasseries Blanc. They seem to be a model fish farm, and if fish have to be farmed (and of course they do, as we have so seriously depleted our stocks of so many wild fish) - this would seem to be the way to do it.

However, accidents happen.

Last November 9 a passing boat seems to have cut a hole in one of their pens, and 4,000 salmon swam away into the sea. The company has suffered a dreadful financial loss - £80,000 said the local press. There has been a fuss in the press and in the Scottish Parliament about publishing some of Loch Duart's escape and information release policies, but I have received satisfactory replies from them to my own questions. Loch Duart has had four escapes since 2005, losing about 23,000 fish, and November's was the first in two years, they say. They are always trying to improve their equipment and security.

I've been dealing with Nick Joy and Andrew Bing of Loch Duart for several years, and they retain my confidence.

Last week I was honoured to present one of the BBC Food & Farming awards - the Oscars of the food and farming world. The award I gave was, I feel, the most important one of the day, for it was the Derek Cooper Award, given for a lifetime's achievement; and it went to a man whose work is of immeasurable importance. Here's how the BBC presenter, Sheila Dillon, reported it:

"There wasn't exactly a theme to this year's Food and Farming Awards but great bread and the revival of our native animal breeds were a kind of thread on an occasion that was funny, moving and a reminder of what counts.

"The breeds were highlighted by Farmer of the Year, farm manager Jonathan Birchall, who on 2250 acres of the Kings Walden estate in Hertfordshire runs a mix of rare breed animals. And the reason he can? The life's work of Richard Lutwyche who nearly 20 years ago when working in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, realised that the only way to preserve our native farm breeds was to persuade us all to eat them.

"At that time some of the breeds we'd lived with, and on, for hundreds and in some cases over a thousand years were on the brink of extinction. Now because of his work promoting breeds such as Gloucester Old Spot pigs and Wiltshire Horn sheep, the animals that our ancestors developed to suit our different landscapes are farmed from Caithness to Cornwall. Richard won the prestigious Derek Cooper Award."
         
To see the importance of Richard's work you have only to go to the RBST website. One breed of farm animal becomes extinct every moth somewhere in the world. This might seem incredible, but I myself well remember, some years ago, trying to find a local variety of pig, the Oxford Sandy and Black. Twenty years ago it was virtually extinct.
        
Richard Lutwyche has been involved in thwarting extinction since the 1970s. I think he's a hero, because he's the sort of passionate, relentless achiever I respect and admire. Without him we'd have lost a big chunk of our British heritage, not least the Gloucester Old Spot pig. Popular and widespread as this breed is today - it was granted European Commission Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) status in July of this year - it is still in a precarious position in the USA, for example, where it is on the "critical" list of the American Livestock Breeds conservancy (fewer than 200 annual registrations), while the RBST here puts it in "Category 5, Minority," meaning that in the UK there are fewer than 1,000 registered breeding females.