Rose Petal Jelly

Discovering our beautiful Rose Petal Jelly
THE NEW-SEASON OF OUR FAMOUS PRESERVE IS HERE. HAVE YOU TASTED IT YET?
When is a jam not a jam at all? When it's a jelly, of course.
Our famous Rose Petal preserve is absolutely delicious spread across a fresh-popped piece of morning toast, but a jam it is not. It's a jelly. And the difference, according to our in-house jam geniuses, is in the consistency.
In a traditional jam - like our strawberry, raspberry or even banana varities - you'll find pieces of plump fruit. A jelly, on the other hand, has a bright and crystal-clear texture, free from fruit solids.
Our Rose Petal is a prime example of that; bright red, almost pink, and so clear it shimmers.

Before the jelly reaches your tastebuds, the story starts in a single garden in Oxfordshire, where all our roses are grown and picked.
Starting at midday on a June afternoon - in 2016, it was a Tuesday, for the curious among you - and continuing weather-permitting until dawn, a team of rose-handlers harvest the best-blooming flowers by hand, before delicately removing their petals one at a time.
The image below shows this year's beautiful crop.
The brushed pink petals are then transferred to a large tombola, complete with a riddling grid attached, which allows the larger petals -- which will make it into the next phase of the recipe -- to be separated from the smaller petals, which sadly do not.
The whole process is very traditional, oh-so-English, and utterly timeless -- much like the taste of the jelly itself.

The following morning, the petals which have made the grade are added to a large silver pot of gently bubbling water to soften. At this stage, the pink colour is drained from the petals, turning them a ghostly pale white and the water around them a deep, dark shade of pinkish-red.
Sugar is then added to the mix, darkening the mixture still further, and restoring some of the natural pinkness to the petals themselves.
The jars are then ready for hand-labelling and hand-polishing - by the same hands which plucked the petals in the first place - and readied for shipping and (more importantly) for eating.

The taste, for the uninitiated, is as close to a pure distillation of an English summer garden as you can possibly imagine.
It's fresh, sweet, and floral without being over-powering. It works wonderfully on toast, crumpets, scones, as the filling in an extra-special Victoria Sponge or Jam Tart - and even as the defining ingredient in a cocktail.
