Meet the supplier - Cartmel Valley Game

At the Three Shires Inn we love preparing the best food we possibly can for our guests, using top quality fresh local produce.

We think it’s really important to take the opportunity to celebrate some of the wonderful suppliers we use from around the county, whose hard work is the starting point for every dish we serve in the inn.

This month, we caught up with John Stott from Cartmel Valley Game, who supplies venison, pheasant, partridge and much more to some of the best restaurants across the county, including the Three Shires Inn.

John, who runs the business alongside wife Susan and daughter Georgina, was the gamekeeper on the Holker Estate, on the Cartmel Peninsula, for 18 years before starting Cartmel Valley Game more than 30 years ago.

The business is still based on the Holker Estate, where John has lived for over 40 years.

“When I was the keeper I started plucking and dressing the pheasants and selling them in the evenings to local butchers,” says John.

“We deal in every type of game, venison, pheasants, partridge, anything. We sell a lot of rabbits and wild mallard as well.

“We have our own smokehouse and make a lot of sausage from venison, pheasant and duck, as well as Cumberland sausage and game sausage. We make a tonne-and-a-half of sausage a week in summertime, as well as selling about 200 sides a week of salmon, which we buy from Scotland and smoke here.

“We mainly sell in the Lake District but we do send products all over the country as well. We have a lot of chefs who work in the area and then go to other parts of the country and still want to get the produce.

“We buy about a thousand pheasants a week off local shoots, so it makes sure they don’t go to waste. We buy them in the feather and then process them here. The best ones we’ll prepare so they are oven ready, or we’ll take out the breasts or use the leg meat in burgers - so there’s nothing wasted.

“We’ll do about 1000 deer a year and they are all shot locally by hunters in the South Lakes. They get turned into all sorts, whether it’s steak or diced. The deer are all shot as part of the annual cull to control the population and the effect they have on woodland and wildlife.

“Susan and I built the business up and now Georgina has joined us as well. It’s just a little family business but we supply all the Michelin-starred restaurants in the area and we’ve got a really good reputation. We deal more in quality than quantity, that’s how we’ve built up our reputation over the years.”