The first bloom: the 2026 Safra is born
It happened today: the first flor de sal of the year formed on the surface of the pans. June sun, an Atlantic breeze, the salinity just right — and there it was. A note from the first harvest of the 2026 Safra, in photographs.
Some days you wait for all year. Today was one of them.
This morning, in the pans at Venta Moinhos, the June sun and an Atlantic breeze met a salinity that had reached exactly the right point — and on the surface of the água mãe appeared the first flor de sal of the 2026 Safra.
Flor de sal cannot be manufactured. It is waited for. And when the water, the sun and the wind align, it is skimmed by hand — or it is lost.
The art of the skim
Flor de sal is the cream of the salt pan, and it keeps its own time: a thin, fragile veil that forms at the very surface of the water and that, if it is not gathered in time, grows heavy and sinks to the clay floor.
So it is skimmed by hand, with a long-handled skimmer grazing the surface without ever touching the bed. It is the marnoto’s oldest gesture — and it is what gives the flor that light, flaking texture that melts on the tongue.
Salt the way the estuary makes it
No washing, nothing added. Gathered by hand and dried in the sun alone, it keeps the magnesium, calcium and potassium that refined salt loses along the way.
Nothing added, nothing taken away.
What comes next
The laboratory analysis will come once it clears our checks — we’ll share it here, as always. And every jar will carry a QR code, for anyone who wants to glimpse the exact day it was gathered.
For now, the joy of the day is enough: the 2026 Safra is born — by hand, in the sun, having waited for the right moment.
Nature provides. We protect.
— From Castro Marim to your table — hand-harvested, rooted in every grain.