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Celebrate with our Festival Blackcurrant Ice-Cream
 The Edinburgh Festival is in full swing and the Bank Holiday weekend only moments away, but how better to celebrate our great British Summer than to have a go at making our Festival Blackcurrant Ice-Cream in your own kitchen! Our new ice-cream recipe, invented by my Wife, is made with our deliciously rich Blackcurrant Gin Liqueur which has been popular drink with our customers ever since we opened our first shop in  Edinburgh in 2004. A few months after we stocked it, it won Gold at the prestigious UK Speciality Food & Drink awards, giving rightful credit to its highly skilled producers Colin and Phyllis Hingston. A little known gem of our store, it has been surprisingly delicious every time we have tasted it since and it can make some cracking cocktails too like our Blackcurrant Bomb. No wonder then that it makes a very delicious ice-cream and a good way to celebrate the Bank Holiday weekend!
Also in this letter:
Something Tasty! Book now if you would like to be invited to a tasting evening in York. More below....
Demijohn on the Road. Find out where we will be coming to next. more below.....
Collect your online order from our shop. Save time by booking your purchases online for collection in store. More below....
Demijohn News - August 2010
Our News: Squeezing in a little music festival between newsletters is all the  rage these days apparently! Aged 39 I finally got my chance to find out what actually happens behind the wire on such enormous and noisy gatherings. I was presented with tickets to the Belladrum Tartan Heart Moosic Festival near Inverness and boy did we do it in style, with our children in a tent! Luckily we managed to persuade 3 other similar families (or victims?) to come and suffer with us. They too, like me, were festival virgins. Stop, I hear you cry! What possible relevance is this story to Demijohn. Well, not only did I  personally spot a healthy flurry of our loyal Demijohn customers at this bash, but I also had a very enjoyable catch up with Andrew Lyle who makes our incredible Organic Rhubarb Vodka for us just a few miles from the festival site. But it was not just the people that make this story relevant, because an adventure like this will always require a certain amount of innovative food and drink, and I demanded stubbornly to have a say in the menus. The result was an all together more civilised affair than your standard camping trip, not least because of remembering to pack the Demijohn drinks' cabinet. Our evening routine was simple, sipping Grapefruit Vodka or Seville Orange Gin and tonics until the sun slipped calmly over the Highland horizon. Take in a little moosic and  return to a sumptouous feast. On the first night we tucked in to a side of beef from our local butcher, cooked on the BBQ after a short marinade in our Kabbadates Extra Virgin Olive Oil and garlic and served with roasted vegetables from our garden. So at the end of the weekend perhaps we had joined the echelons of the glampers rather than the hardcore festival goers. However, it was our children who had the last laugh for while we were spared Scottish rain on my birthday treat, I did suffer a serious attack of radioactive face paint!
Something Tasty in York
As part of the York Food & Drink Festival which runs for 10 days from Fri 17th Sept, we are to run two tasting evenings in our York shop at 11 Museum Street  on Thurs 23rd and Fri 24th Sept 2010 between 6.30pm and 8pm on each day. The normal cost of our standard tasting evenings would be £11.50 per person, however participation will be FREE for invited guests only. If you would like to be invited to attend an evening please email me at info@demijohn.co.uk as soon as possible with your full contact details and choice of dates in priority order. All applications will be responded to, however allocation of limited places will be made on a first to respond basis.
Product News
 If you were at the CLA Game Fair this year or even the Huddersfield Food & Drink Festival a few weeks ago then you might have had the chance to view first hand our our very new British made Sporting Box which has caused quite a stir. So popular has it reception been that we have sold all our initial stock and are now making more so that we can actually display the a Sporting Box in each shop. This is a mobile drinks cabinet with extreme style and is perfect for shooting parties, race meetings, large family picnics or the ultimate wedding present! Please note these boxes are made to order, so please contact us if you would like to place an order. Coming Soon: A new rack for our beautiful teardrop shaped Goccia 100ml bottle and a new cask of whisky!
Event News
It is always nice to find a new event in a new part of the country, especially when it turns out to be successful. Our latest Food & Drink Festival in  Huddersfield was exactly that, and we shall be back for more next year! These are some more dates for your diary, as the Demijohn Road Show will be exhibiting at a flurry of fantastic events right up to the end of the year. Of note is the last event in our calendar, The Kibble Palace Christmas Fair in aid of Maggies Cancer Centres. Now in its second year, we will once again be sponsoring it with a starting Demijohn cocktail to help fire the starting gun. So you like a cocktail or two, note the 1st of December in your diary now!
- York F&D Festival: from Fri 17th to Sun 26th Sept
- Coo Cathedral, Aboyne Castle, Aboyne: from Wed 6th to Thur 7th Oct
- BBC Good Food Show, Glasgow: Stand D120 from Fri 22nd to Sun 24th Oct
- Castle Howard Christmas Fair, N. York: Thur 4th and Fri 5th Nov
- Chuffs Christmas Extravaganza at Oxenfoord Castle, Dalkeith: 9 to 11 Nov
- Country Living Fair, SECC Glasgow: Stand G50 from Thur 18th to Sun 21st Nov
- BBC Good Food Show, Birmingham: Stand C75 from Wed 24th to Sun 28th Nov
- Kibble Palace Christmas Fair, Botanical Gardens, Glasgow: 1st & 2nd Dec
Our website makeover - Now you can order to pick up in store!
Not being entirely comfortable with IT makes any development of our website  an interesting challenge, a bit like sitting a school maths test actually! However, you will notice a few changes over the next month and the homepage is the first area to get itself tweaked with its new Featured Post (Don't ask me how the IT wizards came up with that name!). Most importantly you can now more easily follow on Twitter, join our Facebook page and soon will even be able to enter our competitions. Within our product pages you will have the change to view more pictures of our products. And that is not all. We can now allow you to place an order online and simply pick it up in any of our 3 shops in Edinburgh, Glasgow or York! Keep a look out for the first online competition as we will be advertising it soon.
Staff News
Our website is not the only changing face at Demijohn. We are recruiting again, notably for Staff in our York shop and need your help to find the right person  to fill a Full Time Managers position which will be vacant from mid-October. The ideal candidate will be local to York, a natural enthusiast for food and enjoy hard work! Interested persons should follow the details on our Join us page in order to apply. We are to lose 3 great members of our Glasgow team. We say a sad goodbye to Sam Johnston, Fiona MacGregor and Grace Kirkwood, (who we hope may return after her Erasmus exchange year!). They have all been loyal employees and their hard work over the years is much appreciated.
Have a tremendous Bank Holiday weekend!
Angus Ferguson
Managing Director
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