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Chutney business a family affair
For Rappahannock's Turner family, making chutney is a family affair – and a sweet and sometimes sticky business.
Nevill and Clare, along with 30 year-old son, Oliver, run The Virginia Chutney Company out of their Piedmont Avenue home in the Town of Washington producing jars of the savory condiment to be sold from Maine to Florida. Their goal is to spread the delicious taste of southern-style chutney throughout the U.S., an idea that began as a simple hobby for Clare.
It all started in 2004, when Clare stopped working as a kindergarten teacher; Oliver moved back to Virginia from New York; and Nevill retired from a career traveling around the world as a biochemist.
"I found that the south has a great tradition of chutneys and people always go on about English chutney, so I though we could start making American-style chutneys," said Clare. "What's the point of importing them?"
Clare found the transition into the chutney-making business to be a natural one. In fact, chutney had been in the family for a long time. In 1932, a family member printed an English cookbook which included recipes for tomato chutney and several fruit preserves.
"In England, in every pantry, in every cupboard, in every fridge, there'll be a jar of chutney," Clare said. "Indians have fresh chutney every day for lunch."
The couple, born and raised in England, lived in the Caribbean, Pakistan, and East Africa – all known for their chutney use. They moved to Virginia in 1982 and to their home in Rappahannock two years ago.
"It turns out that they lived in chutney 'hot spots' all along," joked Oliver.
The Turners eat chutney everyday, with sandwiches and cheese, and in the evening with meals, like Americans would eat ketchup. Wanting to bring the condiment into the American market in a similar way, the Turners decided to become the H.J. Heinz of the chutney world.
"We knew there was a potential market for it, because when you ask people what is chutney, they don't really know," said Oliver. "What they don't realize is that ketchup technically is chutney and everyone likes that. Everyone likes the sensation of fruit with vinegar, sweet with that vinegar bite."
Although there are many varieties, the Turner's say chutney is different things for different people.
"There's Caribbean-style, there's Indian-style, and there's English chutneys," said Oliver. "All it is, basically, is fruit, vinegar, sugar, and spices. It's slow-cooked down to a concentrated reduction."
Following the sensational trend that ketchup created in the 1960s and salsa (the number one condiment in America) has today, the Turners' chutney has done extraordinarily well. So far, their business has doubled each year since it began.
Today, the Turners pride themselves in making traditional, natural, southern-style American chutney.
"Southern-style chutneys are sweeter, a little spicy and they go on ham and chicken," said Oliver. "In the south, people didn't have refrigerators, so they would go out and collect the fruit which had fallen to the ground or old fruit and cook it up."
What sets their chutney apart from others is that it's made all-natural, with no preservatives.
"There's no high-fructose corn syrup," Clare said. "You could actually save money by making it with preservatives, to make it thicken much quicker. But by cooking it properly, it makes a difference in the taste and it's a little more expensive."
The Virginia Chutney Company currently offers five fruit chutneys, the most popular being spicy plum and hot peach. Other chutneys contain southern fruits like mango, rhubarb, and cranberry.
Working with foods that had a regional appeal, the Turners also drew inspiration from the "buy local" movement. The company was introduced in Whole Foods Market, a breakthrough the Turners describe as "getting into Princeton."
"It was that big of a break," said Clare. "We got in because we were local, all natural, and we made it into their special cheese department and they wanted something to go with cheese."
Their chutney is currently being sold in 99 Whole Foods stores up and down the east coast. Locally, residents can buy it in Rappahannock at Roy's Orchard, Epicurious Cow, Mt. Vernon Farms, and in Culpeper at Food for Thought. Each 10-ounce jar costs anywhere from $7 to $9.50, depending on where it's sold.
The business has expanded so quickly, production of the chutney had to be moved to a larger facility, now located in Lancaster, Pa. The Turners hope to move to a factory in the area soon.
"We needed something a commercial kitchen that would be large enough to make 200 gallons of our chutney at a time," said Clare. "We're in a transitional state right now, but we want to move production back to Virginia."
Although they don't actually cook the chutney in Virginia, the majority of the work for the business is done in the Turners' Rappahannock home. While Clare comes up with new ideas for chutney in the test kitchen, Nevill heads up quality control and shipping, and Oliver does deliveries and abstract concept work.
"I never once thought of all three of us doing it. I always thought it was something for me," said Clare. "But we love chutney and work incredibly hard and sometimes get obsessed with it, but there's no other way to do it."
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