Fine Cheese & Charcuterie October 2013

As I write this, I am just hours off the plane from Cologne, Germany, where my colleagues and I attended Anuga, the largest food trade show in the world – and I have the sore feet to back up that claim. To give you an idea of how large it is, there are 11 buildings with over 15 floors of exhibit space. There were 6,777 exhibitors from almost 100 countries. At the last show in 2011, there were over 150,000 visitors from 185 countries, and judging by the crowds we encountered everywhere, I’ve no doubt they exceeded that figure this year. Anuga officials like to describe their show as 10 trade fairs in one, with halls devoted to fine foods, beverages, meats, dairy, chilled and fresh food, frozen, and more. There are also many country pavilions and we visited several of them, including Mexico, Peru, India, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Thailand, Japan and the Caribbean. For one plane ticket, it was quite the international tour.

We spent four days walking the halls of the show, mostly the dairy hall, beverages (scouting out new products for our newest publication, Quench) and the various halls that make up Anuga Fine Food, a catch- all category that runs the culinary gambit of packaged foods and also includes the country pavilions. We met with dozens of manufacturers, talked to old friends, tasted a wide variety of foods and beverages, and generally soaked up everything the show has to offer. It’s always an education to attend the European shows each fall and get to see new products and new trends, many of which will soon be heading our way.

From new cheeses to pizza on a stick, there were innovations to be seen everywhere. Overall, quality, healthfulness and convenience were the trends most in evidence. Among the highlights were two delicious and unique new Swiss cheeses from Mifroma; a fair trade extra virgin olive oil produced by a cooperative of Arab and Israeli women in the Galilee called Sindyanna; Tami Flour, a fabulous cup-to- cup-ratio, gluten-free all-purpose flour from Israel; a yummy and highly nutritious Mexican fruit preserve from Interfoods that uses chia seeds in place of pectin and agave syrup in lieu of sugar; Banana Ketchup from Baron Foods Limited in St. Lucia in

the Caribbean; spreadable feta cheese from Olympus Dairy in Greece; Little Miracles, an intriguing and delicious line of organic energy drinks from the U.K. made with teas, ginseng, and various exotic fruits; Angostura Aromatic Bitters Bespoke Tea Blend from SMAKS Luxury Group in Trinidad, the only product so far to be allowed to use the proprietary blend of the famous bitters producer; and a new educational campaign from Delverde Pasta called “Pasta Somme- lier,” in which the properties of pasta are examined in the same way as wine, thus distinguishing traditionally made pasta like Delverde’s from the wannabes.

We saw many more interesting products and producers during our time at Anuga and they will be appearing in our product galleries in upcoming issues. I look forward to shining a light on all of them.

This month, we’ll be exploring how one can set one’s store apart from the com- petition to create a signature that makes it a destination for savvy consumers. I also am pleased to present a new cookbook that should be in the library of every charcuterie and deli, and on the counters for sale, appropriately titled “In the Charcuterie,” written by the founders of The Fatted Calf, a beloved producer and retailer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Once again, Margaret Eckert gives us the “Rules and Regulations” from the world of food, up-to-date information that is useful to everyone in the business; and, of course, we have our gallery of “Products We Love,” foods we’ve collected that are worth considering for your store as we move forward into the fourth quarter.

And, while I nurse my jetlag and get re- acclimatized to the Pacific time zone, our publisher David Spencer, who was with me in Cologne, is off to Peru for Expoalimentaria, an international trade show that he’s attending for the first time. I’ll be anxious to hear about the show and I’m sure he’ll be sharing his observations in a future issue. In the meantime, I wish you all successful business this fall and a ghoulishly happy Halloween.

James Mellgren 

Managing Editor, Fine Cheese & Charcuterie

jmellgren@gourmetbusiness.com