Peter Ward

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“Traitor” is an emotive term in any language, a term that can only be used when you believe you know what the full consequences of its deployment will be. Did Peter Ward know what the consequences would be when he described hospitality providers, who served plastic pots of imported preserves to their guests, as “traitors”? The occasion was the 2002 Bord Bia Speciality Food Conference in Kinsale, and Ward was a largely unknown shopkeeper from Nenagh, though we must admit that we already knew of his rhetorical prowess, having spoken with him on several platforms.

The consequences were swift. Ward went from being a shopkeeper to being part of the National Fabric: first chairman of the Taste Council; a heavy hitter for Slow Food; a guy who appeared before Oireachtas Committees and Late Late Show television audiences, an oracle for his part of the food culture. He actually said something else in that speech that was more important than the “traitor” dirk: referring to Ireland's ancient dairy culture, he said we were a people with “milk in our blood”, an unforgettable image, and true.

He can bring forth this sort of thing in an ad hoc speech, and when he does, you realise that Peter Ward actually spent a long time waiting to become famous, and that none of that time has been wasted. He has been intellectually churning his cultural materials for a long time, detained only by the fact that he works so hard. He has done what no one else ever managed in Ireland: he made shopkeeping into an art form, founded on expertise, graft and craft, and a deep-rootedness that lets him see the bullshit very clearly. There is an anger in Ward, an impatience for all the gombeenism and sleeveenism that is all around him in the political, culinary and cultural fields. He would have made a great politician, except he wouldn't. Country Choice, his Nenagh shop, and its new Limerick Milk Market outlet, are singular places, embodiments of the culture of Irish food. He still works too hard but, as a cattle dealer's son from Meath, work is in the blood.

Country Choice, 25 Kenyon Street, Nenagh, County Tipperary
067 32596
www.countrychoice.ie