COLLEEN ZACHARIAS PHOTO
Carl Durand, owner of Futura Farms, grows German Wine rhubarb and other fruit crops for the beverage industry.
FUTURA FARMS
Somerset grape is a delicious, sweet variety developed by Elmer Swenson, a horticultural pioneer.
COLLEEN ZACHARIAS PHOTO
Carl Durand, owner of Futura Farms, grows German Wine rhubarb and other fruit crops for the beverage industry.
NEXT FRIEND CIDER
Next Friend Cider is made with locally grown fruit.
JAYA’S PRESERVES
Spicy Rhubarb Pickle from Jaya’s Preserves is made with locally grown ingredients.
JAYA’S PRESERVES
Spice up your favourite dishes with Jaya’s Preserves Spicy Rhubarb Pickle made with locally grown rhubarb.
Which fruit varieties produce the best characteristics of richness and depth of flavour? What’s their backstory? Are they grown locally and organically, and harvested sustainably?
“The story of the product is becoming more and more important,” says Jesse Oberman, who operates Next Friend Cider and is a winemaker for Low Life Barrelhouse. “People want to know. It’s not enough just to have something delicious for your customers.
“The younger crowd, especially gen-Zers who are drinking less alcohol than millennials did at their age, are drinking more interesting products. They care about the ingredients but also the background of the product. It’s a whole experience.”
Oberman is part of a growing number of cider-makers, brewers, and winemakers in Manitoba’s booming beverage industry who have exacting standards. They are in the market for organic, sustainably grown fruit and plenty of it.
One of the cider products that Oberman makes, for example, includes locally grown ingredients such as apple, plum, rhubarb, cherry, chokecherry and hawthorn berries.
Carl Durand, owner of Futura Farms, brings the right combination of ingredients and values to the table. “What Carl is doing is really cool,” says Oberman. “He’s farming everything in this amazing, interesting, creative way without using chemicals. He is passionate about finding the most delicious version of the fruit varieties he is growing.”
Futura Farms sits on 50 acres in St. Andrews. Carl Durand purchased the property in December 2018 and in spring 2019, he planted his first acre of German wine rhubarb, along with rows of dwarf sour cherries, Boyne raspberries, haskap berries, gooseberries, and several varieties of apple and plum trees. Grapes are next.
The wholesale fruit production is for wine and cider producers across southern Manitoba and is also being grown for local businesses that make jams, jellies, pies and other fruit-based products.
I first visited Futura Farms in 2020 and have visited each year since but walking through the orchard in late June, there was a palpable magic. Durand had just finished harvesting nearly 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of German wine rhubarb. He grows two different varieties — one has a light pink stalk but the other has a much thicker stalk, is almost double the size, and produces brilliant pink juice.
Demand is so strong that Durand plans to scale up production. “I’m excited by the German wine rhubarb —
it’s large, juicy, has a beautiful colour, and is a consistent producer.” But Durand is also experimenting. He has obtained seed for some unique rhubarb varieties and plans to crossbreed some of the varieties to produce a hybrid that blends the best attributes of flavour and colour.
“German wine rhubarb has the high sugar content that wine producers are looking for, but I want to compare and check the Brix levels of each variety. I don’t think anyone has spent a lot of time really looking at this.”
Most of Futura Farm’s rhubarb is bought by Shrugging Doctor Beverage Company, a locally based producer of wine, sangria, cider, spirits, mead, and other alcoholic beverages.
Willows Christopher, owner and founder of Shrugging Doctor Beverage Company and president of the Manitoba Association of Winemakers, believes wholeheartedly that buying the best quality fruit that is as local as possible makes the best finished wine.
Shrugging Doctor’s Strawberry Rhubarb wine is very popular as a summer drink and has a great nostalgic Manitoba taste you wouldn’t find in a wine anywhere else, he says.
“The wines are usually about 12 to 14 per cent alcohol per volume,” says Christopher. “They’re cool because we treat the fruits exactly the way we treat grapes — nothing is flavoured, nothing is infused. We take the fruits, we crush them, we ferment that juice and make the wines from that. It’s a unique process.”
There must be more than 50 different ways to use rhubarb. Nonsuch Brewing Co., a micro-brewery in Winnipeg, once made a rhubarb oat strawberry beer that was called Rumble in the Crumble.
Jaya’s Preserves, a mother and daughter team from West St. Paul, make homemade small-batch preserves including rhubarb vanilla bean jam and spicy rhubarb pickle. Sapna Shetty, co-owner of Jaya’s Preserves, sells her products at local farmer’s markets. She says the taste of Futura Farms’ German wine rhubarb is fantastic and recommends trying her spicy rhubarb pickle with an omelette and avocado for breakfast.
Soon she will be going to Futura Farms to pick raspberries and Nanking cherries for making jams and jellies.
“The drink industry, whether it is juice, beer, wine, or cidar, needs massive volumes of Manitoba-grown fruit,” says Durand. “I don’t have enough product right now to meet demand, but the opportunities are tremendous.
“There is so much demand for raspberries, for example, that the market is unlimited. The goal is getting enough production for all the fruit crops and seeing which variety is the most popular.” Labour, of course, is an issue for any wholesale producer. This year is a bumper crop for raspberries, says Durand, who is working with a few Hutterite colonies to pick the crop.
Durand does not use any drip irrigation in his orchard. “Everything is solely reliant on precipitation,” he says.
The fruit crops are thriving and the rows of sour cherries are a sight to behold. This is only their third season and the plants are gorgeous and healthy with glossy, dark green foliage.
Durand is growing the Romance series of cherries which has its origins in the groundbreaking breeding of dwarf sour cherries that began in the 1940s by Les Kerr, a prolific plant breeder. The Romance series includes four varieties — Carmine Jewel, Juliet, Valentine, and Romeo — but Durand selected only the first three because of how early they fruit. The earlier the harvest, the less risk of the crop being affected by Spotted Wing Drosophila. The sour cherries are used for making cider.
This is only the second season for Durand’s haskap crop but already they have started producing fruit. He is growing four varieties: Aurora, Beast, Beauty and Blizzard.
The whole orchard is on dwarfing root stock. This summer Durand installed steel posts that will serve as a trellis to support the apple trees, which are now producing ample-sized fruit. Varieties include September Ruby and Tinkerbell, which was developed by his father, Rick Durand, who is a Prairie tree breeder and researcher.
He is also growing Kerr apple which was developed by Les Kerr. “It’s an old variety that is popular with beer, cider and juice producers because it gives you that beautiful red-pink juice and very sweet flavour,” says Durand. “The fruit hangs on really late into the season and can be harvested even after a frost.”
Durand is also growing Viburnum lentago nannyberry and Highbush cranberry for making jam and is experimenting with a mulberry variety from British Columbia. He is growing Somerset grape, which was developed by Elmer Swenson, a horticultural pioneer from Wisconsin.
“It is the most delicious grape — and seedless, too,” he says; he is now deciding which other grape varieties to grow. Naturally, he plans to push the envelope. Durand has his own interesting backstory — he has another career as an optometrist in Selkirk.
colleenizacharias@gmail.com
