Abernethy hand churned butter listed by Fortnum and Mason

Abernethy Butter, the Northern Irish artisan producer of natural and hand churned and rolled butter is now on sale at the Queen's grocer Fortnum and Mason in London.

The family business, started in 2005 by husband and wife team Will and Allison Abernethy on the farm at Dromara in county Down, was listed following samplings by the top retailer's buyers. The butter went on sale on Wednesday 30thJanuary in the London store.

The small company is the only manufacturer of hand churned butter in Northern Ireland. It also recently secured a contract to supply its unique butter to Heston Blumenthal's highly regarded Fat Duck restaurant at Bray in Berkshire.

The couple use only traditional techniques on a 66-acre Beechtree Farm, which has been in Will's family for generations. The cream is sourced by the couple for hand churning from a local farm that grazes dairy cows on the lush green pastures of the Lagan Valley. All that is added to the natural butter is a pinch of salt.

"Winning business with Fortnum and Mason is a marvellous and immensely exciting endorsement of the quality of our handcrafted butter," says Will Abernethy. "It's an extremely encouraging breakthrough in Britain that will help us enormously as we work to build our business particularly in Britain. There's tremendous interest in the natural and richly flavoured butter that we are producing.

"Each roll of butter is lovingly made just like granny did in the farmhouse kitchen so many years ago. We are both passionate about the quality, texture and taste of our butter. It's immensely rewarding to bring a traditional technique back to life and it's proving extremely popular," he adds.

It supplies butter to over 60 stores across Northern Ireland. The butter has also been added to the menu of a number of top Northern Ireland restaurants. It has recently been used by up and coming chef Ben Spalding in London. The artisan business achieved two gold stars at the Great Taste Awards in 2012 and won a bronze award in the dairy category at the Royal Highland Show 2012.

The couple began testing the butter at markets across Northern Ireland including the Victorian St George's in Belfast. The response proved to be overwhelmingly positive.

The small company also set about stimulating the market by showing Women's Institutes, country fairs, church groups and vintage shows how to churn the creamy butter. In addition, the butter is being used for handcrafting a creamy and smooth fudge, particularly for special occasions such as weddings. The fudge is used by many leading restaurant for petit fours.