Prince Charles has been called "out of time" by a cabinet minister and lampooned for his crusty traditionalist views, but championing organic production has turned the heir to the British throne into a fashionable leader.

When the Prince of Wales set up Duchy Originals in 1992, organic foods were about as mainstream

The traditional "oaten" biscuit, made from organic wheat and oats harvested from Charles's Home Farm, launched the fledging brand. Now the portfolio has swelled to over 130 products, ranging from specialist breads and cakes to ales, meats, dairy produce and an award-winning Christmas pud made with organic ingredients.

Recently the business has added non-food items to the range, including hand-crafted garden furniture and body care treatments infused with natural plant extracts and organic essential oils. But does the Duchy website capture the true country fragrance of the brand's wholesome appeal?

Duchy Originals takes it name and logo from the Duchy of Cornwall, the royal estate that, since the Middle Ages, has generated princely incomes for lusty heirs to the throne. The idea behind the brand, summed up in the strapline "uncompromisingly good food," is of fine healthy produce that respects wildlife and the countryside, and naturally tastes good too. All of the profits from the business go to the Prince of Wales's Charitable Foundation.

British royals are famed for their bluntness, and Charles's website is pretty blunt too. The opening page greets visitors to the site with a crisp welcome, and then gets straight down to the business of parading the goods. Two inset panels, stacked one on top of the other against a white background, showcase the newest arrivals to the portfolio. There is no introductory spiel and very little use of visual effects.

The branding is understated but effective, communicated by a small Duchy crest and a sheaf of golden wheat projecting from the top left of the screen. A discreet icon, showing the Prince of Wales's feathers, offers a click-through link to Charles's own official website.

Where the site falls down, and spectacularly so, is in its drab presentation. The problems start with the layout, which is flat, unimaginative and makes poor use of color. The products displayed on the opening page—cheddar cheese bread and body care lotions—don't complement each other. This creates a bad first impression, suggesting a ragbag of a brand that lacks coherence and a sense of direction. Clicking through to the product page reveals more of the same—a bald list of five product headings, flanked by murky photographs of classy garden furniture and what may, or may not, be curls of chocolate.

One of the best features of the site is the way in which every product is captioned with a little description and a thumbnail illustration. Unfortunately, the photographs are so small that almost all of the detail of the produce's colors, textures and stylish outer packaging get lost. Adding a magnification button to the thumbnail panels would show off the quality of the goods and make visiting the site a lot more rewarding. Another gripe is that the typescript is cramped and set in such a spidery font that reading the blurb is made needlessly tough.

Some deft little touches help to brighten the mood. There are pleasant pictures of pigs living short but happy lives on the Duchy estate. Most of the content is well thought out and there are lots of good links to other sites. The food section, for example, offers a hotlink to the homepage of Walkers Shortbread, a family-run business that bakes biscuits to Duchy's specification; other areas link to resources on organic farming and environmental protection. A section, called the kitchen, contains traditional recipes contributed by food writers and chefs with a taste for hearty country-style cookery.

None of this, however, can make up for the site's fundamental flaws, which are annoying for visitors and blur the brand messages that the copy works hard to get across. All in all, the website is a letdown, conjuring up un-regal images of a modest penny-wise business, built with an eye fixed firmly on costs. Off-line Duchy Originals has carved a niche for itself as a brand that is "uncompromisingly good." Keeping that promise demands an online presence that lives up to the fine quality of its distinctive products.