In her groundbreaking effort to open a restaurant that uses local, fresh and seasonal ingredients, chef Alice Waters pioneered the farm-to-table movement back in the 1970’s with her restaurant in Berkeley, CA called Chez Panisse.

It was a simple concept, really, and one primarily based on taste. Fresh produce that’s grown in season is at the peak of ripeness and flavor. It’s difficult to get simpler.

But this concept goes beyond pure pleasure; fresh food is also the healthiest. Our Western nutritional guidelines and food pyramid have purported the benefits for decades. And for centuries, Ayurveda, an ancient system of medicine native to India, has prescribed food, spices, and herbs as the building blocks of health and longevity long before Hippocrates said it was so.

It’s with a focus on freshness that preservation efforts–whether through distillation of essential oils or infusions into shelf-stable alcohol–are the most effective in capturing flavor and healthy components of fresh plants. This is the goal of Bartanica’s products: to capture the best that Nature has to offer and bottle the farm-to-shelf lifestyle.