Unique Black Butter flavour from luxury yoghurt producer

Northern Ireland's luxury yoghurt producer Clandeboye Estate, has teamed up with a recently established artisan business to create a distinctive new flavour.

Based on a farm estate near Bangor in county Down and uses milk from its own award-winning dairy herd, Clandeboye Estate has collaborated with Irish Black Butter from Portrush in county Antrim to produce Clandeboye Estate Yoghurt with Irish Black Butter.

The unique single estate product is a traditional Greek style stirred yoghurt and is available in 150g pots (RRP 79p).

The novel Irish Black Butter was launched by Alastair Bell in November, his first venture in food and is a sweet/savoury spread featuring Armagh Bramley apples, which have EU PGI status, with treacle, brandy, cider and spices.

Bryan Boggs at Clandeboye Estate sees the collaboration with Irish Black Butter as "another example of our focus on supporting other artisan producers in Northern Ireland". "Irish Black Butter is a great product from a start-up business here. I was delighted to see how we could incorporate the rich flavours of his spread in our traditional Greek style yoghurt. What we've done is to stir the black butter into the yoghurt to create an original and delicious flavour," he adds.

Clandeboye Estate is a major supplier of yoghurt to supermarkets and independent retailers across Northern Ireland. In addition, it produces own label yoghurts for German discounter Aldi in the Republic of Ireland.

Clandeboye's Irish Black Butter yoghurt is now being test marketed in some delis and independent retailers in Northern Ireland. "We are really keen to see how shoppers react to the new product. We'd hope to offer it to supermarkets in due course," adds Mr Boggs.

Clandeboye Estate's luxury yoghurt uses milk sourced from the farm's own award winning Holstein and Jersey herd and is processed using traditional handmade techniques that include straining it through cheesecloth with absolutely no thickening additives and therefore no added fats.

The milk, sourced fresh every morning from the estate's herd, is prepared and cultured very gently over a 24-hour period in small batches.

This helps to create the exceptional flavour and texture which has resulted in a string of UK Great Taste and Blas na hEireann, Irish National Food Awards.

The luxury yoghurt began as a farm diversification project driven by Lady Dufferin, the estate owner and a widely respected artist, and was launched in 2007.

Founder of Irish Black Butter Alastair Bell came across a butter-type spread on holiday in Jersey and thought it might be a good idea to create such a distinctive product for Northern Ireland.