Taste early, taste often if you want to find the best from home vintners

Chris Benfield

Agricultural shows get going early and it was 10am when John Medlicott started tasting home-made wines and fruit-flavoured spirits at Gargrave.

“Everybody wants this job,” he said, cautiously sniffing a dry white rhubarb. “But if you swallow, as I do, it can get a bit tricky. You can drink some of these wines quite happily but nobody knows the alcohol content. Luckily, I don’t have far to go.”

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The wine competition was making a comeback in the produce tent at Gargrave Show, between Skipton and Settle, and Mr Medlicott, a retired wine dealer, lives nearby, at Ayrton.

He chose an elderflower from the dry whites, a quince and apple from the sweet whites, a raspberry from the dry reds and a powerful elderberry from the sweet reds – all of them made, it turned out, by the same woman, Mrs B Taylor of Crook, near Kendal, who also did well in the poultry and eggs show.

Elsewhere, on Saturday, there was a sign of the times among the catering vans – a vegetarian specialist, offering falafel and cheesy chips instead of the usual sausages and bags of crackling, run by Graham and Ann Stead of Riddlesden (www.greenmachinefood.com).

They set up four years ago because they could never find anything to eat at shows and have been adding a short list of agricultural events to their more obvious market around the music festivals – and finding a small but enthusiastic market. They were due at Mirfield yesterday. “We tried to get into the Great Yorkshire but they said they already had baked potatoes,” said Mr Stead.

The day started out glowering but turned out brilliantly.

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There was local drama in the tug of war, where Upper Wharfedale YFC B team beat their own A team on the way to winning a final tussle with Lothersdale YFC.

And the fell race, three miles up Sharphaw Fell and back, disturbed a wasp nest at the show boundary, on Eshton Beck, which gave the ambulance service something to do. Winner was Duncan Birtwistle, 18, current British under-18 orienteering champion. First woman was Emma Flanagan of Rossendale, Lancs, an England team member. Among the under-17s, Alex Brown of Ingleton led the males and Pippa Barrett of Keighley the females.