Jersey Royals 🥔

✨It all began with a very large potato…
So it was reported in around 1880, Hugh de la Haye, a local farmer and his friends chopped and planted the pieces of an unusually large potato with 15 / 16 eyes on a côtil above the Bellozanne Valley in the middle of the island.

🌱The following Spring, they produced a significant and early crop, but De La Haye was shocked to see that, despite the fact that the parent potatoes had been round, one of the shoots produced a kidney-shaped potato with very thin skin. This resulted in the birth of this unique variety the “Jersey Royal.”

👑It was first known as the ‘Jersey Fluke; however, due to its premium price at the market at the time, the term ‘Royal’ was soon added which also coincided with the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. Since then, with about 25,000 tonnes sold each year, the Jersey Royals has become one of the most exported agricultural products from Jersey Island.

🥔The Jersey Royal potato is a branded variety that has been granted EU Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status in June 1996, making it unique in the United Kingdom. This is similar to Champagne, Camembert cheese, and Parma ham, which are also protected and promoted so that they can only be obtained from their specific, designated regions of origin.
The PDO ensures that only Royals grown in Jersey could be referred to it as “Jersey Royals.”

🚜The Jersey Royal Company has been operating for almost 20 years and has a number of key sites across the island of Jersey. They plant and harvest around 8,300 vergées (1,800 ha) annually across 1500 fields. The Jersey Royals are all hand planted with utmost care to ensure an even and early harvest. The earliest crops are sowed in December in glasshouses or polytunnels.

👉🏻Learn more about the amazing operation here: https://bit.ly/3LdzXDg