When did the company start ?

Angsthelm & Fils was set up in 1945 by my grandfather. It is located in the centre of the “magic triangle”, in Krautergersheim, a small town with 1,600 inhabitants, 30 km south of Strasbourg. At first, my grandfather primarily grew and processed cabbages. My father, Paul, opened a new site in 1970 and the activity was essentially based on canned goods. Ten years later, we started making our own raw, packaged sauerkraut which was acknowledged as excellent quality. In fact, our clientele expanded significantly from that moment on. When my father retired, I took over the company’s management. My brother Fabien, who is my partner, deals with all the farming side of the business. The company is composed of an upstream farming part and a downstream processing part.

How do you work ?

We produce about 2,000 tons/year of raw or cooked Alsace sauerkraut, which comes from a cabbage harvest of roughly 4,000 tons. To make a kilo of sauerkraut, you need two kilos of cabbage. The waste is used for organic fertilizer. To obtain a better quality cabbage, we use multiple cropping, which means rotating between crops of wheat, corn and potato. Forty of the farm’s 120 hectares are devoted to cabbages. We use early, semi-early, late and semi-late varieties in order to stagger production as evenly as possible. The variety known as Quintal d’Alsace, weighing between 5 and 7 kg, is an exceptional product for making traditional sauerkraut. It has a fine, long texture, a lovely white colour and a very nice taste. It demands good, very deep, silt-laden soil, a warm climate in summer, quite a sunny autumn with cold nights and a cold winter. Planting is done in May and June and the harvesting is done from July/August to November. We practise reasoned agriculture, according to very strict specifications. We opted for product quality certification (Certified Quality Criteria) which vouches for a quality and traceability.

How do you make sauerkraut ?

In the old days, the cabbage was picked manually. Everything is mechanized now. However, the processing is still very manual. To make sauerkraut you start by stumping the cabbage (removing the stalk), then you remove the leaves (getting rid of green leaves and only keeping the white ones), slice it into thin strips (spinning knives) and salt it with coarse salt (about 1.8%). The resulting product is then placed in a vat (100m3) to begin the anaerobic-type fermentation. With the action of the salt and sheltered from air, a lacto-fermentation starts that gives the sauerkraut its slightly acid taste and makes it very digestible. A pickled cabbage is less acid at the start of the campaign than at the end. A good acidity ratio should not exceed 1.5%.

After tasting the sauerkraut, we adjust the rinsing depending on the degree of acidity. We de-vat it to order, since it is also packaged to order, never in advance, for preservation reasons. Once packaged, its use-by-date is 70 days. For cooked sauerkraut, the use-by-date is 120 days and the acidity does not exceed 0.5%. In Alsace, we prefer our sauerkraut more acid than in the rest of France, which we call ‘angel hair’ because it is very long and thin. Cooked sauerkraut is prepared in huge 500 kg cooking pots, representing 15 tons/day, according to different recipes: with spices, white wine, Riesling and lard for traditional sauerkraut; vegetable oil, spices, Riesling for the more trendy version; and champagne and diced bacon for the upmarket version, popular with restaurant owners. Sauerkraut from Alsace is one of our gastronomic prides.

How is the pickled cabbage market faring ?

The national production remains quite stable, despite a slight decrease in national consumption, now at 700g/year/inhabitant. Twenty years ago, we used to consume 1 kg/year/inhabitant. In Alsace, the consumption exceeds 800g/year/inhabitant. With fifteen producers, our region produces 60,000 tons/year (75% of the French production). The Krautergersheim area, where I operate, makes 25% of French sauerkraut on its own.

What do you think of Rungis Market ?

We supply various operators at Rungis Market. My father was already supplying wholesalers at Rungis twenty years ago and it was through this market that our sauerkraut became known in the Paris region. It is an important outlet for us because of its capacity to promote trends and upmarket products. However, the attendance seems to be falling off slightly...