AMID the whiff of honeycakes, chocolate and chilli mayonnaise, there was a delicious kind of concoction going on at York Racecourse yesterday.

It was the marriage of more than 60 buyers like supermarkets, big stores, hotels, farm shops and restaurants with more than 80 of Yorkshire’s niche food suppliers.

Clutching a bottle of Glendale Ginger Beer made in Reeth, in the Yorkshire Dales, buyer Joanna Joyce-Gray said: “This has been a very happy hunting ground.”

Joanna, operations director of Weetons urban farm shop, in Harrogate, said: “It’s great to have all the Yorkshire producers in one room.

“It can take months to get around to them geographically – if you can find them at all.”

Among the producers was Simon Barratt, the Chilli Jam Man, who is moving from Leeds to Thixendale, near Stamford Bridge, next week. His collaboration with another North Yorkshire producer, Yorkshire Cold Press Rapeseed Oil, to produce Chille Jamonnaise, has proved a big hit with buyers even before it comes on to the market in June.

Event organisers, deliciouslyorkshire, had helped him to develop the dip with its blend of garlic chille and mayonnaise with rapeseed oil. “I’ve already had orders from farm shops,” he said.

Supermarkets, delicatessens and farm shops also beamed in on Raisthorpe Manor Fine Foods, also of Thixendale, which specialises in raspberry gin, sloe gin and damson gin.

Managing director Julia Julia Medforth said: “We also do a blackcurrant whisky, gamekeeper’s whisky, Stirrup Cup Port and now – unique to us – sloe port and sloe sherry.

“The supermarkets seemed very interested in that.” Other North Yorkshire producers included Ampleforth Abbey Orchard; Basically Baking and Hambleton Ales of Ripon; Birchfield Family Dairies and Farmshop, of Harrogate; GF Foods, of Selby; Herbs Unlimited and Taste Tradition of Thirsk; and Holme Farmed Venison of Sherburn-in-Elmet.