A taste of Dorset – Salary from the sea
Olivia Lee meets Jethro Tennant, founder of Dorset Sea Salt Company, a new business that’s reviving the county’s long-forgotten trade
Published in January ’18
On the coast of Portland Bill, where frothy waves crash beneath the red and white lighthouse, 24-year-old Jethro Tennant collects seawater. In wellies and an oversized raincoat, he quickly ferries 15 large buckets up to his car. He used to tell people that it was for his saltwater aquarium – a line he’d offer inquisitive passers-by to ward off further questions. But that was before he officially launched his business this September. Now he tells the truth – that he is collecting it to make salt, as the founder of Dorset’s only sea salt company.
Jethro ready to collect the raw material for his gourmet sea salt: the mineral rich waters of Portland
Salt is a precious commodity. There were times when it was worth more than gold. During the Roman period, soldiers were thought to have been paid in salt – their ‘salarium’, or salt allowance, the origin of our word salary. Our language is riddled with references to salt; ‘to be worth one’s salt’, ‘above the salt’, ‘salt of the earth’. In the Middle East, salt was used to make covenants – sprinkling a pinch of salt and saying ‘there is salt between us’ would lock the speaker into a promise. Wars have been fought for salt; the French revolution was largely a result of salt tax, and Mahatma Gandhi’s 241-mile march against the British Raj salt monopoly launched Indian independence. Not to mention that salt is a seasoning we can’t live without – literally. It sends nerve impulses through our bodies, helps our muscles contract, and regulates fluid balance so we don’t become dehydrated.
And yet the once thriving Dorset sea salt trade – a trade which spanned from the eighth century, when monks from Sherborne set up a salt works at the mouth of the River Lim in Lyme Regis, to the 19th century, when sea salt was harvested and sold commercially in Lilliput, Poole – has disappeared. Jethro discovered this history as he was looking for things to do in the area. It was 2015 and he’d just returned to his parent’s house in Portland Bill, after graduating from Winchester University. He stumbled across news of Portland’s salt pans, on the coast of East Weares, and decided to go and have a look. These large expanses of rock flood at high spring tides, collecting pools of salty water. As the liquid gradually evaporates in the sun, salt crystals become encrusted on the rocks.
‘It’s crazy that the tools to make salt right were right there, but no one seemed to be doing it,’ says Jethro. ‘Especially surprising when the industry had been such a prominent part of our local history.’ At the time Jethro was working as a teaching assistant – his original plan, having studied Politics and Education at university, was to become a teacher. ‘There wasn’t a eureka moment,’ he says. ‘I didn’t suddenly decide to start a salt business, but each day I became more obsessed.’ He’d stay up late reading about it – how to collect it, the difference between grains, how to taste a good salt from a bad. He finally decided to harvest it himself.
Jethro doesn’t have to go to the ends of the earth for his salt, but he does have to go to the end of Portland
The technique is simple enough – a basic internet search will yield a number of instructional videos. Seawater is passed through a physical filter to remove sand, shells or sediments that might be lingering in the liquid. It is boiled down until it becomes a highly concentrated brine, at which point it can be left to evaporate over a couple of days. Crystals gradually form, which can then be collected, cleaned and dried. But as Jethro says, ‘It’s really easy to make a rubbish salt,’ – which is how his first few hundred batches turned out.
Fine tuning his product was a lot of trial and error. ‘I spent months testing timings, temperatures, humidity – if you leave it too long, the salt crystals can drop to the bottom and clump together, but not long enough and you’re left with a mixture like wet sand. I had to work out various kinds of filtration to remove all traces of sand. I also had to get rid of the magnesium found in seawater, which leaves a slightly bitter taste. It’s all very Breaking Bad.’
He specifically chose the spot by Portland Bill lighthouse to collect water because it’s where two tidal currents meet, leading to some of the freshest, cleanest water around. When half a litre of seawater produces just a pinch of salt, that’s a lot of back and forth. But back and forth he’d go, lugging those 25-litre buckets from the ocean to his workshop, mumbling about his saltwater aquarium, and sloshing water in the back of
his car.
After several months of hobby harvesting for friends and family, he finally pinned down a technique. But this was just the start. He needed packaging, a website, equipment; not to mention the financial backing necessary to launch a business. ‘It was really difficult wanting something so much, but having no means of making it possible,’ he says. ‘Everything cost money, from buying sample packaging to accounting apps, even small things like extra buckets.’
The final result: a beautifully flaked gourmet sea salt
That was when, in 2016, he found out about The Prince’s Trust – a charity set up in 1976 by the Prince of Wales to help young people get into the workforce. Jethro joined their Enterprise programme, aimed at 18- to 30-year-olds who want to start their own business. He was assigned a mentor and given help in creating a business plan. After an interview that Jethro described as ‘a little like Dragon’s Den’, he was awarded the financial aid he needed.
Dorset Sea Salt Co. officially launched in September. Jethro visits the local markets every Saturday, from Bridport to Dorchester. ‘I feel even more Breaking Bad now,’ he says, ‘driving around with bags of salt crystals and heading home with a box of cash.’ Dorset Sea Salt is already being used in several local restaurants, including The Club House in West Bexington and Mallams Restaurant in Weymouth, as well as a number of delis. A restaurant in Kensington, London, has also started using it. Jethro admits that salt might not make him rich, but that wasn’t why he started it – ‘I could have got a graduate job in London if I’d wanted that,’ he says. Instead, it’s about the lifestyle. Working with his hands, creating a local product for local businesses, reviving a trade that has been dead in the area for years. And after all, there was a time when salt was worth more than gold. For Jethro, perhaps that still holds true today.
www.dorsetseasalt.co.uk
