A KING Valley fine-food company is winning a reputation for quality, writes KATE ADAMSON

King Valley Fine Foods' Rosemarie Thompson got her first break as an 11-year-old, thanks to her mother.

"My Mum hated the cooking so I took over and I just loved it," Rosemarie says.

Thirty-five years later, Rosemarie's company, King Valley Fine Foods, is producing fresh meals daily for the North East and preserves, sauces and pestos for customers throughout Australia, Hong Kong and Dubai.

It all started in her childhood kitchen, where Rosemarie mastered the art of preserving, which was necessary when her family lived in Yugoslavia, before emigrating to Australia when she was eight.

"We had no refrigeration back home so everything had to be preserved if you wanted to survive," she says.

"We preserved meat, smoked and stored it in pots with lard in the cellar.

"All fruit and vegetables were preserved, whether salt-cured or jarred, and stored away in the pantry for winter.

"And I still do that for home. Just the fact you can actually save some fruit or vegetables that would otherwise spoil and you've got it for the whole year."

After cooking in restaurants in Melbourne and Wangaratta, Rosemarie began King Valley Foods 17 years ago, because she wanted to share her preserves.

She bought a property with her husband, Mark, at Edi Upper, near Whitfield, and began making jams and chutneys from the farm kitchen before branching out into more adventurous varieties of pesto.

"We were living in Wangaratta and we came across the property and someone just said, 'don't talk about it Rose, just do it'. So I said 'OK, I'll do it'."

Today, the 2.8ha farm produces 90 per cent of all the herbs used in King Valley Fine Foods, including coriander, basil, dill, rocket, parsley, and vegetables including baby spinach and snow peas, plus olive oil from its 1.6ha grove.

This fresh produce goes into more than 60 varieties of pesto, including beetroot and macadamia, dill and chive and macadamia, chilli and tomato and capsicum, and a range of freshly made family meals, which are sold at the new shop in Wangaratta's main street.

"The shop is about people coming and buying a family meal and getting a good-quality, well-balanced meal that's really good for them," Rosemarie says.

Meanwhile, at a new kitchen in nearby Vincent St, between 5000 and 7000 jars of pesto, her best-selling product, are made each week.

"I used to do it by hand, but we bought a filling machine four years ago and a large blender a year ago," she says. "It's all basically done by hand but with bigger equipment."

King Valley Fine Foods is sold in delicatessens and independent supermarkets across the country.

More than six years ago, a customer tried the pesto at the Brown Brothers Festival in Milawa, and wanted to export it to Hong Kong.

"Then there was another fellow from Dubai. So that was it," Rosemarie says.

"We would never ever market it ourselves by going over there. We haven't got time."

Rosemarie describes her days in the kitchen as play time, and she's always experimenting.

"I've made artichoke, ricotta and green-pea lasagna this week," she says.

"You've got to have something new and a bit different and that's what keeps it interesting."

But success comes down to quality.

"We don't compromise on that," Rosemarie says.

She believes the King Valley is a hub for wonderful producers.

"There's a lot of really interesting people. Everybody does something," she says.