Collias Estates Olive Oil and More

Having visited this beautiful estate high above the coastal town of Agia, Crete, I can attest to the quality and overall experience I had at the Agia Estate. The owner, Spiro, oversees the daily operation of the estate. He grows and harvests everything by hand, using traditional Cretan methods, which yield the highest quality artisan produce, olives and sea salt.

The Agia Sea Salt.
At first glance, Agia Sea Salt looks like other artisan sea salts. Snow white flakes and nuggets. The crystals are semi-hard and crunchy. The crystals are hard enough for a salt mill, yet soft enough to easily break apart between your fingers for sprinkling on your favorite dishes. The taste is fresh, clean and balanced with subtle minerality, making it a perfect choice for both the kitchen and dining table.

As a self-appointed home chef and food enthusiast, I was interested in seeing first hand how sea salt was extracted from the sea and what makes Agia Sea Salt so good. So, while visiting Crete, I was fortunate to be given a personal a tour by Spiro, the owner of Agia. He showed me how his team brings his salt from sea-to-table, by the centuries-old method in which Agia extracts it’s salt from the sea.

As the tide recedes back to the Aegean Sea, the low tide exposes porous volcanic rock, which quickly dries from the the hot Mediterranean sun, leaving pure salt deposits. These crystallized deposits are quickly scooped up by hand in “salt spoons” by skilled and nimble salt harvesters.

Once harvested, the salt goes through a quality control process, in which larger, non-salt particles like rock fragments are removed. The salt is then packaged by hand and ready for use.

This is among the best sea salt I’ve ever used and I routinely give jars of it to my home cook and chef friends.