Cornish Sea Salt

Cornish Sea Salt began on a cliff-side smallholding near the Lizard, where Atlantic spray and sunshine suggested an old idea made new: take water from clean offshore currents and let wind and warmth do what they have always done — leave salt behind. My partner was a chef tired of bland refined sodium; I was a fisherman’s daughter who knew these waters. We built pans, waited through failed batches, and eventually produced flakes that crunched and dissolved with a minerality shop salt never offered.

Harvesting is seasonal and weather-dependent in ways factory salt ignores. We draw seawater at approved tides, filter carefully, and evaporate in greenhouses and open pans without boiling away everything but sodium chloride. Trace minerals remain — not enough to medicalise, but enough to taste. Crystals are raked by hand, dried gently, and packed without anti-caking agents because we would rather sell honestly than pour forever.

Our shed employs local people year-round, with summer intensities when evaporation peaks. We use renewable energy where practical, recycle wash water, and refuse contracts that demand bleaching or chemical stripping. Cooking salt and finishing flakes serve different kitchens; both behave transparently in recipes.

Chefs visit the pans at quiet tides, and we keep sample jars from memorable batches so we remember which wind and warmth produced the flake we liked best. That memory guides every harvest decision we make beside the Atlantic, tide after tide, season after season.

Today Cornish Sea Salt supplies Maxwells with salt that remembers the Atlantic. Cornwall’s coast is hard living and clear beauty; our work belongs to both. We are not the only sea salt in Britain, but we are proud to stand among those who believe a pinch should taste of somewhere real, harvested by hand and packed with care for everyday cooking and finishing alike.

Values: Hand-harvested, mineral-rich