We invited some interested chefs and foodies for an informal salt session on March 24th 2020. Nothing about Blackthorn happens quickly, so it was with great excitement that we had finally reached lift-off in March: tower snagging and pan experimenting done, boxes designed and filled. The Blackthorn bark tannins lend the salt a certain depth of flavour, which is ‘zinged up’ by its essential smack of the sea (in a good way) – people report a sweetness that echos across tastebuds after the initial saltiness. The result is a salt which restaurants and hotels, such as The Fife Arms, and chefs, who have had the chance to try it, such as Garry McLean and Steven Lamb, are excited about.

There no additions made, no bleaching or chemicals involved, merely filtering. Finally, after a week or so from leaving the sea, the delicately golden salt crystals are poured into wee recyclable boxes. In Panhouse we complete the process and gather the crystals - our Salters have developed the ‘Blackthorn Technique’, involving alchemy and intuition in order to produce the perfect salt: a quest we don’t take lightly. Gregorie took a punt: this slow, sustainable process hasn’t ever been used to make sea salt crystals before and, there are no other Thorn Towers producing salt today… The trickle-factor means that we use approximately 85% less power to draw salt crystals from seawater than traditional methods. In this weird and wonderful method, salty water is trickled down an enormous wall of blackthorn bundles, evaporating all the time to produce even saltier brine using only the forces of nature: wind and sun.

After visiting a graduation tower around 12 years ago, Blackthorn Salt‘s Gregorie was drawn to the unorthodox idea that this would be the best, most practical and effective way to bring back salt-making to the Scottish West Coast, where historically there had been lots of thriving local salt boiling enterprises.

Download gin made with blackthorn