(water gurgling) (gentle upbeat music) ♪ Let's take a ride ♪ ♪ I've got the perfect place in mind ♪ ♪ We've got an hour or so to hide ♪ ♪ Monte Negra love of mine ♪ - [Matt] I like to say making sea salt is like, it's like a balance.

It's like an art and science.

♪ Just one more bend ♪ ♪ Let's find a brook or stream my friend ♪ - Hi, I'm Matt Mullins.

- And I'm Tami Mullins.

- And we are the co-owners of Newport Sea Salt.

♪ Who cares if we're a little late again ♪ - I was a naval officer for 20 years.

We were stationed over in Naples, Italy.

I worked for NATO.

And while we lived in Naples, Italy, we really fell into the food culture there, which is not hard to do.

Eat what's local, eat what's fresh, eat what's in season.

So we really started learning to appreciate the use of sea salt, which we had never really done before.

So that mentality of eating local, really good ingredients, but sourced locally kind of, you know, sat with us well.

And we took that back to America with us, back to Newport.

(upbeat music) We were very surprised we couldn't find local sea salt considering we are living in Newport, which is an island.

Rhode Island is the ocean state, and nobody in the state was making sea salt.

So we kind of had this little light bulb moment.

Like, I wonder if a little sea salt company would work well here in Newport, in Rhode Island.

(upbeat music) We source our ocean water from Brenton Reef area because it's fast-moving ocean water.

It's just beautiful.

It's like a swimming pool out there.

(upbeat music) And then we transport it here to Hope & Main, where we spend the entire day making sea water into sea salt.

- [Interviewer] Is that easy work?

- Is it easy work?

No, it's work.

It's definitely not easy.

But it's a labor of love.

To turn, you know, 140 gallons of ocean water to sea salt can take, you know, nine hours.

(upbeat music) We like to say there's two phases.

There's a boiling phase, and then there's a slow simmer phase.

With the boiling phase we use steam kettles that bring all the water up to a boil.

During that process, it's literally the fresh water that's being evaporated.

The minerals, the sea salt, you know, remain behind.

And then there's a certain point in time that we'll shift gears and we'll transfer the water to our shallow evaporating pans.

When you're evaporating seawater, there's a certain window that we're looking for, where the actual sea salt comes out of solution.

When it starts forming on a surface, it looks like ice, and little crystals will float and dance around.

They'll eventually become denser than the water it's sitting on, and they'll just sink to the bottom.

And you let that go for many hours, and you let the salt build up.

Then that's time to scoop it out and see how we did.

(laughs) - [Tami] (laughs) Oh so sure.

Wow.

- [Interviewer] Is salt beautiful?

- Is salt beautiful?

Sure.

They're almost like snowflakes.

Each are somewhat different in a way, but more so where the salt, or, I should say, where the water is sourced from, the trace minerals will differ from location to location.

Salt is all sodium chloride.

Yes, but the trace minerals from location to location will differ, and therefore giving it a different flavor.

(upbeat music) When we're at the farmer's markets, we get a lot of return customers who take our salt if they're gonna visit someone or going to go to someone's house.

- They're traveling to Greece to go see family.

They're going to France.

- And they like to bring a bit of Rhode Island, you know, and take that with them, 'cause it truly is a flavor of, you know, Rhode Island, flavor of Newport.

(upbeat music) - You know, it's something that we work on so hard together, that to be able to bring it to a market or share it with our customers is pretty amazing.

You know, because it's ours.

You know, we made it.

We crafted it with our two hands, so.

Four hands.

(laughs) - [Matt] We're kind of honored that- - [Tami] Very honored.

- [Matt] we get that a lot, where people do take our salt.

- They're taking our sea salt, and they're sharing our story.

You know, they're that connection.

So it's really cool.

So yeah.

- [Matt] Yeah.

(laughs) - [Tami] Yeah.

- That's good.

- Are we good?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

(Matt and Tami laugh) - [Interviewer] Yup, yup.

I think that's perfect.