Valley Produce Company: What They Make and Where to Start

Valley Produce Company is an Australian specialty food brand that started as a cottage business selling crackers and fruit pastes at farmers' markets in the Yarra Valley. The range now runs to seven styles of cracker, three fruit pastes, shortbread, chocolate, old-fashioned boiled lollies, a ploughman's relish and a bag of roasted peanuts. If you are buying one thing, buy the Crackerthins Plain at $3.49.

From a Yarra Valley market stall to the export shelf

The company began the way a good number of Australian food brands begin, with a small team selling crackers and fruit pastes at local farmers' markets in the Yarra Valley, in the middle of Victoria's wine country. That origin still shows in the products. Crackers and fruit paste are what you make when your customers are already standing at a cheese stall, and they are still the two things the brand is best known for.

It has since become an export brand, sold through gourmet food stores, delicatessens and cheese shops in Australia and in the USA, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. Here, the whole range sits on one page, which matters more than it sounds: this is a brand people tend to buy several things from in one order, and doing that one search at a time is tedious.

The origin also explains where the range is still made. The shortbread in the printed tubes and the keepsake tins is made in Australia from 98% Australian ingredients, the boiled lollies in the 170g jars are made in Australia, and the roasted peanuts are Australian peanuts, roasted and lightly salted. Those origin lines are printed on the pack rather than implied by the branding, which is the difference between a gum-leaf illustration and something actually made here. It matters most on the parcels that leave the country, where the label is the whole story.

Why the same name keeps turning up in the same box

The quickest way to read a range this wide is to split it in two. One half is built for a board: crackers, fruit paste, relish and peanuts, priced between $2.95 and $7.95, all of it meant to be opened and eaten within the week. The other half is built to be handed over: shortbread in tubes and tins, boxed chocolate and lollies in jars, running from $7.95 to $19.95, most of it in a container that outlasts the contents. The two halves answer different questions, and the easiest mistake to make here is buying from the wrong one, a keepsake tin for a Tuesday cheese night, or four boxes of plain crackers as a present.

Valley Produce Company, VPC on our product labels, covers more of our shelves than any other brand we stock, and that is arithmetic rather than loyalty. A hamper needs something to hold cheese up, something sweet to sit beside it, and something with an Australian accent for a parcel going interstate or overseas. VPC makes all three, at prices running from $2.95 to $19.95. Seven of its lines go into the Just Add Cheese Hamper, from the plain Crackerthins through to the ploughman's relish and the roasted peanuts. The Gourmet Selection Hamper takes the fig and almond fruit pyramid, the wattleseed and fig native crackers and the boxed pita, and the Gourmet Snack Box Hamper takes the sea salt mini artisan crackers.

The savoury half: seven ways to hold up a piece of cheese

Everything here is a cracker in the broad sense, which is to say a vehicle. What decides the box is thickness, salt, and whether the cracker brings anything of its own.

Two rows are worth stopping on. The first is the gluten free question. A gluten free version of a food often costs more than the standard one, and here it does not. Gluten free original and gluten free cracked black pepper Crackerthins are $3.49, the same as the standard boxes, and gluten free rosemary is $2.95 against $2.99. Four cents is not a saving anyone notices, but it does mean one box can go out for the whole table instead of two plates. There is more of it on our gluten free options shelf.

The second is the pita. The same 100g of olive oil and sea salt pita is $6.95 in a bag and $7.95 in a box. One dollar is what the box costs, and the box is the difference between something you tip into a bowl and something you hand over. That pattern repeats through the sweet half.

Which style suits which cheese is a separate question, answered at length in which cracker goes with which cheese. The one line version: buy plain, buy one interesting box, and make plain about half of what goes out. All of it sits on our cracker shelf.

One more line belongs on the board rather than in the sweet half. The fruit pastes are the older half of the founding pair and still the best argument for the brand. A Fruit Pyramid in fig and almond is $6.95 for 75g, which reads as dear beside a 150g seed crisp until you remember that fruit paste is sliced thinly and one pyramid outlasts three boards. Apricot and pistachio and pear and hazelnut suit different cheeses, and our guide to choosing a fruit paste sorts out which goes where.

Two lines fit neither half. The ploughman's relish is a 270g jar at $7.95, and its label reads apple first, then sugar, water and tomato, with onion, sultanas and currants behind them and a warm spice run of mustard, ginger, clove and cinnamon. It is what turns a cheese board into a ploughman's lunch. The roasted peanuts are a 100g bag at $4.95, the one savoury line in the range that is not built around cheese.

The sweet half: shortbread, chocolate and lollies

The rest of the range is made to be given rather than served, and shortbread is where it starts. The 175g bags are four different biscuits, not one: pure butter and ginger at $7.95, macadamia and a gluten free pure butter at $8.95. The 180g printed tube and the 180g keepsake tin are the same butter shortbread in two containers, $12.95 against $19.95, which is the pita lesson again at a larger scale. The chocolate arrives boxed, 150g to 220g, running from milk chocolate almonds through pretzels and Turkish delight to rocky road, plus a novelty corner where the milk chocolate koala poo is milk chocolate liquorice under a joke label. The boiled lollies are 170g jars at $7.95, among them the two Australian-animal jars, Koala Tucker eucalyptus drops and Kangaroo Balls butterballs, and they are among the cheapest things here that still read as a present.

Where to start, by what you are actually buying for

One box, for tonight. Crackerthins Plain at $3.49. It is one of the cheapest things here and the one that gets used, because a plain water cracker suits every cheese in the fridge and argues with none of them.

A board for eight. Two boxes, not one, and make them opposites. Plain Crackerthins plus a 150g pack of fig and olive seed crisps comes to about ten dollars and covers soft cheese and blue in the same trip. Add a fruit pyramid if there is a strong cheese on the board.

A present under $20. A shortbread tin. It is the only line in the range that looks like a gift without any help from you, and the tin stays on the bench long after the shortbread is gone.

Something with an Australian accent. The native crackers in wattleseed and fig, a Koala Tucker jar, or an animal shortbread tube. These are the lines expats and overseas visitors ask about, and they travel well because none of them needs a fridge.

A staff or client order. Buy across both halves rather than deep in one. A cracker, a fruit paste and a chocolate reads as a considered box. Six packs of the same cracker reads as a bulk buy, whatever it cost. If it needs to arrive already wrapped, our Christmas hampers do the assembling for you.

Questions about Valley Produce Company

Who is Valley Produce Company?

An Australian specialty food brand that began as a small cottage business selling crackers and fruit pastes at farmers' markets in the Yarra Valley, in Victoria's wine country. It has grown into an export brand stocked by gourmet food stores, delicatessens and cheese shops in Australia and in the USA, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. Crackers and fruit paste are still what it is best known for, though the range now runs through shortbread, chocolate, boiled lollies, a ploughman's relish and roasted peanuts as well.

Where can I buy Valley Produce Company products in Australia?

The full range sits on one page at The Gourmet Pantry, so a mixed order takes a single trip through the checkout. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post, and shipping is free once an order passes $100. The whole range is shelf stable and travels without refrigeration. Crackers, pastes, shortbread, chocolate and lollies all go Australia-wide in a cool, dry parcel, and every hamper we build around them goes out in an insulated shipper box.

Are Valley Produce Company crackers gluten free?

Three of them are. The Crackerthins line includes gluten free original, gluten free cracked black pepper and gluten free rosemary, and there is a gluten free pure butter shortbread on the sweet side at $8.95. Those four are the whole of the gluten free list for this brand, and the rest of the range is not gluten free. The pack is always the last word on ingredients, so read it if someone at the table is coeliac.

What is a Valley Produce Company fruit pyramid?

A 75g block of firm fruit paste in a pyramid shape, sold in fig and almond, apricot and pistachio, and pear and hazelnut at $6.95 each. You slice it thinly and set it beside cheese rather than spreading it. Fig and almond is the one to buy first, because it works against blue, cheddar and a soft white without adjusting anything else on the board.

Start with a box of Crackerthins Plain and one thing from the sweet half, then work outward from whichever empties first. The whole line-up is on the Valley Produce Company range page.