From Hedgerow to Hearth: A Dish-by-Dish Walk Through Our 2026 Winter Menu

The winter menu at The Sun Inn is not really written by the kitchen. It gets written by a game dealer, an orchard and a root cellar, and the chef's job is mostly to not get in the way.

When we sat down in October to plan what would be on the board between November and February, the first conversation was not about flavour. It was about what would actually be available, in what quantity, and on which week. Herefordshire does not do year-round availability, and pretending otherwise means air-freighting aubergines past a field full of swedes.

So here is the honest version, month by month: what we are cooking, who grew or shot it, how it tastes, and what we pour alongside.

November: the game season opens properly

The first proper cold snap changes everything. Pheasant and partridge have been in season since October, but it takes a few frosts for the birds to dress out well and for anyone to feel like eating them.

Our whole feathered game comes through a small dealer a few miles the other side of Kington, who hangs birds for us rather than sending them out the same week. The main dish is braised partridge with Puy lentils, smoked bacon and a thyme jus — the birds jointed, browned hard, then given an hour and a half in a low oven until the leg meat falls away. It tastes of iron and woodsmoke, and the lentils soak up the bacon fat and the juices.

Alongside it: venison loin from a Herefordshire park herd, seared and rested, served with roast shallots and a damson ketchup made in September when the fruit was collapsing off the trees. Lean, dark, faintly sweet at the edges.

What to drink: a dark mild from the local board is the unlikely hero here — soft, low in alcohol, and it rounds off the smoke rather than fighting it. If you want something with more cut, a pale ale with a decent hop bite cuts through the lentils nicely.

December: orchards, cider and a very full cold room

December is the orchard month. Cider has been pressed and is quietly working, apples are still coming out of store, and every other dish seems to want a spoonful of something fermented in it.

The centrepiece is cider-braised pork belly from a farm near Letton. The belly is scored, salted overnight, then sat in dry cider and stock for four hours before being finished hot and fast for crackling. The sauce is the braising liquor reduced down with a spoonful of wholegrain mustard until it is glossy and sharp. Served with buttered greens and mash that has rather more butter in it than is sensible.

There is also a pear and perry sorbet with a ginger shortbread — the perry coming from an orchard on the Eardisley road, the pears from a garden in the village. And the Christmas puddings were steamed on Stir-up Sunday at the end of November, hanging in cloth since.

What to drink: a medium dry perry, served cold, with the pork. It sounds odd and it is not. Or a brown ale if you want to stay on the beer side of the fence.

January: root cellar cooking, and the quietest good food of the year

If December is about generosity, January is about thrift and technique. This is when the kitchen stops looking for the new and starts making the most of what is already in the shed.

Celeriac and hazelnut soup opens the month — the roots roasted first until the edges catch, blitzed with a little cream, finished with toasted hazelnuts and a trickle of rapeseed oil. Pale, earthy, and much better than it sounds from the ingredients list.

Then mutton with turnips and pearl barley, slow-cooked for the best part of a day until the meat gives way under a spoon. Hogget and mutton come from a smallholding up towards the Golden Valley; the barley from a farm near Peterchurch. It is the most old-fashioned dish on the menu and the one our regulars order most.

There is also a beetroot and goat's curd tart for the vegetarians, which is not a compromise dish. The beetroot is roasted whole in salt, the curd whipped with lemon, and the pastry short and peppery.

What to drink: a best bitter with the mutton — it has the malt to stand up to the barley and enough hop to lift the fat. The soup wants a pale ale and nothing more complicated than that.

February: a first hint of green

February is the in-between month, and the kitchen stops acting like it is deep winter even if the weather disagrees. Purple sprouting broccoli arrives, watercress comes off the chalk streams, and the forced rhubarb starts appearing from growers who know what they are doing.

The final dish of the season is rhubarb, custard and an oat crumble — sharp pink stems from a grower over towards Ledbury, cooked briefly with orange peel, under a crumble that stays crunchy rather than turning to porridge. It is a reminder that the year does turn.

There will also be a smoked haddock and leek gratin appearing around the middle of the month, mostly because we all wanted one.

What to drink: a stout with the rhubarb pudding. Trust us on this one.

The ale board, and why we pair at all

We keep four cask ales on at a time, all from within about forty miles, and the board changes as the season turns — lighter and hoppier in the spring, darker and maltier now. Pairing is not a ceremony. It is just a question of which drink makes the food taste more like itself.

Countryside hospitality starts in a field

None of this is a marketing position. It is simply what happens when a kitchen decides to cook the county it sits in. The menu is shorter in February than it is in September, and there are weeks when the partridge runs out and the venison is late. We would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

What you get in return is food that tastes like the twelve miles around it — a bird that was shot a fortnight ago, an apple that fell in October, a swede that has been sitting in the dark doing nothing much since Bonfire Night.

That, more than any technique, is what we mean by countryside hospitality. The land goes first. The kitchen follows.