Salty seas off Cork coast are inspiration for new artisan business

SALT has long been an important ingredient in Ireland’s food history.

It preserved valuable butter and cheese so milk could be eaten all year round. It allowed fletches of bacon to be cured so there might be meat to eat for months before the days of refrigeration, and enabled corned beef and herrings to be stored in barrels and shipped halfway across the world.

We are surrounded by salty seas; 3.5% of the weight of seawater comes from dissolved salts. We can taste it in the air when it’s stormy and feel it on our skin after an invigorating briny dip.

It brings all food to life.

Down a narrow boreen, not far from the Old Head of Kinsale, a new artisan sea salt is made in small batches, called Salt of Kinsale.

I met founder, Billy Hosford, amid Salt of Kinsale’s pre-launch, and found out the secret of this salt is purity and simplicity.

“Years ago, I was in Indonesia. People scooped up seawater in clam shells and set them on the beach for the sunshine to evaporate away the water and leave behind sea salt,” says Billy. 

It was so low tech. I think we all have a tendency for complexity, but I really want to keep things simple.

What does simplicity look like at Salt of Kinsale?

Every few months, Billy makes the short journey down to the beach with a 1,000-litre storage tank on a trailer, fills up with seawater, and brings it back to a standard polytunnel housing three beds lined with black liner to hold the seawater. Water is piped through a microfilter, and trickle fed using gravity from the tank into the beds.

Over the course of five weeks, the water will slowly evaporate and as it does small salt crystals begin to form on the surface of the water, eventually dropping to the bottom. When all the water has evaporated, what is left are small rock-like salt crystals, which are scooped up and stored.

For now, production is on a micro scale, but Billy has already acquired a six-acre site a short distance away, and secured planning permission to erect three 60x40 foot tunnels and a salt shed big enough to grow into.

As to where this all started, well, that’s been a much less linear journey across time and oceans.

“I’ve been self-employed my whole life,” says Billy. “I moved to England from Cork to study marine technology. I was obsessed with surfing at the time, and I wanted to go to a university and do a course that would keep me next to the ocean.”

After, Billy travelled around surfing, working on tall ships in charge of complex rigging systems, and met his future wife, Elaine, in Dublin.

“I had a sister who lived in Barbados, she had a business over there. That was 2008 when things were not too great in Ireland, so we decided to try and set a business. We set up a company called Art Splash. Elaine used to teach art to adults and kids and run a gallery, then I opened a restaurant alongside.”

The couple lived in Barbados for a decade, running a successful business and raising their three children. But by 2018, the pull to come home was becoming ever stronger.

Tropical paradises are amazing for a while, but they become normal and then you miss home. There’s that time when, if you don’t come back, your kids get ingrained in the system, and you never leave. I was conscious of that.

Billy and Elaine still part own that business but left its day-to-day operation to return to Ireland and establish a new family home in Kinsale.

But it took a while for the idea to percolate; for the salt to come, says Elaine. 

“It feels like different parts of my life came together. We’re very much connected to the sea, I’ve always been in the water, a cook, and a foodie. The way I socialise is to go out, forage food and cook outside. 

It seemed like making salt brought all the things I’m into together.

Coming back to Ireland, Billy and Elaine had a vision to be as self-sufficient as possible.

“If you get into that self-sufficient foraging mindset, it’s kind of addictive trying to create everything you need. They say owning chickens is a gateway drug to radicalism, because you start off with a chicken and then suddenly you want to create everything yourself!”

The process of sea salt appearing is more like facilitation than creation for Billy – the less interference, the better, he says.

“It’s a human tendency to try and interfere to make things better. I think that’s the same with salt. I’m trying to not mess with it as much as I can. It takes restraint to say don’t try and improve it because it’s already what it is. That’s the beauty of it. Nearly the harder thing to do is to allow it to be what it is.”

Salt of Kinsale will be ‘soft launching’ at the end of June as Billy works towards upscaling production for next year, but that hasn’t stopped the eager chatter amongst the enthusiastic gastronomic community of Kinsale.

“The community has been unbelievably supportive,” says Billy. “Every restaurant, every retail outlet from shops to cafes to tourist shops are open to it. 

I’d love it to be a Kinsale product because this is the town where it’s been made and where the water has been collected from.

Salt of Kinsale is a rock salt, and designed to be used as a finishing salt, not thrown into the pot of boiling water. It has a melting texture and tastes the same as lips do after a sea swim.

“I spend so much time surfing, salt goes everywhere. Our salt reminds me of being in the sea, like you’ve just come out of the ocean. When you’re in the water, you get a taste of the ocean, it takes over all your senses.

“The way I produce salt, I feel it’s no different from going in the ocean, surfing and letting your skin naturally dry. If you lick your arm, you’re the exact same flavour as the ocean.”

Though Billy’s need for simplicity is real, the foodie within him also needs attention. In the future, that will be well fed by developing a range of flavoured salts inspired by seasonal forage.

“I’m really interested in doing the flavours,” says Billy, “There’s an area of creativity I could dive into by foraging for herbs and things in nature. There are so many ways you can introduce flavour into a product like salt. I don’t know where that’ll go exactly, but that’s exciting!”

Salt of Kinsale will sell primarily online at www.saltofkinsale.com