Wild Cranberry, Sweet Woodruff & Black Pepper Drizzle
A winter fruit drizzle shaped from wild cranberry, orchard apple, sweet woodruff, and black pepper – softly rounded, jewel-toned, and quietly spiced, made for table use and gentle hearth nourishment.
 
This winter drizzle is built from fruit softened rather than sharpened – wild cranberries slowly infused with the juice of wild apples, allowing their deeper, darker notes to emerge without acidity taking the lead. The apple draws the cranberry inward, lending orchard sweetness and a supple body that feels calm and composed.
 
Sweet woodruff replaces vanilla here, chosen for its native presence and its warm, hay-soft, almond-leaning aroma. It brings cohesion rather than sweetness – a binding note that rounds the fruit and settles the palate. Cracked black pepper follows at the finish, offering lift and clarity, a fine line of spice that keeps the drizzle poised and balanced.
 
On the tongue, the movement is gentle. Fruit arrives first – rounded, bright, and well held – followed by warmth and soft herbal depth. Pepper appears last, clean and measured, leaving a lightly spiced brightness rather than heat. This is sweetness shaped by restraint, designed to nourish rather than excite.
 
This is not a dessert sauce or syrup. It is a table drizzle – used sparingly, where a small amount carries flavour and intention. Each pour is an offering placed on the altar of the mouth, taken into the body as the earthly temple. Crafted to hold fruit through the dark months, it brings colour, warmth, and quiet pleasure to winter food without excess.
 
Flavour pairings
Soft cheeses and labneh – goat’s cheese or washed-rind
Oatcakes, rye bread, or sourdough
Roasted squash, carrots, beetroot, or fennel
Baked pears or dark chocolate desserts
Yoghurt, panna cotta, or winter porridge
 
Serving suggestions
Use sparingly as a finishing drizzle at the table. Designed for gentle sweetness and balance rather than pouring. Particularly suited to dishes where fruit, fat, and warmth meet.
 
Storage
Store in a cool, dark place. Once opened, refrigerate and use within several weeks. Natural settling may occur – warm gently and shake before use.
 
Winter Hearth Soulfoods – Mother Tongue of the Cailleach Country
The Winter Soulfoods collection is an immersive body of work set in Cailleach country – the boglands of Béarra – approached as ecosystem, archive, threshold, and kitchen. It imagines what it might mean to work from within the Cailleach’s own domain, drawing flavour, nourishment, and craft from deep ground, slow water, turf fire, and time.
 
The bog is not treated as symbol or backdrop. It is a keeper of strata – layers of matter and memory held intact. A place where time is thickened rather than spent. A preservative ground where infusion, storage, and patience are not techniques, but ways of living in relationship with the land around you, and the land within you.
 
Within this terrain, food is ceremony and commitment. Ingredients are gathered as the year unfolds, worked slowly, and held back for winter – not for spectacle, but for sustenance. Fruit, spice, mineral depth, and gentle sweetness shape flavours meant to be met with attention, feeding the body deeply, strengthening bones, warming, soothing, and replenishing marrow through the dark months.
 
These soulfoods are acts of natural pace and continuity – ways of staying in relationship with place, season, and deep time. Crafted through hand, hearth, and long devotion, they carry the quiet authority of a path walked faithfully, day after day, in preparation for the dark.