Illinois Mustard Tops Grey Poupon

Boetje's Dutch Style Stone Ground Mustard from the Quad Cities has received
a gold medal in the World Wide Mustard Competition. Boetje's was awarded
gold in the "coarse grained" category of the 15th annual Napa Valley Mustard
Festival. It even beat out the vaunted Grey Poupon brand, which took silver.

The contest—in the heart of California wine country—attracted more than
400 mustards from seven countries, judged in 19 categories by food
journalists and chefs from across the country. This was Boetje's first entry
to the Napa Valley festival. The awards ceremony is March 14, 2008.

Boetje's (pronounced "boat-chee") Mustard is made in Rock Island, Illinois.
Founded in 1889 by German immigrant Fred Boetje, the company was sold by
the Boetje family in 1960 to Will Kropp. Today, Boetje's staff includes two
full-time employees and two part-time workers who come in on production
days.

"I hope people of the Quad Cities realize there's a national treasure there in
the mustard world," Barry Levenson, festival coordinator and curator of the
Mount Horeb Mustard Museum near Madison, Wisconsin, said of Boetje's.

As if he were talking about a complex wine, Mr. Levenson described the local
mustard thusly: "It has just a delightful mouth feel. It is able to capture all
the flavor of the mustard seed," he said. "It's extremely well-balanced, has a
good nose hit, and a satisfying finish."

"It has just a little bit of sweetness," Mr. Levenson said of the spicy brown
mustard, which does use sugar in its Old World recipe. "It's well-rounded. It
has a definite cult following all over the country. We send it out to a lot of
people on the West Coast."

The Mustard Museum has sold Boetje's on site and in its catalog for 10 years,
one of 4,900 varieties it carries.

Using the same recipe today, it uses 1,000 pounds of Canadian mustard
seeds per batch, and each Friday the brown seeds are split and combined in
an oak-wood vat with water, sugar, salt, and distilled vinegar. On Monday,
the mixture is sent through a high-speed stone grinder, which takes about six
hours, Mr. Kropp said. The mustard is stored overnight in stainless-steel
tanks and on Tuesday is pumped into 8.5-ounce jars and packaged.

Boetje's has long had a strong regional following. The majority of business is
large-chain grocery stores with about 30 percent independent stores and
restaurants. It produces about 36,000 jars a month, twice that in the
summer. It is the exclusive mustard for the John Deere Classic PGA
Tournament held in the Quad Cities in July.

Boetje's, 2736 12th St., Rock Island, Illinois, does offer free, guided
production tours for individuals and groups. Please call in advance for tours
at 309-788-4352. For more information, their website is
http://www.boetjefoods.com. (Due to technical problems, it is down at the
current time, and should be back live in late-March.)

For more famous products locally-made in the Quad Cities, visit
http://www.visitquadcities.com.