GO BEYOND FOUR SEASONS

EARLY

MELON – GALIA
Cadiz, Spain
Apr - Jun

We source sweet and aromatic Galia from a cooperative in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cadiz – an area renowned for its melons. In our second year of working together, we’re able to bring in ripe, wonderfully grown melons as early as April, ahead of Zerbinati’s Honey Moon and Sun Sweet varieties, which start arriving from late May into June.

In Sanlúcar de Barrameda, there’s a century old tradition of growing melons in a particular fashion. Growers here practise minimal irrigation in sandy soil with saline water. In this harsh environment, the plants are forced to reach deep into the soil to draw on nutrients. The effort is palpable: the melons have full-bodied flavour in dense, undiluted flesh.

Beyond irrigation techniques, the growers train their melons up trellises –  a method that allows for better pruning and precise harvesting, now a rare practice among commercial growers.

Although labour intensive, this allows for better airflow, more effective pruning and even less water uptake. Each is harvested at perfect ripeness, attractively cut with its long stalk still attached.

LATE

TOMATO – MARINDA
Pachino, Sicily
Feb - May

Expect no more than three weeks on Marinda Tomatoes. As temperatures rise in Sicily, the tomatoes ripen faster and growers have to be extra vigilant in order to catch them before they are overly mature.

With sourcing teams on the ground, we’re attentive to these seasonal changes and continue to source until flavour drops off. Where the start of the season brought taut skin and crunchy flesh with umami richness and acidic tang — the result of slow growth in cooler temperatures – now we can expect softer flesh with lower acidity and more rounded sweetness. These final harvests make the perfect bridge until the first soil-grown summer varieties kick off shortly in May.

Of all our Winter Tomatoes, we consider the Marinda to carry the greatest complexity –  balancing the bright acidity of its seeds with thick, deeply-ridged skin and crunchy, umami flesh. Despite its incredible flavour, low yield and intense labour demands make Marinda hard to find beyond their local market. We’re working with Sebastiano and his cooperative of small-scale growers on the southeast coast of Sicily to extend the reach of this unique variety.

Where intensively-grown tomato plants can produce up to 80kg per square metre, a Marinda grown with minimum intervention averages at just five – a remarkably low yield which demonstrates our growers’ commitment to flavour above all else.

Like all Winter Tomatoes, Marinda’s unique profile is derived from the stress of the cold and salinity of their growing environment. With farms lining the coast – some just 50m from the shoreline – the plants are sparsely irrigated using fresh seawater, sometimes naturally during high tides. Drawing down into the deep reserve of salts and minerals in the sand, the resulting fruits are firm, with an exceptionally high concentration of nutrients.