Our Heritage & Philosophy.
Seven generations of a gastronomic vocation. From a Galician botica to a working catalogue in Madrid. This is where the House comes from - and what it still stands for.
A gastronomic house. Not a deli. Not a gift brand.
Zales & Rego begins with a vocation that predates the word gastronomy itself. It began on the shelf of a Galician botica, where food, medicine and craftsmanship still belonged to the same discipline.
The work is two-sided. The majority of what we sell is composed in-house: preserves, condiments, dips, sauces, freeze-dried preparations, and limited-edition pieces produced at our facility in Alcorcón, Madrid.
The rest is curated, selected from producers whose work is strong enough to sit beside our own. Balsamic vinegars from Acetaia Sereni in Modena. Olive oil from Raza AOVE in Jaén. Manchego from Pérez Arquero in Tembleque. Salts from the Coopérative de l'Île de Ré. The distinction matters because it's honest, and because in the world we operate in, honesty is the only luxury that can't be faked.
Compose. Select. Preserve the Excellent.
Not a slogan. Simply a description of our job.
Spain and Mexico are our origins. France, Italy, and the wider world are our horizons. Excellence has never respected borders. Neither should your pantry.
Where we come from.
Seven generations. A single verifiable document. A line of work that precedes the name by more than a century.
The root of the craft.
In the late 17th century, the Rego family worked as apothecaries in Mondoñedo, Galicia.
Our formulation books still exist in the family archives. They are not family legend. They are documentary proof, preceding the house name by more than a century.
The ZAR mark appears for the first time.
At 21-years-old, Alonso Rego arrives in Cádiz, the port of arrival for exceptional products of the time: vanilla, cocoa, cinnamon, sugars.
He meets the Zales family. Together they begin trading oils, vinegars, preserves and selected provisions. Together they place the ZAR mark on crates for the first time.
A patrimonial bet. Not an adventure.
Don Alonso risks it all to cross the Atlantic.
He brings the ZAR mark with him.
The journey from Cádiz to Veracruz Mexico takes three months. The fare, provisions, and freight amount to a labourer's forty years wages. A patrimonial investment.
The first documentary proof of the family in America.
In 1797, at the age of 41, Alonzo marries María Dolores Ortega Bustos in the Parish of San Miguel Arcángel in Orizaba. The parish record, preserved to this day, records his occupation, origin, and lineage: merchant, native of Santiago de Goiriz, Diocese of Mondoñedo, Kingdom of Galicia.
Don Ismael gives structure to the tradition.
Don Ismael Rego y Salcedo (1848–1916), Alonzo's grandson, gives structure to the family tradition: a catalogue, a method, a name.
1776 marked the beginning of commerce.
1888 is its baptism: The Zales & Rego brand is born.
The same vocation, back to the old world.
Seven generations later, the house returns.
The vocation remains unchanged - To compose, select, preserve the excellent. Zales & Rego now serves the entire world from Madrid.
La vocación no se improvisa. Se transmite.
The vocation is not improvised. It is transmitted. From the family archive, after the Galician boticarios.
The Botica Gastronómica.
A documented historical category. Not a marketing metaphor. The gastronomic botica existed for four hundred years and had, at the time, the same status we now grant to a Grand Cru.
The word botica comes from the Greek apotheka - a storehouse. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, food, medicine and luxury belonged to the same craft.
The botica was a hybrid establishment. At the same counter, it dispensed medicinal syrups, distilled aromatic waters, prepared vinegars for the table, made fruit preserves and confectionery.
When those trades split in the early 19th century, the botica disappeared from commercial life. The category vanished.
To practice as a master botica in Spain required passing a public examination before the Royal Court of Protomedicato. It was one of the country's most respected crafts - part physician, part alchemist, part gastronomic artisan.
Zales & Rego was formally established in 1888, just as that figure disappeared. The category became vacant.
The botica isn't a theme. It's a documented craft. A category left vacant for more than a century - and one we're proud to continue.
Composed, or selected. Always declared.
Every entry in the catalogue answers a simple question: does it deserve to stand on the same table as the rest? And every entry says, plainly, which kind of answer it is.
Composed in our IFS Food-certified facility in Alcorcón, Madrid. Vinegars, preserves, condiments, dips, sauces, salts, freeze-dried preparations, and limited-edition pieces, made under the same standard the house holds itself to across the whole catalogue.
- IFS Food, HACCP, RGSEAA certified facility
- Open dossier and batch reference on request
- Composed, not assembled
Selected from named producers whose work is strong enough to sit beside our own. Authorship is not decoration. The producer's name is on the label because their work is the reason the product is there.
- Acetaia Sereni, Modena, balsamic vinegars
- Toro Albalá, Montilla-Moriles, D.O.P. vinegars
- Raza AOVE, Jaén, organic olive oil
- Pérez Arquero, Tembleque, organic D.O.P. Manchego
- Coopérative des Sauniers de l'Île de Ré, salts
From the Collection.
See All Entries
Alba Liquída
Picked early and pressed cold the same day, Sierra Mágina's mountain Picual at its most vivid: intense, grassy, and alive with the bitterness that only young oil carries.
Biblioteca de Sabores 1888
A leather-bound library system, one volume per category, gifted whole or one at a time so the collection keeps building year after year.
Brasa Americana
Tomato and onion, smoked twice over with chipotle and oak paprika, sweetened with cane sugar and honey: barbecue sauce read through a Spanish-Mexican kitchen.
Brétema de Wagyu
Wagyu beef, air-cured the Castilian way cecina has always been made, sliced gossamer-thin so the marbling dissolves the moment it hits the tongue.
What the house holds itself to.
Everything that leaves the house under the Z&R mark carries our name. Before we ask you to trust the product, we think you should be able to inspect the process.
For every product, we open the dossier, the batch reference and the Certificate of Analysis. Not because compliance requires it. Because provenance shouldn't be a mystery. We name the producer. The region. The process. Only if you know where something comes from, can you understand its value.
The House is deliberately small. Every addition is questioned. Every recipe challenged. Every producer evaluated. Nothing enters the catalogue because it's fashionable. Everything enters because someone around the table was prepared to defend it.
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