RAW SPICES

I was lucky enough to be born in a malouinière, a 18th century corsair house in which Robert Surcouf played as a kid. The sailors’ songs, the tales from the Cape Horn, the Terres Neuvas and the spices hunters from the East India Company inspired me during these first years. Later, the marine and adventure literature satisfied my desire for the unknown and meeting people.

To translate the spirit of Saint-Malo, I turned my attention to the spices that were already in the city during the 17th and 18th century, spices from the East and the New World. I read again and again and travelled with Jane all around the world through the itineraries of Saint Malo's greatest families of shipowners. We roamed the coasts of South America, Caraïbeans, Indian Ocean, Mascarene Islands, the coasts of Malabar, the Maluku islands, South-East Asia and African coasts. Tell the story of the marine adventures of my Brittany was my challenge.

I have used the spices that I brought back like the other sailors of this country did before me, fuelled by the fantasy they hold. A bit like the seeds of a lost paradise, the Garden of Eden. Isn’t it the reason the Westerners started to roam the oceans, looking for this lost paradise?

For more than thirty years, on the routes of the great Bretons sailors, we met amazing men and women. They made us discover the varieties of peppers and unknown spices, like the Talauma, wild pepper from Vietnam. They taught us how to recognize higher quality of vanilla, cardamom, turmeric and cumin. They passed on to us their wisdom, their balance and relationships to others. They inspired us with their humility, magnanimity, beauty and kindness.

Most of our producers live in India (around 130 little farms), in Cambodia and Madagascar.

We chose to buy most of their spices at the FTLO (Fair Trade Labelling Organization) price to help them in their development. The vast majority of our spices are organic, they are never ionised to preserve their active principles.