There is more to Granny Tig’s salad dressing than meets the taste buds.

The slender bottles are selling in their thousands – not bad considering they are available from only one outlet. Only three people in the world know the recipe, and the general consensus among those who have tried it is that it’s absolutely delicious.

And the lady behind the orange-red dressing is as interesting as the sauce itself.

After all, how many other national beauty queens have gone on to create their own recipe and then sell it to acclaim from all over the country?

Meet Annabel Henn, popular resident of Much Wenlock, wife of respected businessman Alan, mother of three and as spritely a 79-year-old as can be found in the county.

Life for Annabel has been one long tale of the unexpected, which started off in her native country of New Zealand.

The middle of three sisters, Annabel was born and brought up in Whangarai in the northern extremities of North Island.

It was in these parts some 63 years ago that Annabel, as a beautiful 16-year-old, was crowned Miss Ao-tea-roa – which is a Maori translation for Miss New Zealand – much to her surprise.

Since then Annabel’s life journey has taken her to England, Shropshire, and finally Much Wenlock, where she lives with Alan who as well as running the family jewellery business for several decades was a co-founder of Beacon Radio.

She is also responsible for what is fast becoming a thriving little cottage industry which is being overseen by her daughter Alexandra at her award-winning café near Leominster.

After an idyllic childhood in New Zealand, Annabel’s adventures really began when she was persuaded to enter a beauty contest by her father. The year was 1948 and she went to the competition not knowing exactly what it was.

“I was wearing a ghastly knitted wool jersey swimsuit and when I went into the changing room, all the girls were looking extremely glamorous in their lovely swimwear,” remembers Annabel.

“Anyway, a short while later and there I was wearing the winner’s sash as what translates as Miss New Zealand.

“Funnily enough I was flying into Auckland one night about 12 years ago and I came across a picture of me in a newspaper in the fitted blue swimsuit!”

Annabel had always harboured an ambition to come over to England for a visit – “I just had to,” she admits – and so it was that she boarded a boat to England before arriving six weeks and the occasional adventure later.

And that was that. She found herself whisked off to Cheshire via some contacts she had and it was only a short while afterwards that she was swept off her feet by Alan and the Henn clan multiplied three times in quick succession.

The family lived at Farmcote, between Bridgnorth and Wolverhampton, for several years and it was here that the story of Granny Tig’s dressing began.

“Farmcote had its own walled garden where we used to grow lots of vegetables and salads,” explains Annabel.

“The dressings at that time consisted of vinegar, oil and maybe some sugar, and they were all completely colourless.

“This was at a time when liquidisers were just coming out and the kids were still pretty small.

“I happened to come across a really old recipe which I adapted and then adopted as my own and for the last 50 years or so that has been Granny Tig’s dressing.”

She remains steadfastly tight-lipped when quizzed about the ingredients, except to mention that it contains cider vinegar.

Granny Tig’s dressing – the name of which comes in a roundabout way from a character from the 1960s children’s show Pogles Wood – is sold solely at Broadfield Court’s café which is owned and run by Alexandra, the Henns’ eldest child, and her husband Mark.

Coined

It was Alexandra who coined the name Granny Tig and who was given the recipe when her own three children were young.

“Everyone absolutely loved it from day one,” says Alexandra in the gardens of Broadfield Court, where she lives with Mark and their three children, Sam, Jacob and Phoebe.

“I managed to get the recipe out of mum and then only Carol, one of the cooks here at the café, knows the recipe.

“We only started bottling it and selling it three years ago and it has gathered momentum ever since. It is now flying off the shelves and I suspect we must have sold nearly 5,000 bottles in that time.

“I knew we were onto something special when I got a letter from a bus driver of a tour company which had sent a group here. He had visited some time before but had loved the dressing so much that he felt moved to write and ask if we were still selling it.

“It really is quite amazing. Bottles of salad dressing which I grew up with and have given my children from an early age are selling by the thousands each summer.”

Neither Annabel, Alexandra nor Carol are in any mood to pass on the recipe which they insist is very simple if a little unusual.

That will be a legacy to be left to one of Annabel’s grandchildren to take on, by which time it really could be a household name in Shropshire and beyond.