The Artisan Kitchen

The Artisan Kitchen are a Gloucester based multi award winning artisan producer of jams, marmalades and preserves. Each unique, bursting with real fruit flavours, handmade and homemade, in just over 10 years they have won over 100 awards

In 2011 Sarah Churchill, a professionally trained chef and passionate foodie, took inspiration from a local Mirabelle plum tree that year after year would shed its wonderful fragrant fruit on the pavement, but with no takers. Eventually she approached the owner of the tree to see if they would like to swap the fruit for some preserves, and one truly local batch of jam later The Artisan Kitchen was born.

Since then Sarah has won local and international recognition for The Artisan Kitchen’s jams and marmalades, however these are all still handmade and homemade by Sarah in her kitchen, from where she sources, produces, jars, labels as well as continuing to experiment and develop new flavoursome fruit laden jams, preserves and marmalades.

Despite the huge success and demand all of The Artisan Kitchen products continue to be made in a big copper pot, bubbling away at the heart of Sarah’s small Gloucestershire kitchen. Drawing from her years as a chef at the sharp end of some the UK’s finest hotels and restaurants, and later from her work as a development chef at Daylesford, Sarah is passionate about provenance, sourcing locally wherever possible, and always selecting the best tasting fruit and ingredients.

Seasonality of the differing fruits that are used has created a regular annual production flow. January begins with the rhubarb jams, citrus seville and blood orange marmalades through to April when lemons and pink grapefruit production takes over. With a brief switch to apricots in May, by June the British summer fruits; strawberries, blackcurrants and blackberries start to arrive. By late July through to September it’s all about plums, and as Autumn arrives and the focus is back to the citrus products.

As well as making production, Sarah also handles jaring, labelling and dispatch. She is true a one woman miracle, testament to her passion, dedication and no doubt the lessons learnt from working at Michelin starred restaurants guided by ever demanding, but talented and renowned chefs.

A professional chef by trade, training first at Westminster College in London, Sarah has worked in some on the UK’s finest restaurants under leading chefs, including L’Escargot in Soho and at The Square for Philip Howard. Drawn towards the Cotswolds she then spent 10 years at Daylesford Organics working in product development and production control. After inspiration from the local Mirabelle plum and wanting to spend more time at home with her young family, Sarah made the switch to working full time to The Artisan Kitchen, doing what she loved, making extraordinary jams, preserves and marmalades from her home kitchen.