Ludlow Food Festival Comes of Age
The Ludlow Food Festival comes of age this year (2012) and the organisers are hard at work bringing together a host of attractions to help celebrate the festival's 18th birthday from 7th - 9th September.
Lovers of food, drink, books and photography are well catered for in 2012 with a food themed book festival and photography exhibition running alongside the main event.
The book festival will see well-known cookery book authors and literary minded chefs give talks at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms.
The same venue will also be home to the prestigious Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year exhibition featuring dozens of delectable images of food submitted from across the world.
Another new event for 2012 will be tutored wine tasting in association with Tanners, Shropshire wine merchants since 1872.
The festival is always eager to encourage new, young food talent and has just awarded its Graeme Kidd Bursary (for 16-25 year olds) jointly to Dan Cooper, an events management student and Daniel Jones, a talented chocolatier.
In addition, the festival restaurant this year will feature top quality, affordable food prepared by the culinary stars of the future; 
namely current and past students from catering courses at Shrewsbury, Hereford and Ludlow Colleges, all overseen by a host of top chefs.
The Ludlow Food Festival is renowned for the calibre of its exhibitors and this year is no exception with more than 160 hand-picked local artisans selling their products and sharing their skills and enthusiasm.
Across the weekend the finest chefs and experts will be taking to the two stages to delight audiences with a range of talks and demonstrations; some of them interactive so that visitors can get involved with fun activities such as bread making and sausage linking, the latter is not as easy as you may think!
Friday at the Ludlow Food Festival sees the cream of the restaurant profession descend on the castle to share their talent and passion with visitors.
Chefs at previous festivals have included Alan Murchison, Tom Kerridge and Richard Bainbridge and this year promises to include just as many well-known faces from the culinary world.
Of course the ever-popular sausage, ale and bread trails will also be taking place around Ludlow along with the pudding tasting and Sunday producers market.
For those who want to learn more about particular ingredients or methods of cooking the Taste Workshops are a must. Led by expert producers or chefs, they will guide you through a tutored tasting. Previous talks have included 'snout to tail', sherry tasting and the art of fruit distillation.
And if that wasn't enough the festival will also be the venue to crown the winners of the prestigious Ludlow and the Marches Food and Drink Awards.
Judged in August, an expert panel will taste both amateur and professional entries in categories including bread, pies, cakes and preserves.
For more details about the festival please visit the website www.foodfestival.co.uk