Producer

We're proud to be a part of the Eastern Shore community of farmers and makers. We have a great amount of respect for the salt making traditions of England, France and other countries but we believe that we shouldn’t have to rely on container ships traveling 3,800 miles to enjoy culinary grade flake salt right here at home.

We’ve spent over 10 years perfecting our sea salt and the result is a bright white, flake sea salt with a clean, oceanic flavor and a sweet finish. We’re extremely proud to be Virginia’s first coastal saltworks since the 1700s!

Barrier Islands Salt Co. handcrafts sea salt from the East Coast's last coastal wilderness, the Virginia Coast Reserve. This 130,000 acre nature preserve is protected by the Nature Conservancy and naturally filtered each day by thousands of acres of eelgrass meadows and oyster beds. Our salt making process starts with an eight mile journey by boat into the preserve, where we collect crystal clear sea water at high tide in about 60 feet of water. Back on shore at our production location, we filter the sea water and transfer it into kettles where we reduce it down into a brine. We filter it once more and transfer it into shallow rectangular pans which are warmed just enough to allow salt flakes to form on the brine's surface then become heavy enough to fall to the bottom of the pan. We scoop the salt out and spread it in trays in our drying room where it will stay for several days before it's hand jarred. The total process takes about two weeks from boat to jar and is the same method that has been used by European salt makers for centuries. It takes 100 gallons of seawater to make just 20 lbs of sea salt.