In a media blitz last week they sent out jars of new Marmite XO to food writers everywhere but I was abroad and missed it. Fortunately nobody else at Foodepedia likes Marmite (call yourselves gourmets?) so our jar remained untouched until I found it last Friday.
So here, a bit late, is my take on XO.
Love it.
I expected it to be super-strong, blow your head off stuff but instead it’s actually smoother and deeper like an XO cognac. They call it super-strength but that seems to me to be doing it a disservice. Matured for 28 days instead of 7 and using 4 different yeast sources, it has a darker more complex flavour and a lot more umami going on.
It works great on toast and I use the same quantity I always use – a lot – and it makes great Marmite sandwiches with the obligatory crap white bread. As any Brit will tell you, it’s not a Marmite sandwich unless it can be compressed to the thickness of a Rizla.
Some people have fretted that it might replace regular Marmite but I think not. For one thing it costs more, as a premium product should, which would make it a bit pricey for students. Others worry this new XO may just be a marketing ploy (well duh!) and won’t stay on the shelves for long. Well obviously running two product lines simultaneously is logistically difficult and so XO may well be pulled in a few months time once the publicity has run its course.
I hope not. While I love my standard Marmite I will be happy to eat the XO at weekends and on public holidays as a special treat. It’s a genuinely special product that lives up to the marketing copy.
And I bet it’s even better stirred into a Shepherd’s Pie mix than the original, which is really saying something.
More power to Marmite’s marketing division; it’s good to see a great British icon getting good British advertising..
Just like the product, it’s all about having unique taste and the confidence to tell the truth.