THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE JARS
Every product in this shop has a person attached to it. This page is where they get their name back — where they work, what they make, and what they told us when we asked why they do it that way.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
We look for small producers who can answer a specific question without checking with anyone: how much did you make this year, and why that much? Scale is the first filter — we work with people who choose not to grow, because not scaling is a decision and usually the reason the product still tastes of something. Then comes place: a named parish, not a region. Then method: low-intervention, seasonal, explainable in a sentence. And finally the part no audit measures — whether they want to talk about it. A producer who will not tell you how a thing is made is telling you something anyway.
HOW WE WORK WITH THEM
We visit before we buy, and we buy in the quantities they can actually make, not the quantities we would like to sell. We pay the price they ask; we do not run reverse auctions and we do not ask anyone to strip a recipe to hit a shelf price. Everything is bought outright, so a slow month here is our problem, not theirs. In exchange we ask for two things: the full story of how the product is made, in enough detail to publish, and the right to send you to their door. Several of them already host our guests during a tour. The shop is the same relationship, in a box.
WE BUY WHAT THEY CAN MAKE, NOT WHAT WE COULD SELL.
WHAT WE GUARANTEE
- The producer is named on the product page, not hidden behind our label.
- The origin is a parish or a municipality, never just a country.
- The process is described in plain language, including the parts that are less charming.
- Composition, allergens, net weight and shelf life come from the producer's own label, and the label wins if the two ever disagree.
- When a batch runs out, the page says sold out for now. Small producers, small batches — we do not substitute a lookalike and hope you will not notice.
THE PRODUCERS
Three so far. Each one has a full page of their own, and every product they make links back to it.
Casa Negrilho
- Makes: black garlic
- Where: São Teotónio, Odemira
- Working since: 2014
Two people, one curing chamber and a field of Branco de Vila Nova garlic. They started curing for themselves, sold the surplus at the Odemira market, and have never grown beyond what the chamber holds.
"If you rush it, you get brown garlic that tastes of nothing. Sixty days or do not bother."
Read the full profile →
Oh! My Cod
- Makes: Alentejo table olives
- Where: São Miguel de Machede, Évora, Alentejo
- Working since: 2016
The second producer on this page is us. Oh! My Cod owns a property in Alentejo where we already run the olive harvest as an experience — guests pick, we press, everyone eats far too much bread at the end of it. The table olives in this shop come from those same trees: Galega, picked green, cracked and cured in brine, which is what azeitona britada means. Britada is the past participle of the verb to crack — the olive is split open so the brine can get in and the bitterness can get out. It is the oldest domestic preserving method in the region and the reason a September harvest is still on a table in March.
Picked green by hand in late October, cracked one at a time with a stone, then left in water changed every day for ten days until the bitterness goes. Only then the brine, with garlic, oregano and a strip of lemon peel.
"The water tells you when it is ready. You taste it, not the calendar."
Read the full profile →
Ribeiro & Filhos
- Makes: the printing on our aprons, t-shirts, tote bags and tea towels
- Where: Arcozelo, Barcelos
- Working since: 1987
The creatures have to be printed by somebody, and we would rather that somebody had a name too. A textile workshop of eleven people, two streets from the market where the Barcelos rooster is sold to tourists. They print with water-based inks and refuse runs under a hundred units, which suits us.
"We can print anything. Whether it survives forty washes is a different question, and that is the one we answer."
Read the full profile →
Note: this page grows one producer at a time, and slowly. If a name is missing here, it is because the product is not in the shop yet — not because we have left somebody out.
