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GOURMET NEWS DECEMBER 2018 www.gourmetnews.com SUPPLIER NEWS 1 5 RAFT Cocktails Adds Bitters to Syrups Line Portland, Oregon-based RAFT Cocktails has added to its line of all-natural cocktail syrups with four flavors of cocktail bitters – Aromatic, Cardamom, Orange and Grapefruit. The bitters position RAFT to offer the building blocks for great cock- tails. All consumers need is their favorite spirit and a little soda water for great cocktails at home. They're made by Improper Goods, Inc., which also produces The Bitter Housewife Cardamom Bitters, winner of the 2018 sofi Award for product of the year from the Spe- cialty Food Association. RAFT Bitters are made with the same great care and attention to quality as the company's syrups. All sources are carefully vetted with a priority toward supporting local producers and using organic, fair trade and sustainable products whenever possible. The launch of the bitters also inspired a refresh of the RAFT branding. The bold, modern labels complement the accessible, clean label product inside. Each label also speaks to the ease of use of each product with either a recipe or simple graphic showing how to use each flavor. "A great cocktail is a balance of strong, sweet, sour and bitter. With RAFT now of- fering both the sweet and the bitter, making great tasting cocktails at home is so easy," says Founder and CEO Genevieve Brazel- ton. RAFT Bitters can currently be found at The Fresh Market across the Southeast and will be available at all Fred Meyer stores in November. The bitters line will be rolled out to RAFTs existing stores over the next few months. GN GOODFOODS Guacamole: Extra Cool Under Pressure GOODFOODS' new guacamoles are now the first guacamole products to come to the retail market bearing the Cold Pressure Council's new "High Pressure Certified" seal. "We are the first company to use the HPC logo on the HPP foods, including gua- camole and a new line of plant-based dips," said Joyce Longfield, Vice President of Product Innovation for GOODFOODS and also Chairperson of the Cold Pressure Council, the industry group behind the newly developed certification. According to Lisa Wessels, Cold Pressure Council Founding member and Chief Mar- keting Officer for JBT/Avure, which manu- factures the high pressure cold processing technology, "Previously, most of the prod- ucts bearing the seal were cold-pressed juices, since that was the first set of stan- dards developed by the Cold Pressure Council." The seal, and its accompanying stan- dards, has two sets of goals, Wessels said. On its industry-facing side, the standards are intended to ensure that all members of the food industry are using the technology properly. "The industry side of it tells our industry peers using HPP that there's now guidance that reflects the regulatory re- quirements. We wanted all of the users who use HPP to use the same validation process," she added. For consumers, the seal is intended to communicate that the food they're buying is safe. In the case of the GOODFOODS Guacamole, it means that the products could be made without either adding preservatives or freezing them to preserve the product with sufficient shelf life to sur- vive transportation to the market and dis- play in the grocer's refrigerator case. The high-pressure processing also makes it possible for GOODFOODS to use fresh, raw ingredients that couldn't survive pasteuriza- tion with heat, Longfield said. "The HPP takes care of the process. We use cilantro in our gua- camole, but because we use HPP, that addresses the pathogens of concern," she said. "Using the cold pressure processing doesn't de- nature any of the raw foods. We can create products that taste almost as fresh as if you made them in your kitchen, but now they're safe, and they have a shelf life. This is what the HPP symbol really represents." The "High Pressure Certified" symbol will also soon be appearing on meat prod- ucts, where it means that the prod- uct can be made with less salt. "Historically, meat preserva- tion has depended on high levels of salt," Longfield said. "With HPP, they're able to lower their sodium levels because the HPP is taking care of the preservation process." The new GOODFOODS Guacamoles are offered in four flavors: Tableside Chunky Gua- camole, Tableside Spicy Guacamole, Table- side Southwest Guacamole and Tableside Pineapple Poblano Guacamole. Tableside Chunky Guacamole is also available in a four-pack of single-serve mini tubs. GN Charcuterie Continued from PAGE 1 treated. And it's certainly possible to stay ahead right now. "I'm still talking about a very small niche, a very small part of the population," said Daguin. According to Phil Gatto, co-Founder of True Story Foods, what makes truly good charcuterie is that craft producers use her- itage breeds of animals that are humanely raised, antibiotic-free and hormone-free. "Those breeds usually take a little longer to grow, and end up with a deeper color, more marbling, which gives them more internal fat, and that natural fat brings a sweetness to the flavor profile," he said, adding that the exercise these animals get out on the pasture also helps with marbling. And it's not just pigs Daguin cited a her- itage breed of chicken used at D'Artagnan that eats vegetable scraps and takes longer to raise, which results in a truly unique fla- vor experience. "A chicken that's 100 days old is basically three times more expensive than a chicken that was processed at 30 days old and the taste is more than three times better, but the price is three times higher," she said. For Chris Eley, Owner of Smoking Goose, quality charcuterie really is all about the animal itself. "You can't make something great starting with a poor-qual- ity product," he said. "I used to work with a guy when I was young who would always say, 'You can't make chicken salad out of chicken [manure].' So we're always focused on how the animals are raised. That's the key to the quality of our product. Our job we buy a high-quality animal, a heritage breed raised properly, fed well, it was stress- free our job is to not screw it up." Any ad- ditional herbs or spices, Eley said, are there to bring out the natural flavor of the meats not to enhance or cover it up. That's not to say there's an absolute rule about ingredients in craft charcuterie. Bill Miner, Owner of Il Porcellino, said his company makes a vari- ety of salamis, some tradi- tional and some non-traditional, to keep cu- rious customers coming back. "We make one salami called a Queso Salami, and we use a cheese in there called Queso de Mano from Haystack Mountain, which is a local cream- ery here in Colorado," he said. "It's a Manchego-style cheese we put in there, so you get a bite of cheese in your salami. It's not a lot, just a little bit, and it's pretty unique. We're using local wine from Den- ver, local beers in some recipes, juniper berries, which is an indigenous ingredient from Colorado. But then we make tradi- tional things like sopressata, finnochionna, coppa, things that people know. You can be different, but you also have to make prod- ucts people are familiar with so they sell." In addition to how the animal was raised and how the meat is handled, region plays a major role in the final flavor. With fac- tory-farmed animals, location doesn't mat- ter no matter where they're raised, those animals are manufactured to produce a high quantity of meat that comes out tast- ing the same but high-quality charcuterie producers take note of regional flavors. Smoking Goose products, for example, are all about Indiana from animals and ingre- dients all the way down to the name. Its Rustbelt Salami recalls the era of steel mills in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois and it changes batch to batch, using a sin- gle-source and single- breed pig from one of those states. "We have stuff from foragers, like lo- cally forged juniper berries; we use mead wine from a local meadery that makes their mead from In- diana honey," Eley said. "The idea is to represent the flavor profiles of this region of the country, rather than trying to recreate regionally-tra- ditional European styles." As for inspired names, look no further than Smoking Goose's Dodge City, a salami named for a part of Indianapolis that's since improved Smoking Goose was part of its redevelop- ment, so they named the salami out of re- spect for how far it's come. However, when factoring in which char- cuterie is right for your store, think literally about how a region affects flavor. Pigs raised at the foothills of the Ozark Moun- tains tend to eat acorns from nearby oaks and hickories, flavors that carry subtly into the meat. "It's called terroir," said Daguin. "It works the same with wine. You take ex- actly the same grape, you grow it in one place and another, and it makes a very dif- ferent wine sometimes, it's less than half a mile away, and it makes a huge difference." We can think of charcuterie like cheese, too; milk from a cow that eats dray hay in the winter will taste quite different from milk made by the same cow grazing on fresh green grass in the spring. "You can- not say, 'I have the best terroir to raise a beef," said Daguin, but the origin certainly can be an indication to charcuterie-seek- ing customers of what flavors to expect. Enamoring your customers to craft charcuterie is partly a matter of educa- tion. Even though consumers have con- stant access to a smorgasbord of beautiful charcuterie with a single search of #char- cuterie on Instagram, they'll likely be more engaged with your products if your staff can tell them all about the meats from your area, or how the wagyu beef raised in Texas you carry is truly one of a kind. Your customers will thank you. "In many cases, it's subtle, but the people who can sit down and take the time to eat the product taste a difference, and it's greatly appreciated," said Gatto. "So part of this is about educating people about which characteristics good-quality crafted products let you experience." Eley said he's part of a group working on a charcuterie certification exam, like the Certified Cheese Professional Exam, which could help retailers decide which meats are the best. However, according to Angela Bozo, Education Director at the Interna- tional Dairy Deli Bakery Association and one of the people making the exam a real- ity, it won't be ready for another two years at best. Meanwhile, these meats continue to get more love than ever in the U.S. In other words, there's no better time than now to become a charcuterie expert and start stocking the best meats in town. GN

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