Grenada: Sugar and Spice Ice Cream Company

Most people like ice cream but I LOVE it!! I especially love it homemade or made by small producers - there seems to be so much more depth and flavour to the finished product.

After dinner on our first night in Grenada I ordered the three scoops of ice cream for pudding.  There was one scoop Grenada Chocolate, one Coconut and one Nutmeg.  They were so lovely I asked if the waitress had the details of who made it.  The following morning I got reception to phone and ask if I could get an email address with the prospect of doing a write up.

Half an hour later reception phoned the room to say that the man from Sugar and Spice Ice Cream was there and would love to have a chat with me!

I met Jerry and his son Gerard, really nice people who were amazed and flattered that I wanted to visit their factory and see the ice cream being made.  Gerard arranged tocollect us the following morning, take us to the small, family run factory and then to their retail outlet near the University for some tasting. 

The Sugar and Spice Ice Cream Company is a small, family run business and for the last 31 years have been producing lovely treats to sell on the island to hotels and restaurants. 

The retail outlet was a relatively recent addition in the student food and drink area near St George's University.

The ice cream is made from a whole milk powder imported from The Netherlands (there is no dairy industry on the island) to which they re-hydrate, pasteurise, homogenise and add natural flavourings before freezing. 

Sons, brothers, brother-in-laws, wife and other family members make up part of the team of 16 who all work in this compact factory churning out gallon after gallon of this delicious product.

It was a blistering hot day and inside the ice-cream factory was really warm but Mr R and I seemed to be the only people noticing the heat!

Jerry told us in order to be called a premium ice cream it must contain at least 10% butter which their product does giving the end product a definite high quality with very distinct but not overpowering flavours.

It was a real treat to try the basic vanilla ice cream as it was just made before it goes into the huge walk in freezers to await distribution.

One of the flavours being mixed when we got there was Hurricane. It was named after hurricane Ivan which decimated the island in 2004. When you scoop into the product you should be reminded of the chaos and turmoil of hurricane Ivan! 

Mr R loved this flavour and later on at the retain shop he had a huge cone with Hurricane ice cream. He said "This is the first time I am looking forward to a hurricane!"

The company use local and natural ingredients like fresh nutmeg, cinnamon and Grenada chocolate.

We were able to pick our flavour from such celebrities as Soursop, Nutmeg, Grenada Chocolate and of course Hurricane!

Sugar and Spice Ice Cream are also importers and distributors for Marley Coffee produced by Bob Marley's son from Jamaican coffees.

Many thanks for the hospitality and enthusiasm, for taking the time to tell us all about Sugar and Spice Ice Cream for keeping the method of making Sugar and Spice Ice Cream virtually unchanged.  I was not required to write a positive review and as usual all opinions and photographs are mine or Mr R's.