Sea Salt Story

“Our ways are patient, gentle and sustainable: Scottish West Coast sea water is slowly trickled through the country’s only graduation thorn tower whilst being evaporated by the exhilarating West Coast winds.”

These are the words of Gregorie Marshall, the man behind the salt that gives our Sea Salt Chocolate its mouth-dancing, flavour enhancing, wild Atlantic zing!

The story of Blackthorn Salt is a staggering achievement: the creation of the world's only graduation tower - an ancient technique creating a giant tower of thorns to capture the wind and sun to create a mineral-rich sea salt. It is a beautiful testament to the ingenuity and tenacity of humans: using ancient wisdom to harness the forces of nature.

Read on to discover more, written in their own poetic words-

The first stages of the Blackthorn journey are wild and solely require nature: West Coast seas and winds. Reminiscent of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, our imposing tower of thorns sits facing the sea and the mountains of Arran. This spiky structure is incredibly effective as well as being visually impressive: it enables a significant acceleration of the evaporation process required for sea salt production.

Sea water is dribbled through 54 wooden taps and a series of channels which are checked and adjusted daily according to the weather.

The sea water seeps along every twig and thorn, maximising exposure to our powerful and persistent coastal winds (and any sun that might be showing face). The emerging droplets partially evaporate and any remaining liquid becomes a more concentrated brine.

It took years to perfect our unique method of harnessing the wind and sea to ensure we create a better salt, a ‘salt of the world’ as well as ‘for the world’ and one that we are proud of.

The final stage is all skill and alchemy: we take the now exceptionally salty brine, add our Salters and their intricate knowledge of our salt, some gentle heat and nothing else... at all.

Our Salters Gregorie and Malky work together, looking after the pan and the tower, perfecting their ‘paidling’, drawing off the salt and carefully ensuring that each batch is of the highest quality with the perfect ‘crystal crunch factor’ every time.

Blackthorn Master Salter Gregorie has lived and breathed salt since day 1 as his family has been involved in all things salt for 5 generations.

By an uncanny twist of fate, just as Ayrshire’s last remaining salt pans were becoming redundant, Gregorie’s great, great grandfather founded his family business. They soon became the UK specialists in all things salt. A helpful background for Gregorie when finally, in 2019, he was able to realise his long-held dream to reignite Scottish salt-making on the Ayrshire coast and Blackthorn Salt was born.

It was not a simple journey though, Gregorie came across the impressive graduation towers in Poland and Germany back in 2007. Although those thorn towers haven’t produced any food salt for over 50 years, Gregorie was inspired by the practicality, naturalness and beauty of the process.

12 years of committed research, language issues, prototypes and umpteen trials and errors later, the Blackthorn Tower was built. For the first time in history sea water, not rock brine was trickled down a bespoke thorn tower and, on 20th June 2019, the very first mini batch of Blackthorn Salt crystals was hand harvested.

Salt had finally come home.

Malky, Blackthorn Salter: Born and raised on the Ayrshire coast, where his family have lived for generations, Malky cannot remember a day without the sea, the background to daily life.

’Creating salt from that body of water is something truly special; my ancestors were probably involved with the pans on this coast’.

Malky apprenticed with Gregorie straight after school and has been immersed in his own salt-learning and making journey ever since.

In daily charge of the thorn tower, Malky knows the nuances of every tap and most of the twigs, especially the stubborn ones. He watches the sea and the weather minutely and is in tune with the Blackthorn salt pan and every aspect of crystal emergence.

www.blackthornsalt.co.uk