Our SAL de IBIZA Fleur de Sel
We at SAL de IBIZA explain to you here first hand how our salt is made and in our online shop you can order the fine Fleur de Sel and many other delicatessen products from SAL de IBIZA safely and quickly to your home. Find your favourite product in the packaging that suits you best and bring your piece of Ibiza home.
If you want to know how the natural salt is harvested on Ibiza, we will introduce you to the extraction method here.
The special thing about our hand-harvested natural salt is its crystal structure in the form of a salt flower and a high content of minerals and trace elements in the residual moisture. The delicate salt crystals of our Fleur de Sel crunch a little on the tongue before melting in the mouth like snowflakes.
Our Fleur de Sel from Ibiza is packaged in an iconic ceramic jar that can be resealed with a natural cork, bringing a holiday feel to your kitchen with its aqua blue and golden sun.
What is Fleur de Sel?
Fleur de Sel is extracted from seawater. The salt pans on Ibiza were established there almost 2,800 years ago by the Phoenicians, because of their particularly favourable geological conditions. These original areas of all Mediterranean salt production, with their salt basins of varying sizes, but always accurately delimited by clay dams, are still the source of this unique type of salt, a true gift from Mother Nature to us. According to centuries-old tradition, our Fleur de Sel is still harvested by hand by the local salt farmers. The evaporation of the particularly clear and clean sea water in the Posidonia fields between the Pitiusas (Ibiza & Formentera) creates the delicate salt flakes in the salt pans. Today, the salt flats of Ibiza are a highly protected nature reserve, which was also declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999.
How is Fleur de Sel extracted?
Fleur de Sel is a completely natural salt that crystallises in the form of delicate flakes on the surface of the water. Salt farmers separate the areas along the sea coast with clay dams. In the evaporation basins thus created, the seawater crystallises out due to the influence of a lot of sun, low rainfall and steady wind, and the Fleur de Sel can be skimmed off the surface of the water by hand.
What is so special about Fleur de Sel?
Fleur de Sel is the salt flower or salt blossom. Only the delicate and wafer-thin salt crystals that form on the surface of the water are used. In their crystalline form, they resemble flowers. Fleur de Sel looks beautiful, has a special texture - it crunches on the tongue. In terms of taste, it is strikingly mild and delicate and contains an above-average amount of additional minerals and trace elements in its relatively high residual moisture. Fleur de Sel is much less pungent and bitter than conventional rock salt; it is rather a veritable spice instead of a classic kitchen salt.
Why Fleur de Sel from Ibiza?
On the warm, sunny coast of the island, there is a centuries-old tradition of salt harvesting. For this purpose, salt farmers have built evaporation basins in which the salty seawater evaporates only through the forces of the sun and the wind. On very hot, windless days, the salt crystallised on the water surface is harvested by hand with special shovels, which pretty much resemble pool-surface skimmers.
Are Fleur de Sel and sea salt different salts?
Fleur de Sel is also a sea salt that is produced in salt marshes through the evaporation of seawater. Fleur de Sel with its fine, flowery crystal structure, however, is only produced on windless and very hot days and is skimmed off by hand by the salt workers. Fleur de Sel is a particularly mild and gentle type of salt that is appreciated by gourmet chefs from all over the world as a noble delicacy.
Why do the salt marshes look so colourful?
The different shades from light pink to dark purple of the salt fields are caused by a tiny alga, the Dunaliela Salinae, which consists largely of beta-carotene. It loves the salty environment and readily inhabits salt marshes around the world. There it serves as food for the brine shrimp, which are among the most salt-tolerant creatures on our planet. These in turn form the favourite food of the typically pink flamingos and are thus responsible for their pink plumage. The less the seawater in the evaporation ponds becomes and the higher their salt concentration, the more intense their colour becomes, turning into a vibrant purple just before the salt is harvested.
