There's a reason the products are named after places.
It would have been easier not to. A generic name — something botanical, something evocative, something that gestures at craft without committing to a specific geography — would have been simpler to explain and simpler to protect. But it would have been dishonest. Because the flavours in these jars don't come from nowhere. They come from somewhere specific. And that specificity is the whole argument.
Adana
Adana is a city of about two million people on the Seyhan River in southern Turkey, sitting at the edge of the Çukurova plain — one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the country. The climate is hot and humid. The food reflects that: intense, grilled, heavily spiced, built for people who work in heat and need food that can hold its own.
The Adana kebab is the city's most famous export. What makes it distinct from other kebabs is the long, flat skewer, the high ratio of fat to lean meat, and — crucially — the inclusion of Adana pepper. Not just chilli heat. A specific smokiness, a depth, an earthiness that other peppers don't have in the same way.
When I was developing the Adana Kraut, that smokiness was what I was reaching for. Not a generic spicy sauerkraut. Something that tasted like it came from somewhere specific — from a place with a particular relationship to heat and spice that has been refined over centuries. The bird's eye chilli in the recipe carries the heat. The cumin carries the earthiness. The dill carries something cooler that sits beneath both of them.
The name isn't decorative. It's an acknowledgement of where the flavour logic comes from.
Xalapa
Xalapa — sometimes spelled Jalapa — is the capital of the state of Veracruz, Mexico. It sits at around 1,400 metres above sea level, in a cloud forest zone where the Sierra Madre Oriental meets the Gulf coastal plain. The altitude and humidity produce a climate that is permanently cool and misty, nothing like the tropical Mexico of popular imagination.
The jalapeño is named after this city. Not because jalapeños are only grown here now — they're grown across Mexico and beyond — but because this is where the chilli was historically cultivated and traded. The name is a geographic marker, like champagne or parma ham. It says: this thing comes from this place. The climate shaped it. The people shaped it. The specific conditions of this city are in the flavour.
The Xalapa Kraut doesn't try to replicate Mexican food. It borrows from a geography with centuries of flavour intelligence and treats it seriously. White cabbage fermented with jalapeño and dill — the jalapeño carries the place name, and with it, the history. The fermentation does the rest.
Ferment Blue
Ferment Blue doesn't carry a place name. It carries something else.
My daughter was born while I was building this brand. Her name is Mavi — the Turkish word for blue. She arrived in the middle of everything: the recipe development, the label design, the endless batches of test ferments, the 3am market runs. The timing was not convenient. It was the best thing that happened.
I decided to make the brand real partly because of her. Not in a sentimental way — in a practical one. I wanted to build something that could last. Something she might work on one day if she wanted to. A business with real products and a real identity, not just a project.
The blue jar is hers. The blueberries, the mint, the edible flowers — the whole strange and quietly extraordinary ferment. When people ask why there's a fruit ferment in a range of vegetable krauts, the honest answer is: because she arrived, and the world needed a blue jar.