About Us

The Mediterranean boasts of this centuries-old agricultural tradition because the early onset of cultivation in the Middle Eastern region which is rightly known as the ‘Fertile Crescent’ which is also modern-day Iran, Syria and Lebanon. It also covers parts of northern Egypt and southwestern parts of Turkey too. As the staple of any region is naturally also a product of the environmental factors, this is even more true for preservation of grapes and dates in the Mediterranean. Due to the climate of the region, dehydration or drying emerged as an initial form of food preservation. Fallen fruits would dry up under the merciless sun and they would be picked up by gatherers who would realize the effects of heat on these fruits and how it increases the concentration of sweetness in these fruit.

Going back in time, the earliest traces of dry fruits in recorded history can be found in the Mesopotamian tablets dating as far as 1700 B.C. Historians have discovered the existence of hundreds of recipes for dry fruits and how raisins and evaporated date juice was used as sweeteners. These recipes ranged from simple barley bread for the workers to sophisticated forms of cakes and honey for the elite and places of worship. The inscriptions were in cuneiform which was never the language of the layman, it is highly unlikely that these recipes were for the common people’s usage. Therefore, the only logical conclusion we can draw from their existence is that these recipes were recorded by scholars to document the culinary arts of the epoch. This makes sense as every culture attempts to preserve their most prized possessions for the future generations and the elaborate recipes with the rarest of rare ingredients point in similar direction.