Brigid Dorsey, owner + founder, les collines
Brigid Dorsey, owner + founder, les collines
My love affair with marmalade began as a teenager in Upstate New York.
In cold winters, I’d cozy up with marmalade toast, some spiritual book, and listen to Glenn Gould’s Goldberg variations over and over. The fact that it was Smuckers marmalade, nicked from rations in our cellar, made no difference.
Marmalade. Elevates. Everything.
Years later in LA, I found myself working for the new owners of Doris Day’s former house. They were razing her citrus trees and did I want some lemons? Yes and please!
So became my first and last attempt to make marmalade. The result – opaque, bitter and grayish – proved just how hard it is to make beautiful preserves that retain both the color and taste of their source.
Imagine my surprise when I read about a woman in NY making a legendary, coarse cut marmalade called Scots Bitter. Made from imported Seville Oranges and Single Malt Scotch, I had to taste this!
Scots Bitter, close up
This marmalade has a brilliant clarity like citrine and so much chewy rind! It is bitter and sweet and I ordered one, then another, and another and decided to ask the creator of this magical elixir to share her story.
Get something yummy to eat and drink for this one.
Culinary Profile: Brigid Dorsey, owner + founder, les collines
Where did you grow up and what were you doing before starting les collines?
I grew up in Northern Virginia, Massachusetts, and upstate New York. I’ve also lived in Tidewater Virginia, coastal Maine, New Jersey, and France.
For the few years before les collines I had been working mostly as a freelance writer. With les collines I also launched a blog, the life I picked, to serve as an umbrella for my writing and for the jelly, as I always refer to it—officially, jelly & preserves, but ‘jelly’ rolls off the tongue (pun!) more easily than ‘preserves’ or ‘les collines’—I imagined the writing being the primary thing, with the jelly a beautiful sidecar. Of course, the jelly took over!
Brigid at the Great Barrington (MA) Farmers Market, summer 2017
For people new to you and your products, can you describe les collines?
Les collines are small batch jelly & preserves, edible jewels and gems of flavor and color, inspired by the seasons and sourced from the bounty of the region’s (Hudson Valley, Berkshires) small farms. Flavors are unique, a few including herbs or tea, or sourced from old recipes, but all serve to let the fruit shine, with sugar as a background supporting player, and of course, as a preserving agent. Citrus are the only non-local fruits we use.
The name (means “hills” in French, and is very similar in the other Romance languages, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Romanian) pays homage to my mother, Coline, named for her uncle Colin; my time living and studying in France; and the hills of Columbia County, NY, where les collines is based. I use the word preserves as opposed to jam to denote there are larger chunks of fruit rather than being finely chopped or more mashed.
The crabapple jelly is the flavor that launched your business. How did you know that you had a business?
It is! There was a single tree near the house I was living in that fruited every other year—this means the tree needs pruning, but I didn’t know that—and the fifth year I was there was the year I finally was able to pick, and made jelly. These were the wild ones, small and red like cherries, but hard of course. They’re not easy to pick—your fingers sort of get calloused—but yield a beautiful tart, garnet-hued jelly.
Probably mostly by the response the product was receiving—the jars were pretty, but once people tasted, they believed. Being committed to local, stores were willing to take a gamble with a new product—I only sold wholesale the first few years, adding a few markets slowly in 2015 and online in 2016. Business-wise I did not know what I was doing!! But keeping it simple felt important, and probably helped.
Growing pains in the early days…?
Gosh. Many. I produced out of my home kitchen the first two years, which by NY law limited sales to NY state. Selling outside of the state or online required moving to an exterior kitchen that could be certified for my product, and being geographically so close to Massachusetts and Connecticut, there were stores there that were on hold til I could move and sell to them. My dream was to buy the house where I lived, which was an old farmhouse on a previously working farm full of old fruit trees, build a separate kitchen and revive the farm…sort of a mini Stonewall Kitchen. If you’re ever near York, ME check out their store, gorgeous. Anyways, a new store with teaching kitchens for cooking classes opened in the next town over, owned by the same person who owns the Hillsdale General Store, the very first store to stock les collines in October 2013, and it ended up being certifiable for my product. I’ve been there ever since.
Moving to a natural pectin that allowed me to use lower amounts of sugar seemed daunting, but ended up being a really smooth transition that allowed for more flavor control and slightly bigger batches—for some flavors up to 40 jars as opposed to 12 or 15. That example feels like a metaphor in running a business, and probably life—often the thing you most fear or resist can be the thing that once tackled is a), much easier than how you were hyping it in your mind, and b), leads to a breakthrough of some kind.
There was no marketing plan whatsoever, for better or worse, just my personal inclinations and aesthetic. The round jars echoed the curve of the region’s rolling hills that I drew for the logo and just seemed so appealing; it turned out they were so round a label wouldn’t fit on the jar itself, and so everything had to fit on the top label. This was a design driver, but also became the les collines look, a pretty round jar that showcases the contents inside. I think it’s really cool that there are no two flavors that are the same color. At market, time and again I see people looking at the jars from afar and walking toward them, as if drawn in. I say the jars are beautiful inside and out, it sounds corny, but it is true.
The les collines display at the Basilica Hudson (NY) Holiday Market 2024
What was the biggest surprise as a small business owner? Product development, marketing, etc?
Hmmm…maybe the wearing of so. Many. Hats. I think I assumed I’d end up hiring folks to help with this and that, but not having deep pockets (i.e. no pockets at all!!), or a spouse/partner/family around, you end up just doing it all for the most part. It can be crazy, and sometimes you really do need a hand, but on the flip side the space of creativity you have to play in is huge, and the soul of the thing has to come from you, anyways.
It was another small business owner in a farm to food business program les collines was part of a few years in who helped enlighten me about the creativity piece. He’d gone to Yale for art but eventually made his way back to run the Hudson Valley orchard his grandfather had started. Do you miss the art? I asked him. Running this business is the most creative thing I’ve ever done, he told me. And I can always paint.
Did you grow up learning how to preserve food through mothers or grandmothers?
Yes, though not as much as I think people may assume! It was there but not a big thing. I was probably around 10 when I went with my mother and one of my sisters to pick strawberries somewhere in Massachusetts, it was so fun and we were so industrious we ended up with way more than we could eat in shortcake and fit in the freezer, and that’s the first I remember making jam. With Certo (liquid pectin) which requires boatloads of sugar, into sterile jars with a layer of paraffin poured on top. Then I helped with apple jelly in the fall sometimes. My mother also made mint jelly (colored green!), chow chow, and sweet pickles…at my maternal grandmother’s in Halifax, we ate hand to mouth the tiny wild blueberries that grew everywhere, but one summer we extracted a copious crop of golden raspberries, too many to eat, from the brambles I’d never paid attention to, and we made a beautiful jam. Those berries are the first I remember a fruit capturing me so—the special color and flavor, that they were part of the magic of my grandmother’s place.
Where do you find inspiration for new flavors?
Everywhere! But mostly, simply, in the fruit. For example…I hadn’t thought about doing a plum, but one year a farmer at market with me (Great Barrington, MA) brought some beauties over and off I went. Same with peaches. I had never really liked peach preserve but they were just so gorgeous one summer…now, it’s one of my favorites. It feels like getting a new box of Crayolas when you’re a kid. Or maybe like finding a new color as a painter. I tell people it’s like painting with fruit.
A lot of times it’s simply making what I like. I grew up drinking tea, and with Harney Tea just down the road in Millerton, NY it was a natural pairing. Sometimes like the farmer with the fruit, it’s suggested to me. In that same farm to food program I mentioned, a couple running a lavender farm north of Saratoga, NY asked me to make a private label lavender jelly. It did not appeal to me, really, but I thought I would do it for them at least. They provided the bud they had grown, and it was just extraordinary. I ended up loving it and kept it in the lineup.
An artfully arranged, just received online order, spring 2025
Bestselling flavors?
Sour Cherry, hands down. Followed by Meyer Lemon Rosemary. Before the pandemic, it was flipped. There is some wisdom there but not sure what it is…
But, there are some flavors that are highly seasonal, and oh so limited—the Raspberries, for instance! I can only get in so many local ones, and they sell hand over fist; if I could get larger quantities of local they’d likely be way up there.
Can you describe something you learned or which surprised you from your customers?
I love this question. I learn so much. On the granular level, the ways folks use flavors can be very cool. Simple, like pairing the Lavender with lamb (I don’t like lamb so would have missed that one) or the Heirloom tomato to slow cook brisket or glaze salmon. The Meyer Lemon in Lemon Mousse.
Seeing how customers connect to les collines has been wonderful, and really keeps me going. And it makes me feel I did something right. There is something genuine and true, I think, in the simplicity, tradition, and quality. Life is complicated. Now more than ever. These small, beautiful, good things mean all the more.
Process photo: left, Quince Preserve, an all day, low and slow labor of love; right, Scots Bitter, a two-day mystery of citrus alchemy
Favorite part of running a small business? Least favorite?
Wearing all those hats is both! By nature I’m someone who likes variety and liveliness, but it can just be, a lot. With the pandemic, I pulled back from having any extra folks to help, besides my kitchen assistant Maria, who’s been with me since 2017, and never went back. The next step of growth would be bring a few more people in, and that’s what I hope for whoever takes the helm.
There can be a grueling aspect to the manual labor of it, given the streamlined way I’m running it, especially over time. And I was already in my early 50’s when I began! But I never grow tired of seeing the finished jars all lined up after a production day. They really do look like jewels. Or the smile on a customer’s face the first time they taste a flavor at market. There are so many joys in running a small business, but the connections—to customers, other business owners, and in my case, farmers—are way up there. When a validation comes, like the recent New Yorker piece that called out a few flavors in the nicest way, it is a moment to pause and take stock and realize how far you’ve come.
You are also a writer. Favorite authors? Favorite way to read—long form, blog, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, biography?
Thank you for noticing!! And for asking…it’s funny, for quite awhile after I finished my PhD (Princeton, Romance Languages/20th c French, 2002) I did not read a single book. Seems shocking to say, but I had put myself on a fast track—I was a single parent, and I just reached a point of needing to be done—and had read so much, in a relatively short time (at one point I was trying to consume a book a day, horrible) I was saturated. I had not been a French major as an undergrad, not even a minor, so I had lots of ground to make up for the general exams. Anyways, newspapers and magazines were it for a bit—granted the New York Times, The Atlantic and the like, lots of long form. But still.
It was that time in graduate school that made me realize I was a writer, not a scholar. And that helped me realize I did not want to go after academic jobs once I defended. Now, I do read as much as time allows. I am a dinosaur in not liking to read off devices, though I do find that’s the only way I ever get to read a newspaper these days. I need a hard copy book in my hands. I keep trying to do audio books but they don’t quite work for me. I am not averse to blogs and substacks, and there are many great ones out there, it’s mostly a matter of time constraints.
I grew up devouring books. A favorite genre, that’s tough. I love history, and that’s often the nonfiction I’ll read—David McCullough’s a favorite. I do love a good memoir, though I resist the form, feeling like it’s been overdone—everyone seems to have a memoir out there. But I’ve been surprised. Sharon Stone’s was a cool one. A well written biography is a pleasure, an autobiography maybe even more. But getting lost in a good novel is kind of it. And always, poetry.
Faulkner. Richard Price. The Brontës. Raymond Carver, the stories and the poetry. Joan Didion, though I’m poorly read. Milan Kundera’s writing was the catalyst that led me to Paris (you can read my essay about it in a collection called Paris Was Ours). Yves Bonnefoy. Rumi. Essays have been my own form sort of by default these past years, and I think they took hold with a course in grad school devoted to Montaigne, who basically invented the genre.
If you hadn’t run les collines this past decade, how do you think you would have spent your time?
Great question. I hate to admit it, but, I have no idea…I think in an alternate universe, in an Everything Everywhere All At Once kind of way, my writing would have taken flight before the jelly. But by necessity, I had to concentrate on what was bringing income, lacking any foundational stability like housing or family to lean on. Necessity being the mother of invention.
Clarence with chapeau patiently waits at a rainy Great Barrington Farmers Market, fall 2023
Plans for your post-les collines life? Any personal projects you’re particularly excited for?
A vacation would be so nice. I think of that beautiful, plaintiff line from “Wichita Lineman,” I know I need a small vacation/But it don’t look like rain. So, just a small one. More walks with Clarence, my very sweet, senior Italian Spinone. More animals. More time with friends, reading, and cooking at home. Moving deeper into the country, probably. I am trying to figure out how to let my writing step into its own, at last. There’s a book to finish. Then a novel surely. And there’s other work to do that I have yet to define.
What qualities are you looking for in the ideal steward of les collines?
Here I should emphasize no experience in making preserves is necessary!! I had no formal training of any kind, general cooking or preserves. Living in France did not impart anything special in terms of cooking! And while I can wax poetic about Quince and Crabapples, but I’m the opposite of a process nerd. Nor had I any business acumen. I did take a course with the local SBA office a year after I started—those can be great resources.
Really, someone who simply loves food and appreciates the connection of farms to food and the seasonality of things. When I say farm to spoon, it is pretty literal. A love of beautiful things, energy to make the little engine go. A desire perhaps to simplify, and to grow something. I can imagine someone(s) looking to make a lifestyle as well as career change, wanting to run something manageable, stepping in and leaving their own imprint on this gem of a business.
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Brigid’s Blog, the life i picked
Catherine Tingey
Entrepreneur, yogini, designer, award-winning filmmaker, personal trainer and former marathon runner. She left a career in finance to start her own business and along the way, became a yoga teacher. She has been practicing yoga for 33 years and teaching privately for 13 years.
About the Author
Catherine Tingey+ Entrepreneur, yogini, designer, award-winning filmmaker, personal trainer and former marathon runner. She left a career in finance to start her own business and along the way, became a yoga teacher. She has been practicing yoga for 33 years and teaching privately for 13 years.
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