NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE From vineyard to jar to store
Culinary family goes to grape lengths to create jellies, sauces, spreads
There’s a lot of lip-smacking going on between the colourful rows of neatly stacked jars and bottles at Kurtz Culinary Creations in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“Try it! It tastes like wine,” a customer urges a small group as he dabs more Cabernet Sauvignon wine jelly on a bread cube. “That one’s pretty good.” Nearby, Anne Just looks pleased. Her family grows the grapes and makes the jelly the shopper is swooning over.
“It’s all about taste here,” says the retailer, who’s the third generation involved in the farming business started by her grandfather, Frank Kurtz, in the 1940s.
Wine jelly is only one of dozens of products bearing the Kurtz name in the four-year-old Queen St. shop, which is a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds. Displayed on glass shelves and antique wood furnishings, the jams, curds, sauces and spreads pop with colour inside jars labelled with original artwork.
“Vibrant colour is important,” says Just. “It shows freshness.”
She notes they’ve made a real effort to reflect the natural flavours of the region and the fruit they grow on their 20-hectare orchard and vineyard.
Their culinary team works with the region’s producers “to have each crop ready for the pot or the kettle at exactly the right moment,” according to the company website, kurtzorchards.com.
That covers “the first rhubarb of spring to the last pumpkin of autumn.” What the Kurtzes don’t make themselves, they bring in from other local artisans to give visitors from around the world a full range of mouth-watering “land-to-table” gourmet products. The shop also stocks culinary gift items and cookbooks.
Among the perennial favourites are red pepper garlic dressing, apple-spiced pecan honey butter, pepper jellies and artichoke-andspinach tapenade. The “No. 1 product in the store, by far,” says Just, is Asiago bread-topper.
But don’t let the name fool you, she says.
The mixture of cheeses and herbs in grape seed oil can be used in many ways — fans keep coming up with more. It can be tossed with pasta or stuffed into mushroom caps or chicken breasts, for example. It was Just’s father, Edward Kurtz, who started making the specialty foods, which are also sold in their retail barn on the scenic Niagara Parkway, where the farm is located. Just describes the family as “foodies in a value-added business” who chose a different route through grape country. “We made wine jellies instead of wine,” she explains. The product line grew to incorpo- rate the latest food trends, with an “old world touch” from her grandparents’ time, when people made their own chutneys and relishes from scratch. The family opened the shop at 38-40 Queen St. in historic downtown Niagara-on-the-Lake to serve travellers using Hwy. 55. “We had a tremendous response when people discovered us for the first time,” says Just. As tantalizing as everything looks, the proof of it is in the eating. Open jars of this and that are invitingly displayed for customers to sample at taste-testing stations throughout the store.