◆ In House

Melaza de Humo

Smoked Chipotle Preserve

€17.50

Chipotle chiles smoked seventy-two hours over pecan, oak and mesquite, then cooked down in cane sugar until the jar reads smoke first, sweet second, heat last.

Origin México / España

Producer Zales & Rego

Volume 360 g

Appearance

Dark-mahogany, glossy syrupy preserve with visible chipotle pieces

Aroma

Cold smoke, dried plum, molasses, leather, faint bay laurel

Taste · Primary

Smoke-cured chipotle, slow-building chilli heat, sweet dark caramel

Taste · Secondary

Dried plum, raisin, onion sweetness, light vinegar, bay laurel green

Texture

Thick, syrupy, glossy; chipotle pieces yield softly under the spoon

Finish

Long, smoky-sweet, with sustained warmth and clean acid close

FROM OUR TABLEBrétema de WagyuWagyu Cecina, Castilian Air-Cure

FROM OUR TABLEEl Lomo Fino100% Ibérico Acorn-Fed Lomito

The chile chipotle is the soul of this jar: chīlpōctli in Nahuatl, smoked chile, the mature red jalapeño of Veracruz and Puebla after seventy-two slow hours over pecan, oak or mesquite smoke. A green-grass jalapeño becomes leather-dark, oil-rich, deeply phenolic, carrying a smoke aromatic no other chile delivers.

Cane sugar is the slow-cooking medium, softening the dried flesh into a spoonable conserve and converting to dark caramel as it goes; onion lends allium body; bay laurel threads a green-aromatic Mediterranean signal that grounds the Mexican smoke. Dense, dark-mahogany, three-layered: smoke first, then sweet, then heat.

The Producer

Zales & Rego - Alcorcón, Madrid

The line starts in a botica in Mondoñedo, Galicia, where remedies, conserves and spices once shared the same shelf. Alonzo Rego carried the trade to Cádiz in 1776, then across the Atlantic to Veracruz in 1795. In 1888, Don Ismael Rego y Salcedo gave the house its formal name. Seven generations later, Zales & Rego returns to the old world, composing and selecting from a workshop in Alcorcón, Madrid: compose, select, preserve the excellent.

Founded 1888

Generations Seven, documented in archive

Workshop Alcorcón, Madrid

Philosophy Compose. Select. Preserve the Excellent.

The Process

Seventy-two hours of smoke. Then sugar.

Mature red jalapeños smoke for seventy-two slow hours over pecan, oak or mesquite until they turn leather-dark and deeply phenolic: chipotle. Cane sugar becomes the cooking medium, softening the dried chiles into a spoonable conserve and caramelising as it reduces. Onion adds body, bay laurel grounds the smoke in something more Mediterranean, and the result builds in three layers: smoke first, then sweet, then heat.

Chile Chipotle, Veracruz and Puebla

Smoke 72 hours, pecan, oak or mesquite

Medium Cane sugar, reduced to caramel

Structure Smoke, then sweet, then heat

“Three layers in one spoonful: that's not an accident, that's seventy-two hours of smoke.”

Zales & Rego · México / España