Gargantuan garlic

Simon Drewitt may have grown up in a leafy London suburb, but he is extremely proud of his Cornish roots – and rightly so. His grandparents hailed from Newlyn, with the fine Cornish surnames of Glasson and Rodda; and while his parents made the move to the Big Smoke, Simon always heard Cornwall calling, beyond the regular family holidays of his childhood to something more akin to a yearning to work the land.

“I always wanted to be a farmer,” he explains, “but the family farm didn’t come down my line, so I went down a different route.” Having forged his career in TV advertising – working on numerous campaigns including Kitkat’s “Have a break” and another for Guide Dogs for the Blind, both of which won the Cannes awards that now sit proudly in his living room – he finally made the move to the motherland with Nikki, his girlfriend of 30 years, in search of something completely different.

That something turned out to be The West Cornwall Garlic Company. At the heart of wild West Penwith, a drive out to their fields passes through some of the most beautiful landscape on earth, dotted with ancient monuments (Lanyon Quoit) and remnants of Cornwall’s tin heritage (the delightfully-named Ding-Dong Mine), a salty tang in the air and the occasional sight of the sea.

At home, the aroma of garlic wafts from their barn, where impressive bulbs hang from the ceiling, drying out ready for sale. These bulbs look as though they have been fed with super-dung or steroids, but no. This is allium ampeloprasum, otherwise known as elephant garlic: a cross between garlic and leek, but with the taste and appearance entirely of the former, albeit milder and sweeter.

Planted between October and January, in a field overlooking Longships Lighthouse, it remains in the ground for eight months. Straight out of the soil from mid-June, it’s “green” and similar to a spring onion, great in salads; wet, it has a six-week shelf-life, cured more like six months.

When we meet in July, Simon is midway through harvest. He digs his fork in and pulls out a fresh bulb, shaking off the wet earth. “The key time is when the leaves are turning yellow-brown,” he explains. The scapes, or flowering stalks, have already been harvested by this time – cooked like asparagus, they are extremely popular with restaurants and can also be picked up in farm shops.

Simon plumped for garlic following extensive research into niche crops. “I was looking for something no one else was doing.” It turned out the loamy soil was ideal for garlic, which is grown commercially in more exotic climes: Spain, China, the USA. “It needs plenty of sunshine, but also rain and cold winters, and ours are just cold enough,” he explains.

Sloping fields make for good drainage – these are rented from farmer Howard Eddy, whose tractor heaves into view. “I’m very grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to be here,” says Simon. “And he’s an Englishman,” laughs Howard, whose family has farmed here for generations.

In the first year, Simon and Nikki planted 5,000 bulbs, the old-fashioned way: by hand, following a piece of string from one end of the field to the other over six weeks. By year two, that figure had almost doubled to 9,000, planted over four months with the help of a small team. Weeds are hand-hoed, not sprayed. “It’s labour-intensive,” he admits. “That first year, it was cold and wet, and I realised we still had 4,500 bulbs to go. But you get into the swing of it.”

It goes without saying that quality is important: “Growing it in Cornwall isn’t good enough – the standard has to be high, and I think you can tell the difference,” he says, with pride.

While the numbers might sound like a lot, this is by no means a crop on an industrial scale: “We’re not trying to compete with the supermarkets.” An impressive roster of customers includes local restaurants such as sister venues The Coastguard and the Gurnard’s Head in West Penwith, Kota in Porthleven and the Tolcarne in Newlyn.

Then there’s a host of farm shops and delis, from the Duchy of Cornwall Nursery to Stevenson’s of Newlyn via our own Great Cornish Food Store in Truro, selling either the entire bulbs or the individual giant cloves.

Future plans include a trial of seaweed fertiliser on one field in collaboration with the Duchy of Cornwall, while match-funding from the Great Cornish Food agri-food grant scheme has enabled Simon to invest in a smoker as well as other useful kit.

A keen chef himself, Simon swears by his own goods: “I love cooking with it,” he beams. “It’s versatile, cleaner, subtle – nicer.”