Category Archives: Past Events

Fairtrade coffee morning at St John’s Church, Woodbridge. With delicious homemade cakes and Fairtrade drinks to refresh you, enjoy browsing the many stalls selling fairly traded products. An excellent chance to buy Christmas gifts.

On Saturday 5th March at 7.30pm, as part of Fairtrade Fortnight 2011, we are holding a Quiz Night in St John’s Church, Woodbridge. There will be Fairtrade refreshments, a Fairtrade stall, and a lot of fun to be had, with teams of up to eight people each – organize your team in advance or just join one on the night. Tickets are only £5 each and include a free cup of Fairtrade tea or coffee.

Proceeds from the night will go towards our activities, maintaining Fairtrade Town status here in Woodbridge, and also contribute towards the cost of the church’s next mission trip to Romania.

Call 01394 382589 or the St John’s church office for tickets.

For more details of Fairtrade Fortnight events, have a look at the Fairtrade Foundation’s pages.

Just42, a youth work charity in Woodbridge, organised a wine tasting as a follow-up to Fairtrade Fortnight.

Wine expert Jude Mullins, from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in London, began by explaining that there are many good quality Fairtrade wines on the market. Of the 290 wines listed on the Fairtrade Foundation website we had time to sample six:

Four from South Africa

• Co-Op Fairtrade Sparkling Brut
• Thandi Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon
• Fairhills Cabernet Sauvignon Petit Verdot 2008
• Thandi Sauvignon/Merlot blend 2008

One from Argentina

• Tilimuqui Torrontes

One from Chile

• Co-Op Fairtrade Carmeniere 2008

One example of the advantage of Fairtrade certification is demonstrated in the Fairhills vineyards of South Africa set up in 2005. The Fairtrade premium has helped build schools, daycare and community centres benefitting the 1,000 Fairhills workers and their families.

Of the 25 guests present at the tasting, many were complete novices yet Jude soon had us commenting on the wine’s ‘appearance’, ‘nose’ and ‘palate’. We learned that a red wine could be clear, a nose could be clean and that a wine could be ‘long’, ‘medium’ or ‘short’ (this relates to the length of time the taste lingers). It was a fascinating evening and Jude commented that there was something suitable for any occasion, barbecue, aperitif or even a wedding in the case of the Sparkling Brut. Wine tasting usually involves seeing, swirling, smelling, tasting and not swallowing but the wines were so good the ‘not swallowing’ bit was ignored!

Personal favourites were the Sparkling Brut from the Co-Op (£7.99 a bottle) and the Fairhills Petit Verdot from Tescos (£4.49). “I would be happy to have any of them again” said Chairman of Fairtrade for Woodbridge, Anthony Lumley.

Fairtrade for Woodbridge are grateful to Just42 for organising and hosting the evening, to Jude for travelling up from London to teach us and to Budgens, the Co-Op, Wines of Interest (Ipswich) Adnams and Tescos for supplying wines.

As part of the nationwide Big Brew campaign, Fairtrade for Woodbridge hosted an afternoon ballroom and latin Tea Dance on the 7th March in Woodbridge Community Hall. Sixty eight dancers waltzed, quickstepped and cha cha cha’d to a wide variety of music including Michael Buble, Frank Sinatra, Jamie Cullum and Norah Jones.

Dancers were able to choose from the range of Fairtrade products available from the Traidcraft stall including chocolate, sugar, raisins, biscuits and footballs or sit down with a cup of Fairtrade tea and slice of home-made cake. Run as an event to promote Fairtrade in our town, as part of the ongoing Fairtrade Town campaign, participants said ‘it was a great success’.

You are invited to our Fairtrade Wine Tasting evening at the Woodbridge Youth Centre on Saturday 17th April at 7pm. The tasting will be run by Jude Mullins who works for the Wine & Spirits Education Trust in London as their International Development Manager.

For more details or to reserve a place please contact Caroline Rutherford on 01394 380992 or email caroline@just42.org.uk. Tickets are priced at £15 each.