Renwick butcher wins Marlborough’s best sausage at Blenheim’s A&P Show

A Renwick butcher has laid claim to having the region's best banger after his culinary creation won Marlborough's best sausage at Blenheim's A&P Show on Sunday.

Up against the region's snazziest snag makers, Renwick SuperValue's head butcher Steve Wilkinson was awarded the crown after his beef banger tantalised the judges’ taste buds.

Store owner Chris Elliffe said winning the title was a massive turnaround in the butchery's fortunes after its early struggles, but he wasn't surprised given Wilkinson's dedication to his work.

"Steve's the legend here. He's got a wealth of knowledge, puts in a lot of effort and the amount of care he shows, it doesn't surprise me to be honest," he said.

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Elliffe said the store's butchery had gone from strength to strength since they decided to start producing their own sausages, after it was losing money in the first few years.

"The win is great, especially considering the butchery was costing us money to have open when I first took over, and now it's actually our most well-known and strongest department within the community.

"We started making sausages three years ago, and we started with just a $250 hand-operated sausage filler, as the machines that push out the meat into the skins cost around $7000.

"So we thought we’d just wait awhile to see if we could make it work, so we battled through with this hand one for way too long actually, and wore it out, and then we realised the demand was out there, so we ended up investing in a big machine," he said.

Elliffe said word of their sausages had travelled well and people were travelling to Renwick from far and wide to get a taste of their sausages.

"We’ve established a pretty good name, and then we started having people from everywhere coming in and buying them, and then we started realising we had a pretty good product. We get people from ... Westport, Hanmer Springs, Picton.

"We can sell up to 180 to 200kg a week (roughly 2500 to 2800 sausages) so we are selling a lot. I talk to the other Fresh Choices and SuperValues, and we were like, ‘Crap! We are going through a lot of sausages compared to the others’, and they’re all made by hand.

"It gets quite hard to keep up with demand because he's (Steve) a one-man-band in there. Me and Alan go in there to help out, but we’re trying to get him some more staff in there to help him, because coming into summer we’ll see meat sales skyrocket," Elliffe said.

Wilkinson said he’d been a butcher for more than 40 years, and knew a thing or two about a good sausage after doing pretty well in competitions in the North Island before moving to Renwick in March this year.

"The secret for the perfect banger is getting the right meat, you need good, fresh meat, you need the right balance of fat and consistency. Where most people go wrong is when their fat-to-meat ratio is slightly wrong, and water is a big part of it as well, using the right amount of water is essential," Wilkinson said.

Elliffe said their fastest-selling gourmet products were lamb and mint and bacon and maple sausages with the likes of smokey paprika and garlic, and beef and blue cheese not far behind. He said the perfect banger took quite a bit of work, but it was worth it in the end.

"I guess in Renwick we have an older demographic who expect their meat to be high quality, and meat is quite expensive, so you need to be giving them their money's worth.

"They’re very time-consuming, but people love them, so we’ll keep making them. It has been a bit of a success story, there's nothing quite like a good sausage," Elliffe said.