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Chances are, unless you’ve made it yourself, you’ve never tasted a rhubarb jelly. And even if you did make it, you probably added apples, strawberries, cherries, raisins, or even Jell-O to sweeten it up.

Rhubarb is a member of the buckwheat family, and although the part of the plant eaten is not technically a fruit (it’s a fleshy stem), it’s most often cooked like fruit. Because it is puckeringly tart, people either add staggering amounts of sugar to rhubarb or sweeten it up with sweet fruit. Strawberries are a classic companion.

Now there’s a tangy, pure rhubarb jelly, made only from rhubarb, sugar and fruit pectin (in that order), available from Maury Island Farms, a 20-year-old company located on an arm of Vashon Island in Washington’s Puget Sound. The bright, ruby-red jelly has just the right balance of sweet to tartness.

Although best known for red-currant jelly, Maury Island Farms also offers such regional specialties as gooseberry, loganberry, blueberry, raspberry and marionberry jams, cherry preserves, black currant jelly and now, rhubarb jelly. To keep the tart taste of the fruit, owners Peter and Jude Shepherd cook all their products in small batches, using a lot less sugar than conventional recipes.

Two 10-ounce jars of the jams, jellies and preserves cost $13.50. A four-pack sampler of 5 1/2-ounce jars costs $15.95. There’s also a $3.50 packing and shipping charge for each shipment.

Maury Island Farm, P.O. Box L, Vashon, Wash. 98070. (800) 356-5880.