The Pantry – Atomiq Condiments

Everything Atomiq makes starts the same way: take what is in season, apply real technique, and skip the shortcuts. Seven lines make up the pantry, and what is on the shelf shifts through the year as the harvest moves from wine grapes in the fall to citrus in the winter and stone fruit in the summer.

Labeled like a fine wine

Our labels read more like a winery’s technical sheet than a condiment jar. Each one records the vintage, the region, the grower and the wine producer, the starter vinegar, the time in barrel, the reduction or fermented fruit that went in, the weather of that growing season, the lab numbers and the batch and bottle number. If you want to know exactly what you are tasting, it is all there.

Atomiq label concept for Nebbiolo Mosto Ridotto on two glass bottles and a glass jar

Label concept: Nebbiolo Mosto Ridotto, shown on a 3 oz bottle, an 8 oz corked bottle and a small glass jar. More labels are on the way as each line comes together.

We package in clear glass, so you can see the color of the vinegar and the fruit, in small sizes that get used while they are at their best.

The seven lines

Vinegars

Single-varietal vinegars made from California wine, vintage-dated like the wine they come from, and aged at least six months in white oak. We look for Old World grapes grown in California: Barbera and Teroldego from Italy, Albariño and Tempranillo from Spain, Touriga Nacional from Portugal, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre from the Rhône, and heirloom and little-known varieties wherever we can find them.

Alongside the wine vinegars, we make vinegars from cider, craft beer, sake and mead, each one tasting of what it started as.

We start with small oak barrels and move to larger ones as we grow, the way serious vinegar houses do. Once a vinegar is ready, it rests in glass demijohns, which add nothing more from the wood, before it is bottled. Each season’s best vinegars are released in small, numbered runs, and when they are gone, they are gone.

Agresto, Mosti & Oxymel

Wine grapes and seasonal fruit, concentrated at room temperature with no added sugar, then balanced with our own vinegars. We name them after three old traditions, from most acidic to sweetest. Agresto is mostly vinegar, softened with a little fruit. Mosti is an even balance of sweet and sour. Oxymel is mostly fruit, lifted with a little vinegar.

Wherever we can, we match the grape in the reduction to the grape in the vinegar, Tempranillo with Tempranillo, so the two taste like they belong together. The balance shifts with the season’s fruit. Curious where the names come from? Read From Vine to Vinegar.

Mustum Ardens

Our mustard line, named for the word’s own origin: mustum ardens, “burning must,” from the old practice of grinding mustard seed into fresh grape must. We stone-grind black and brown mustard seed, sourced from smaller farms in the United States, with our own vinegars and single-variety grape reductions.

Black seed brings the most heat and a deep, almost smoky edge; brown seed gives the sharp bite of a classic French mustard. Ground slowly on stone, the old way, the heat stays bright and the texture stays rustic.

Our mostarda, fruit preserved in a sharp mustard syrup in the northern Italian way, follows the seasons: peaches in summer, quince and pears in the fall.

Tomatoes & Alliums

We choose tomatoes the way we choose grapes: by variety. For bright, fresh preparations, dry-farmed Early Girls, small and intensely flavored, a Northern California summer classic, along with Green Zebra, Black Zebra and Jaune Flammé. For sauces, pastes and drying, San Marzano, Amish Paste and Principe Borghese, the old Italian drying tomato.

Onions, shallots and garlic become the pantry staples a cook reaches for every day: slow-cooked black garlic, caramelized sweet onion jam, garlic and shallot confits, and herbed allium compound butters. We are also working through every style of chili crisp we can think of, built on our own chilis and alliums. All of it gets the same small-batch, seasonal treatment as everything else we make.

Preserved & Fermented

Pickles, kimchi and cured and preserved produce, chosen by variety and season: green tomatoes pickled in several styles, striped Berkeley Tie-Dye tomatoes, strawberries pickled with local pink peppercorns and the tingle of Sichuan pepper, Black Mission figs, purple tomatillos and artichoke hearts. Alongside them, single-variety wild mushroom ketchups and olive tapenades.

Northern California’s coast and forests are full of ingredients most kitchens never see. We plan to work with local foragers, starting with the region’s seaweeds, and there is a great deal of room to grow here. One signature runs through the whole line: lacto-fermented fruit and vegetables finished with our own vinegars and wine-grape reductions, so the funk of the ferment and the brightness of the vinegar meet in the same jar.

Pantry: Salts, Peppercorns, Oils & Spice Blends

Salt from pans with centuries of history: flor de sal from the Algarve, the salt flats of Ibiza, Trapani in Sicily, Guérande and the islands of France’s Atlantic coast, Cervia on Italy’s Adriatic coast, and Hawaii. Peppercorns from the places that grow the best of them: Vietnam, Kerala, Sarawak on Borneo, Kampot in Cambodia, Lampung on Sumatra, and Brazil. Each one tastes of where it grew.

Oils to cook and finish with: olive oil from a local producer we plan to partner with, avocado oil, and culinary algae oil: clean, neutral, stable at high heat, and a favorite of a growing number of chefs. An avocado mayonnaise is in development.

We keep our spice blends to a short list on purpose. Each one is cooked fresh in our own kitchen in small batches, then dried or worked into a shelf-stable paste. Most spice companies blend from dried commodity stock. We cook first.

Chilis & Hot Sauces

Unusual chilis are the heart of this line. Our hot sauces start from fermented mash of single varieties: fruity charapita, rocoto and piri piri, and a growing list that includes ají amarillo, Aleppo, Antep acı dolma, Calabrian, cascabel, wiri wiri, datil, malagueta, Maraş, pequin, Red Savina and Urfa biber.

Heat is only part of it. We fire-roast mild local peppers for smoke and sweetness, and blend with Habanada, a habanero bred without the heat, for all of the tropical aroma and none of the burn. We also make our own mole pastes.

Our single-variety chili honeys are made with honey from apiaries around the Bay Area, each one carrying the flavor of its own local bloom.

Gift sets

Our products are made to be shared, and the sets are built the way a cook would put them together:

Vinegar and its match: a vintage vinegar paired with the reduction made from the same grape.
The Basics: five everyday seasonings done right: ancho chili flakes, porcini powder, onion granules, garlic granules and smoked salt.
Seasonal boxes: what is best right now, from fall harvest to winter citrus.
Salt cellars and vessels: pieces chosen to sit on the table with what is inside them.
Holiday and business gifts: built to order.

We are finishing our permits now, so nothing is for sale yet. Our first pop-ups will come first. To hear when the first bottles are ready, get in touch or email hugene@atomiqcondiments.com.