Golden pasta- Celebrating their Gold medal success the Yarra Valley Pasta team, from left, Candice Fradley, Sue Grovenor, Eric Jorgenson and Margot Jones and the Colaneri family, Mary, Michael and Fel

By Kath Gannaway
GOLD! Gold! Gold! Yarra Valley Pasta has taken out three gold medals at the prestigious Sydney Royal Show, including Champion of the Fine Food Show.
Competing against 40 contenders, the Colaneri family business, which has operated in Healesville’s East End since 1997 took champion gold for their egg spaghettini and gold medals also for their Lemon and Parsley and Chilli linguines.
Michael Colaneri, who oversees production and quality, said the triple-gold was a fantastic result for the whole Yarra Valley Pasta team.
The pasta is made on site by hand using a small industrial pasta machine. Mr Colaneri said the outstanding results were a natural progression as they continued to create the very best pasta.
“We certainly didn’t enter thinking what are the judges looking for, you just continue to produce the best product using the best possible ingredients, small batches and lots of care,” he said.
He attributed the show success to the strong foundations of the business, pioneered by his mother Mary and sister Lisa based on family traditions, and to the loyal team of pasta makers who, he said, produced close to a tonne of pasta each week.
“Everyone who came to our place for dinner loved the food and loved the atmosphere, and although we have moved with the times and introduced more contemporary flavours and more efficient production systems, we maintain small batch production that ensures consistency using recipes that have not changed since mum began making it in the shopfront 14 years ago,” Mr Colaneri said.
He said the ethos of the company was embraced by everyone on the team.
“It takes years to build up the sort of quality reputation we have and everyone here has that at the heart of what we do,” he said.
The business now operates five days a week and has a metropolitan retail outlet at the Prahran Market.