Concept

“Respecting the integrity of the product starts with the time you devote to it. "

Florence Châtelet Sanchez, Founder of Maison DEHESA.

A Philosophy Based on Time.

Our philosophy of taste is based on the respect of time in the cycles of breeding and those of maturation . Without additives or preservatives *, our first ingredient is time .

Peasant Agriculture, Fermentation Crafts and Culinary Creation.

Since 2011, Maison DEHESA has been supporting the greatest chefs in the world , shifting the focus of culinary creation from kitchens to land , in order to enhance the work of the artisan-producer .

We owe this "agricultural" culinary creation first of all to our artisans, guardians of ancestral know-how, the last of their generation to perpetuate the gestures of wild agriculture and conservation . Thanks to them, we promote the biodiversity of soils, marine environments and living species.

Our leading place in the culinary avant-garde , we then owe it to our canning craftsmen, who have sublimated these living materials in natural maturation processes, without freezing them. To do this, Maison DEHESA has carried out research and development work that is unique in the world for 10 years, combining all the crafts of fermentation, both Mediterranean and Japanese, according to a house process of slow maturation® . This technique is unique - and expensive - in that it is based on an individualized hygrometric composition, the use of ferments or yeasts native to each of the products to take into account its unique character. It is only on this basis that we found the legitimacy of the word terroir in the terminology of "local product".

Fermentation, the cuisine of tomorrow.

"We recognize a civilization by the way it eats" recalled Brillat-Savarin. At the start of the millennium, our civilization is being called into question and so are its eating habits. Avant-garde cuisine, for its part, questions the world of tomorrow and already offers an interesting outline. Founded on the principles of "farm-to-table" by Alice Waters and "naturalness" by Alain Ducasse between 1980 and 2010, the nouvelle cuisine already gave primacy to the product and the way it is cultivated. For the past five years, nouvelle cuisine has been promoting "ni-cru-ni-cuit" or fermented . After Ferran Adria, it is up to chef René Redzepi, the pope of fermented cuisine, to occupy the leadership of the world gastronomic scene. And this is no coincidence. Fermented cuisine can only rely on a substrate of living cultures to offer a future promise of exceptional flavors. The fermented product offers a very rich aromatic spectrum and nutritional balance. It is also 0 carbon, 0 waste but it consumes time and a lot of attention. I would even say a lot of love .

"Man did not invent fermentation. It was fermentation that invented man." Sandor Ellix Katz.

It is thanks to its nutritional properties that the Neanderthal man was able to develop his intelligence and his sociability. Archaeologists have managed to prove that it was fermentation and not agriculture that pushed the first men to settle down. **

Also, at a time when the whole world seems to plunge once again into the darkness of the nationalisms of yesteryear and of withdrawal into oneself, the new cuisine must offer the ferment of a new humanity.

Florence Châtelet Sanchez

** "History and civilization of fermented food" by Marie-Claire Frédéric. 2014

* except products under DOP Iberico de Bellota and Wagyu