The Town of Castro Marim is Tucked so far east into Portugal that you might hear echoes of Spanish from across the Guadiana River. Though not a famed salt mecca on the order of Guerande, France, or Maldon, England, people here have been transforming seawater into seasoning for millennia. Jorge Raiado married into this tradition 12 years ago, effectively becoming part of the second generation to operate a company called Salmarim.
It seems simple enough: The tide runs in from the Atlantic Ocean through man-made canals, filling Salmarim’s grid of shallow mud ponds with water, which the sun gradually evaporates, yielding a crust of salt on top.When Raiado started working at Salmarim, “they were harvesting everything that floated, and so I did the same,” he says. The problem is that the top crust is made of prized