Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Help celebrate Virginia's Finest
Lindsey Nair
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If you ever want to get a true sense of why Virginia is associated with peanuts, take a trip down U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Tidewater.
We did it over Labor Day weekend, and even the driving rain from a whirling coastal storm couldn't distract me from the miles and miles of lush, green-carpeted fields.
These peanut plants lead all the way to Wakefield, known to many as "The Peanut Capital of the World" and home to the legendary Virginia Diner, where tourists and locals alike flock to buy one of the state's most famous products.
On tins of Virginia Diner peanuts, you'll find a familiar symbol with a blue check mark and a red "A." That means the product has been certified under the Virginia's Finest program with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Virginia's Finest was launched in 1989, and Gov. Tim Kaine has proclaimed September as the program's 20th anniversary month. Elaine Lidholm, spokeswoman for the department, said as far as they know, Virginia's Finest was the first quality-based trademark program to be instituted by a state.
The state department of agriculture, of course, suggests that we all celebrate this birthday by purchasing and using a bunch of Virginia's Finest products. But that proposition doesn't sound too bad when you consider the delicious foodstuffs it would involve, including ham, wine, fresh trout, chips and salsa, pasta sauces, and homemade cakes and candies.
The list is almost as long as those rows and rows of peanut plants!
If peanuts and ham seem rather obvious, consider some of the more obscure products that have been certified as Virginia's Finest: firewood, Christmas trees, alpaca fiber, wool and bull semen.
Yes, you read that last one correctly -- for breeding purposes, some bulls have even been branded as Virginia's Finest. Although I'm pretty sure they aren't running around wearing a red "A" like Hester Prynne of "The Scarlet Letter."
Becoming the Finest
Holly Shaver of Bonsack, who makes and sells Holly's Homemade Treats, has been certified with the Virginia's Finest program for 16 years.
She vaguely remembers filling out paperwork and shipping a wide assortment of her goodies, including pound cake, apple cake, sweet breads, rum cake and Kahlua cake, to Richmond.
A short time later, she was notified that her products had been approved. She received a sheet of stickers with the Virginia's Finest logo as well as an electronic version of the logo, which she uses to create labels for her treats.
From Holly's perspective, it sounds like a fairly simple and painless process. Lidholm explains that once the goods arrive in Richmond, it isn't so simple.
Every six weeks or so, a committee meets to vet potential Virginia's Finest products. The group includes folks from the state department of agriculture as well as members of the industry represented.
For example, if the committee is tasting peanut brittle, a peanut specialist or candymaker probably would be on hand. This meeting usually takes up the better part of a day, Lidholm said.
Of course, not everything is edible. And the committee isn't going to ask someone to bring in a Christmas tree and prove it holds ornaments. So sometimes field trips are taken to the production site, particularly if it's a product that must be inspected for safety.
Virginia's Finest products do not have to spend every phase of their development inside state lines. For example, a few coffee brands are certified, but the coffee is grown elsewhere and shipped to Virginia, where it is then roasted and turned into a value-added product.
That production phase must take place in Virginia, though. Someone in Minnesota can't buy Virginia peanuts to make brittle in Minnesota and sell it back in Virginia as a Virginia's Finest product.
Foresight was 20/20
Twenty years ago, Virginia Department of Agriculture officials had no idea that local food would be the popular trend that it is today.
But when they created the Virginia's Finest program, they were saying that the origins of food are important. Today, that's one of the main tenets of the local food movement.
So this month, celebrate your status as a proud Virginian, whether that means planning an entire dinner around the state's most coveted foods, sending a basket of Virginia's Finest products to a friend or loved one, or simply picking up a tin of peanuts to enjoy.
To find certified products in our corner of Virginia, search the Virginia's Finest database at www.vdacs.virginia.gov/vafinest.
