Taste of Bute Ltd was first registered back in 1999 by Brian and Janet with a view to marketing premium beef and lamb from The Plan Farm and to encourage other island producers to participate in a joint marketing venture. The primary motivation behind the island-based project was to encourage all of the island's farmers to produce high health status livestock that could be marketed with a unique brand following the industry's crisis of the UK-wide BSE outbreak in 1996.

In the early year's Taste of Bute marketed small volumes of fresh beef and lamb to the UK mainland but the logistics of distributing a
fresh highly perishable product from a remote island base were challenging. Longer shelf-life added value products were seen as the way forward and in 2008/9 the opportunities to produced cured smoked meats were researched resulting in converting some of the redundant vernacular buildings at The Plan Farm into a smokery.

The first products produced were Roast smoked beef andlamb, soon to be joined by smoked trout and cheese which were also produced on
the island at that time. In order to utilise remaining parts of the lamb and beef carcase, not suitable for smoking, the now highly acclaimed Sleeping Warrior and Drover's Dilemma hot roast sausages were created and added to the range. In 2011 two more sausages, Highland Flinger and Red Sky at Night were introduced along with beef pastrami. A number of products were awarded star ratings in the industry's Great Taste Awards in 2010 and 2011 but the outstanding success was the recognition by Scotland of Food and Drink of the Sleeping Warrior as Scotland's best Red Meat/Game product in 2011.

Throughout the years of developing Taste of Bute there was always the pressure of running the home farming enterprise comprising a
100-head herd of suckler cows and the 750 ewe flock. Brian manages the cows and grassland whilst Janet is the single-handed shepherd. In 2010 Lauren joined us to help with the smokehouse operation, assisted for a short while by her partner, Jonathan. In 2011 Tara was
recruited as smokehouse manager, and was then further assisted by Fiona. They proved to be a fantastic team – Lauren the champion slicer, Tara the real organisational cool-headed brain, and Fiona who we could never properly see because she was constantly lost in the smoke of the kiln-room. However even with this magnificent trio, the executive pressures felt by Brian and Janet were considerable with the potential to impact upon the well-running of the farming enterprise.

Sadly, despite all our successes and tremendous rapport with our customers, at the end of 2011 the decision has been taken to cease the
smokehouse production. The recipes and the well-guarded secrets of production have all been archived and who knows, maybe the next generation at The Plan will consider a re-launch one day. But for the time being Brian, now approaching 65 and Janet ably assisted by Fly and Molly will get back to farming their cows and sheep without the the pressures of flow charts, food hygiene manuals and the
need to constantly meet the plethora of regulatory requirements that come with running a food production business.

We thank all our customers both small and large who have given us so much encouragement throughout the short life of the Plan Farm
Smokehouse.