Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls from Great Britain at the Candy Store
Handmade hard candy keeping mint lovers aglow for over 100 years!
If you want a subtle, sensuous note of mint to enhance your day, I’d steer you toward these special English confections—which are clearly for serious mint lovers! They’ve got a big mint flavor, backed up with notes of caramelized sugar that come together in a way that’s surprisingly not super sweet.
William Santus & Co. is yet another small, artisan business of the sort we love to work with—a company that’s still family owned and run more than a century after it was founded by William Santus. In the spirit of what I’ve been writing about succession in recent years, they have successfully kept both the company and the Mint Ball recipe in the family for six generations—John and Antony Winnard, Santus’s great-nephews, are the current owners. While nearly all the small confectioners who set up shop in that same era are now divisions of massive multinationals, Santus remains proudly privately owned to this day.
Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls are made in their hometown of Wigan, which is about halfway between the city of Manchester and the sea to its west. Due south of the English Lake District, where the poet Wordsworth did much of his work, Wigan is a market town with roots that go back to the seventh century. It’s probably best known today for its relationship to a different kind of ball—Wigan Athletic Football Club didn’t play in the World Cup, but it’s very well known around the world!
William Santus was born on July 27, 1873, four years and a month after Emma Goldman was born in Lithuania. Growing up in poverty, Santus left school at 14 to work at the market in fruit and vegetable stalls, and a few years later, he married a local girl named Ellen Seddon. Seddon had friends who had taught her confectionery, and gradually, the young couple began to make more and more of it. In 1908, they owned a series of market stalls—a photo of Ellen Santus standing proudly in front of an abundant display looks not unlike Zingerman’s Candy Store Retail Manager Allison Schraf doing the same today! In 1919— just after World War I and in the middle of the Spanish flu pandemic—they moved into a bigger factory, where they still work to this day. Their Mint Balls became increasingly popular, in part through great marketing work: “We make sweets to make life sweeter” was their slogan, modeling the power of purpose many decades before it was a common topic of business-school discussion.
Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls are, as they were in 1898, still crafted by hand. Sugar and mint oil are boiled down to make the candy, and then they’re rolled into balls. They contain no artificial additives or colors. During the two World Wars, they were hugely popular with British troops. The 21st-century slogan for the Mint Balls is that they “keep you all aglow.” And it’s true—these babies are the heavy metal of the mint world. If you need a midafternoon wake-up, pop one of these in your mouth, and I’m guessing you’ll be more alert in a matter of minutes!
