Modena's Acetaia Malpighi produces traditional balsamic vinegar, with the family's barrel work reaching back to 1850. Its DOP vinegar provides a named regional counterpart to the citrus preserves made by Agricola Ricucci in the Gargano. That agricultural business also produces olive oil, with organic citrus fruit among its crops. In Siena, Antica Drogheria Manganelli 1879 sells regional pantry goods from a Via di Città shop retaining its original furnishings.
A.C. Perch's has traded from Kronprinsensgade 5 in Copenhagen since 1835, when Niels Brock Perch named the shop for his son Axel Christian. An upstairs tearoom still serves brewed pots above the retail counter.
Best for Tea from Copenhagen’s historic A.C. Perch’s Tehandel
A.C. Perch's Tehandel has traded tea from Kronprinsensgade 5 in Copenhagen since April 1835, when Niels Brock Perch opened the shop and named it for his third son, Axel Christian Perch. It's recognized as Scandinavia's oldest tea merchant and occupies one of Copenhagen's oldest surviving shop premises -- the building itself dates to 1805 and is listed. The founding aim, sourcing the best teas from around the world alongside a bit of porcelain, still shapes the range nearly two centuries later: green, white, black and oolong teas, herbal blends, matcha, and tea accessories, sold both loose from the counter and as gift sets. An upstairs tearoom lets customers drink what the shop sells rather than only buying it to take home, serving brewed pots above the retail floor in a space that has grown alongside the original ground-floor counter. The business has since expanded into other Scandinavian locations and added an e-commerce platform, but the Copenhagen shop remains the original site -- nearly 190 years of continuous trading from one address, run today as both a working retail counter and a sit-down tearoom.
Abulafia — also transliterated Abouelafia — has baked from the same corner of Yefet Street in Jaffa since 1879, run across generations by one Arab family and now stewarded by Said Abulafia.
Best for 24-hour Jaffa bakery serving sambusak and pita since 1879
Abulafia — also transliterated Abouelafia — has baked from the same corner of Yefet Street in Jaffa since 1879, run across generations by one Arab family and now stewarded by Said Abulafia. "When people hear that the bakery started in 1879, they think about history," he told Enviro Magazine in 2026, framing the shop's age as an obligation rather than a marketing point, and describing longevity as the sum of many small decisions rather than one big one.
The bakery bakes around the clock, open by multiple accounts 24 hours a day, turning out pita and sambusak — a folded pastry sold with fillings such as mashed potato, onion, mushroom and cheese, topped with sliced hardboiled egg and finished briefly on a grill. On how the shop handles change, Abulafia's own stated rule is blunt: "You have to modernize carefully."
Jaffa's mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood has made the counter itself a small emblem of coexistence: staff have handed out shirts reading "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies" to visitors, and outlets from Mother Earth News to regional coexistence groups have documented residents and tourists of every background lining up at the same window at all hours. Almost 150 years on, it is still a family bakery first — Said Abulafia's own test for any change is whether regular customers can feel it, even if they can't explain it in technical terms.
A Modena family has aged Traditional Balsamic Vinegar DOP here since 1850, tending some 3,500 barrels. Bottles and seasonings sell through the online shop, and the acetaia offers free guided tours and tastings.
Best for DOP balsamic vinegar aged in 3,500 barrels since 1850
A family organic farm on the Gargano coast since 1850, Agricola Ricucci grows certified-organic Gargano citrus—oranges, lemons and bitter oranges—alongside extra-virgin olive oil and citrus jams. A Slow Food member, it ships its harvest through its own online shop.
Best for Organic Gargano citrus (oranges, lemons) and citrus jams
Sakrisøy island, between Reine and Hamnøy, Moskenes, Lofoten
Run by the Gylseth family on the tiny island of Sakrisøy for around 130 years, this seafood shop and bar sells its own smoked salmon, trout, halibut, stockfish and caviar. Historic 1874 rorbu cabins stand alongside.
Best for Local Lofoten seafood delicacies (smoked fish, fishcakes, caviar)
Run by nine generations of the same family since 1806, this butcher on Greve's central Piazza Matteotti cures Tuscan salami, finocchiona, and prosciutto alongside cuts of local beef. The historic shop sits beside a bistro and an online store that ships the family's cold cuts.
Since 1895 this Geroskipou family has boiled and dusted loukoumi, the rose-scented Cypriot delight that earned Cyprus its first PGI. The factory shop on Makarios Avenue also stacks sugared almonds, almond preserve and carob-sesame pastelaki fresh from the works next door.
Best for Loukoumi, Cypriot delights, confectionery, sugared almonds
Babington's Tea Rooms opened on December 4, 1893, at Via Due Macelli 66 near Piazza di Spagna in Rome, founded by two young women, Anna Maria Babington and Isabel Cargill — granddaughter of Captain William Cargill, founder of Dunedin, New Zealand — who invested 100 pounds of their own savings into a tea and reading room for Rome's Anglo-Saxon community.
Best for Hand-blended tea served in a Piazza di Spagna tea room
Babington's Tea Rooms opened on December 4, 1893, at Via Due Macelli 66 near Piazza di Spagna in Rome, founded by two young women, Anna Maria Babington and Isabel Cargill — granddaughter of Captain William Cargill, founder of Dunedin, New Zealand — who invested 100 pounds of their own savings into a tea and reading room for Rome's Anglo-Saxon community. It was a genuine risk at the time: in 1890s Italy, tea was sold mainly in pharmacies, not in shops built to serve and drink it.
The business survived where the risk might have suggested otherwise, staying open through Mussolini's anti-English climate and the Second World War with its English-language sign intact in solid bronze on a Roman travertine plaque. It is now run by a fourth generation of the founding families, still hand-blending teas with no artificial flavoring, and in 2018 launched the Babingtons Foundation, funding education in Darjeeling — tying the shop's supply chain back to the region much of its tea still comes from.
For a Roman institution founded by an Englishwoman and a New Zealander, Babington's own description still holds: not entirely British, not precisely Italian, but Babingtons.
60-62 Allées de Tourny, 33000 Bordeaux, France / Bordeaux / France
Founded 1880 by Madame Badie in an 18th-century Allées de Tourny building; first Bordeaux cave to offer classified-growth en-primeur allocations to private customers (official; Bordeaux Tourisme).
Best for Bordeaux wine and classified-growth en-primeur expertise dating to 1880.
Founded in 1885, this family-run sweet house built its reputation on classic sandesh and later added baked and fusion mishti such as chocolate sandesh without abandoning traditional recipes. Multiple outlets across South Kolkata still make sweets fresh daily using the original family formulas.
Maison Boissier, Paris confectioner since 1827 and inventor of the marron glacé, sells chocolates, dragées and confections from its counter at Galeries Lafayette Gourmet.
Best for Historic Parisian confectionery and chocolate — marrons glacés
Maison Boissier has traded as a Paris confectioner since 1827, when Bélisaire Boissier, arriving from the south of France, opened a shop that soon drew the era's fashionable élégantes — and, by reputation, admirers including Victor Hugo. The house is credited as the inventor of the marron glacé, and candied chestnuts remain its signature, wrapped in the gold paper the brand still uses today. Alongside the chestnuts, Boissier makes chocolate — pétales, mendiants, tablets and truffles — and a run of old-fashioned confectionery: sugared almonds, marshmallows, fruit pastes and the pearl-shaped bonbons boules in apricot, cherry and blackcurrant. The house keeps its own boutiques at Galerie Vivienne, rue du Bac and rue de Passy, and its best-known outpost sits inside Galeries Lafayette's Haussmann flagship, where a Boissier corner and periodic pop-ups occupy the Le Gourmet food hall alongside the store's other specialty grocers. It is a confectioner first — its own site and its Galeries Lafayette listing both center on chestnuts, chocolate and candy rather than a dedicated tea program, so shoppers looking specifically for loose-leaf tea should treat Boissier as a stop for sweets and gifting rather than a tea specialist.
Paul Fürst founded this confectionery around 1890 and invented the Original Salzburg Mozartkugel, a marzipan-pistachio core wrapped in nougat and dark chocolate. It is still made by hand each day to his original recipe.
Casa Gispert has roasted nuts, coffee and dried fruit in a single wood-fired oven since 1851. It still hand-serves from its original El Born storefront on Carrer dels Sombrerers.
Best for Wood-fired roasted nuts and coffee since 1851
Casa Gispert has operated from the same El Born storefront on Carrer dels Sombrerers since 1851, a run long enough to make it, by its own description, Barcelona's oldest food shop. The defining piece of equipment is a single wood-fired oven that's stayed central to the operation across that span — it's used not just for roasting nuts but for preparing the shop's own Romesco sauce, tying two product lines to one traditional heat source rather than splitting roasting and sauce-making across separate modern equipment. The catalogue built around that oven runs wide: roasted, raw, fried and caramelized nuts, dehydrated fruits, seeds prepared multiple ways, organic lines, coffee and saffron, plus the Romesco sauce itself. Service still leans on the old format — products are hand-served in traditional paper cones, a detail carried alongside newer recyclable packaging rather than replacing it outright. At a fixed Sombrerers, 23 address with regular six-day opening hours, Casa Gispert reads less like a specialty grocer chasing trends and more like a 19th-century roasting operation that's kept its original oven and location running continuously into the present, adding product lines around that same fixed point rather than relocating or modernizing away from it.
The Cassano 1875 shop bottles Limoncello di Sorrento IGP alongside artisanal amari, liqueur creams, marmalades and hand-painted ceramic bomboniere. Orders ship from the Sorrento coast with PayPal and Stripe payment and free shipping over 200 euros.
From Kalafationes in the island's interior, Cheimarios has bottled soft drinks since 1950, chief among them tsitsibira — Corfu's spicy, alcohol-free ginger beer made to an 1860 recipe. A herbal refreshment called Alpinia joins it, both produced without additives or preservatives.
Best for Traditional Corfiot ginger beer (tsitsibira)
Cinco Jotas traces its founding to 1879, when the ancestors of today's owners opened what the company describes as the first operation dedicated entirely to a pure Iberian acorn-fed pig, in Jabugo, a town in Huelva's Sierra de Aracena.
Best for 100% acorn-fed Iberian ham cured in Jabugo's founding cellars since 1879
Cinco Jotas traces its founding to 1879, when the ancestors of today's owners opened what the company describes as the first operation dedicated entirely to a pure Iberian acorn-fed pig, in Jabugo, a town in Huelva's Sierra de Aracena. The venture grew from a partnership among the Sánchez Romero family and ham specialists Manuel Romero and Vicente Carvajal, whose combined surnames still identify the parent company, Sánchez Romero Carvajal.
The hams cure in what the company calls centuries-old cellars built into Jabugo's particular microclimate, a combination it credits for the character of the finished product. Production runs by hand and is measured in years rather than months, and the pigs are raised on a deliberately limited scale under acorn-fed (bellota) standards the company says exceed Spain's official Black Label minimum, alongside stated attention to animal welfare during rearing.
Today Cinco Jotas sells whole jamón, paleta, lomo, and cured sausage through its own online shop, restaurants, and cellar-visit experiences, in addition to wholesale distribution, and remains headquartered in Jabugo — the town most closely identified with the ibérico category as a whole.
Founded in 1898, Colmado Murria is a Modernista delicatessen whose facade carries Ramon Casas advertising posters. Inside it sells fine cheeses, wines and conserves.
Best for Fine cheeses, wines and gourmet conserves
Premises opened as a liquor shop in 1883; Silfredo Avvignano turned it into a confetteria in 1926; still sells handmade cuneesi al rum (Comune Torino Compra Vicino; official where page).
Best for Handmade cuneesi al rum from a confetteria established in 1926.
Confiserie Hanselmann has occupied its purpose-built St. Moritz building since 1894, when founders Fritz and Theresia Hanselmann opened the confectionery, bakery and café together. Now run by the Mutschler-Hanselmann family in its fourth generation, the shop still sells pastries and chocolates from the same central address.
Best for Fourth-generation confiserie in its 1894 purpose-built building
Confiserie Hanselmann was founded around 1894 by Fritz Hanselmann and his wife Theresia, both from southern Germany, who had the building purpose-built in St. Moritz during the town's rise as a destination for sophisticated European travelers, including British alpinists. The business has passed through wars, deaths, marriages and shifting economic fortunes over more than 130 years, and is today run by the Mutschler-Hanselmann family in its fourth generation.
The building itself is notable for its sgraffito wall decorations — a traditional Engadine plasterwork technique — on its reddish relief exterior, and the shop's guest book has included figures such as the Aga Khan, Empress Soraya and writer Thomas Mann.
Hanselmann still combines a confectionery, bakery and café at its central St. Moritz address on Via Maistra, selling pastries, chocolates and gift vouchers both over the counter and through its online shop, open daily.
Court purveyor Josef Holzermayr founded this Salzburg confiserie in 1865, and it still sells genuine Salzburg Mozartkugel. The counter also carries chocolates, French caramel, drops and silk candies.
Confiserie Lilamand has made candied fruit in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence since 1866, now spanning five generations of the same family. Its crystallized fruit remains a Provençal specialty, produced and sold from the same Provence address for over 150 years.
Best for Candied fruit crafted by five generations since 1866 in Saint-Rémy
Family cannery founded 1893 in Concarneau, Brittany, by Madame Courtin, credited with the original scallop confit recipe. Now headquartered in nearby Tregunc with six boutiques and a free production museum offering tastings.
Best for Breton tinned seafood from the fishing port of Concarneau
Conserverie Courtin traces to 1893 in Concarneau, the Breton fishing port whose harbor still supplies the company's scallops and other catch. Its founder, Madame Courtin, is credited with the house's signature recipe, a scallop confit that borrows curing techniques from southwestern French confit traditions and applies them to shellfish landed at Concarneau's market that same day. Billed as the oldest conservery in the town, the company has since built a wider range around that founding idea: fish spreads and rillettes, canned sardines, prepared seafood soups, and gift sets, all made without added colorants or flavor enhancers. Operations today are based a short distance away in Tregunc, from where the company runs six retail boutiques in addition to its online shop. Courtin also opens a production site to visitors as a free museum, letting them watch the canning process and sample the results.
Family-run since 1882 across six generations, Dharmsala Tea Company grows and manufactures certified-organic, single-origin Kangra tea at its Dharamshala facility, spanning black, green, oolong and white tea plus Ayurvedic wellness blends developed with yoga practitioners.
Best for Sixth-generation, certified-organic Kangra tea grown and made on site in the Himalayan
Dharmsala Tea Company's family history in the Kangra Valley goes back to 1882, when its founders first planted tea in a district whose gazette, even then, rated the local leaf 'superior to that produced in any other part of India.' Six generations later, the same family still grows and manufactures the tea on site at its Dharamshala facility, in the Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh, with the range certified organic throughout. The core is Kangra black and green tea, a regional style distinct from Darjeeling or Assam, made from leaf grown on the family's own gardens; alongside it sits oolong and white tea and an expanding line of Ayurvedic wellness blends, developed in partnership with yoga and wellness practitioners rather than formulated purely in-house. The company frames its work around 'simplicity, naturalness, purity, love, and sustainability,' and extends that ethos into its packaging, where it supports the revival of traditional Kangra miniature painting by using the art form on its tins and boxes rather than generic branding. It is a rare combination for a tea house this age: over a century of continuous family ownership, single-valley sourcing, organic certification across the whole range, and a wellness line built with outside practitioners rather than marketing alone.
Homewood is the retail arm of Ooty's Doddabetta Tea Factory, founded by N K Krishnamoorthy and now three linked factories. Its Tea Museum traces Nilgiri tea history from 1835; the flagship product is hand-rolled Silver Tips white tea.
Best for Silver Tips white tea and factory-to-museum tea tours tracing Nilgiri tea history
Homewood is the retail brand of the Doddabetta Tea Factory, founded by N K Krishnamoorthy, whose own father had earlier planted tea gardens across the Kagguchi and Ketti Palada areas that still supply leaf to the business. The factory sits near Doddabetta, the second-highest peak in South India, at Mel Koddapmund outside Ooty, and the company today runs three linked factories - Nankemp, Kookalhatty and Doddabetta - across different elevations in the Nilgiris. What sets it apart from a standard tea shop is the adjoining Tea Museum, an idea credited to Krishnamoorthy's son Diwakar, a mechanical engineer who wanted visitors to get a firsthand feel for how tea is actually made rather than just buy a packet at the end. The museum traces the history of tea from its early origins in China through its arrival in Europe and Asia, then narrows to the Nilgiris' own tea story from 1835 onward, including the region's GI certification, alongside live demonstrations of the leaf-to-cup manufacturing process. Homewood's product range covers strong, cardamom, masala and green teas plus Lemon Black, but its signature is Silver Tips - a high-grown, hand-rolled white tea made from single buds picked at high elevation. Handmade chocolates and spices round out the catalog. Museum entry runs roughly ₹20 per person, open daily.
Family-owned since 1884, Doud's Market is the general grocer of Mackinac Island, stocking everyday food for residents and visitors and running a deli and pizza counter. Its Main Street store is joined by a satellite shop near Shepler's Ferry and an online store for island merchandise.
Edmond Fallot has milled mustard in Beaune since 1840 and remains independent and family-owned, still stone-grinding its seed on traditional millstones. The range spans sharp Dijon classics and IGP-labeled Burgundy mustards, all made at the Faubourg Bretonnière mill.
Best for Stone-ground Dijon and IGP Burgundy mustards
Elmwood Inn began as a Perryville, Kentucky tea room in a restored 1842 mansion, later named by the UK Tea Council among America's best tea places; now in Danville, tea author Bruce Richardson runs a tasting bar selling 150+ loose teas plus its own Benjamin Press imprint.
Best for More than 150 single-estate and blended loose teas
Elmwood Inn Fine Teas traces back to 1990, when Shelley Richardson opened a tea room inside the 1842 Greek Revival mansion in Perryville, Kentucky - a building that had served as a Civil War field hospital during the Battle of Perryville and later as a boarding school before its restoration. Over fourteen years the tea room built an international reputation, and in 2002 the UK Tea Council named it the first American tea room included in its 'Best Tea Places' guide. The Richardsons closed the tea room in 2004 to concentrate on the wholesale and retail tea business it had grown alongside it, now run from Danville, Kentucky under son Ben's management. Today the operation centers on a tasting bar and shop carrying more than 150 single-estate and blended loose teas - black, green, oolong, white, herbal and caffeine-free - plus the pots and infusers to brew them. Bruce Richardson, who chronicled the family's early years in tea across several books, later founded Benjamin Press, the company's own imprint publishing further titles on tea history, etiquette and service. Between the tasting bar, the wholesale accounts supplying restaurants, hotels and museums across North America, and the publishing arm, Elmwood Inn functions as much as a tea-education operation as a retailer.
A Bremen fish house trading since 1860 in fish, mussels and seafood, long a fixture of the city's maritime food trade. It supplies fresh catch and specialties with online ordering available.
A Baltimore seafood market and raw bar that has traded in historic Lexington Market since 1886. Its jumbo lump crab cakes have earned a following well beyond the city.
Best for Jumbo lump Maryland crab cakes and fresh seafood
Fauchon was founded in 1886 when Auguste Fauchon opened a specialty grocery at Place de la Madeleine in Paris. The house added its Grand Salon de Thé in 1889, establishing the gourmet épicerie now recognized by its signature pink.
Best for Gilded French gourmet goods from the 1886 Place de la Madeleine épicerie.
Fauchon was established in 1886 when Auguste Fauchon, a young Norman passionate about quality products, opened a specialty grocery store at Place de la Madeleine in Paris. He chose the location to offer Parisians exceptional products from Normandy: peppers, nutmeg, tea, and coffee achieved quick success. Fauchon stayed current with innovations, selling LU biscuits from their 1887 creation and Maggie bouillon. In 1889, the opening of the Grand Salon de Thé revolutionized the French art of living, offering a refined space dedicated to women. The Grandes Caves de Réserve opened four years after the original shop, known for its selection of authentic wines. In 2018, Fauchon opened Hôtel Paris on Place de la Madeleine, combining hotel excellence with French gastronomy, perpetuating Auguste's legacy of French elegance and culinary excellence.
The Schmidt family has run this butchery on Alte Heerstraße since 1806, and Uwe Schmidt has led it for more than two decades, curing Rheinischer Saftschinken and dry-aging beef on site. Sausages and cured meats are made in-house, with traceability and animal welfare built into their sourcing.
Best for Cured Rheinischer Saftschinken and dry-aged beef
The Schmidt family butchery has stood in Koblenz since 1806. For more than 20 years Uwe Schmidt has led the family firm at Alte Heer Strasse 34. He describes himself as part of a new generation of butchers who follow quality from the field to the plate. The shop calls its work meisterhafte Delikatessen, natürlich hausgemacht. The house speciality is Rheinischer Saftschinken, a Rhineland ham cured in the shop's own manufaktur. Dry-aged steaks mature in a ripening cabinet on the premises. The sausage specialities and preserving jars come from the same in-house kitchen using family recipes. Sourcing rests on farmers and producers the family knows personally, chosen for animal welfare from rearing through low-stress slaughter to whole-animal use. Transparency and the origin of the meat sit at the centre of the work, balanced with what the shop calls new international flavour impulses. The result is a counter where old Rhineland tradition and current tastes are handled by the same pair of hands.
Fundokin has brewed soy sauce and miso in Usuki, Oita since 1861, still relying on live fermentation cultures alongside modern production for its dressings, sauces, and seasonings. The company sells its full range through its own online shop and offers factory tours at the Usuki plant.
Ginza Kimuraya traces its origin to 1869, when a former samurai left unemployed by the Meiji Restoration, Yasubei Kimura, met a baker who had trained under a Dutch resident of Nagasaki's Dejima trading post and opened a Western-style bread shop, first called Bun'eido and renamed Kimuraya the following year.
Best for The birthplace of anpan, baking in Ginza since 1869
Ginza Kimuraya traces its origin to 1869, when a former samurai left unemployed by the Meiji Restoration, Yasubei Kimura, met a baker who had trained under a Dutch resident of Nagasaki's Dejima trading post and opened a Western-style bread shop, first called Bun'eido and renamed Kimuraya the following year. In 1874, Kimura and his son Eizaburo adapted the sake-yeast starter used for a steamed bun called sakamanju to leaven bread in a way suited to Japanese palates — the company's own history dates the result, anpan, a bun filled with sweetened azuki bean paste, to that year.
The bun's reputation was made the following spring. On April 4, 1875, Kimura presented Emperor Meiji with a sakura anpan studded with a salted cherry blossom sourced from Yoshino, and the emperor and Empress Shoken reportedly asked that it continue to be served to them afterward — the same date is now marked in Japan as Anpan Day, and Kimuraya's own corporate history page recounts the audience and the flower detail directly.
The Ginza flagship still occupies a multi-floor building at 4-5-7 Ginza: a bakery on the ground floor, a café upstairs, and a Western-style grill above that, run today as a roughly 95-employee company making close to 130 products, some of them seasonal. By its own and outside accounts it remains Japan's oldest Western-style bakery still trading under a name it chose for itself in 1870.
The Frankfurt butcher that invented the Rindswurst, a smoked all-beef sausage, and has made it in the Ostend since 1894. The counter on Hanauer Landstrasse still sells the sausages hot to eat or vacuum-packed to take away.
Henderson's Relish has blended its spicy Worcestershire-style table sauce to a secret recipe in Sheffield since 1885, still run by the same family generations later. The company sells relish, snacks, and merchandise worldwide through its own online shop.
The world's oldest vegetarian restaurant (since 1898) with an attached gourmet shop. Plant-based Swiss specialties, organic products, and prepared foods.
Best for The world's oldest vegetarian restaurant (since 1898) with an attached gourmet shop
Jiulaifa has hand-made traditional Tainan pastries like peng bing and sesame nougat from its shop on Ziqiang Street, across from the historic Kaiji Mazu Temple, since 1875. The bakery refuses wholesale distribution, selling only what it bakes itself, in person, by phone or through LINE Pay.
Best for Zodiac-stamped peng bing, hand-made since 1875, no wholesale
Jiulaifa has baked traditional Tainan pastries from its shop on Ziqiang Street, across from the historic Kaiji Mazu Temple, since 1875 — nearly 150 years of continuous, handmade production. The bakery's best-known product, peng bing, is stamped with zodiac designs using food-approved dyes, a practice the shop has kept alongside its other offerings, sesame nougat (mahlao), rice cakes, and traditional ritual offering snacks.
Jiulaifa deliberately avoids wholesale distribution, selling only what it bakes itself directly to customers — a stance the bakery frames as a way of preserving its century-old recipes rather than scaling production. Packaging stays minimal, in keeping with that same philosophy. Local press has recognized the shop for maintaining traditional, ancient baking methods while training younger artisans in the same heritage techniques.
Orders can be placed in person, by phone or through LINE Pay, and the shop is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Joselito's history in Guijuelo, Salamanca, goes back to 1868, when Vicente Gómez began the family's ham production there; the name comes from his grandson, nicknamed Joselito, who later put it on the products.
Best for Sixth-generation Guijuelo ibérico house curing continuously since 1868
Joselito's history in Guijuelo, Salamanca, goes back to 1868, when Vicente Gómez began the family's ham production there; the name comes from his grandson, nicknamed Joselito, who later put it on the products. Six generations of the Gómez family have run the business since, curing hams in natural drying rooms and century-old cellars on the same ground and raising pigs on open dehesa pasture.
The company distributes to restaurants and shops in a reported 56 countries and has drawn attention from Michelin-starred chefs and gastronomy critics over the years, alongside producing fresh meat and other cured products beyond ham itself. It also runs its own retail points in Madrid, at Velázquez and Las Rozas, putting a direct-to-customer shop front on what is otherwise primarily a producer-and-wholesale operation based in Guijuelo.
More than a century and a half after Vicente Gómez started curing there, Joselito remains one of Guijuelo's oldest continuously family-run ibérico houses, still headquartered where it began and still describing the work, in its own account, as a single obsession carried across six generations: making the best jamón it can. That continuity — same town, same family name, same stated goal across six changes of leadership — is what the company itself points to first when it talks about what sets it apart in a crowded producing region.
Founded in 1861 in Lititz, the bakery describes itself as the first commercial pretzel bakery in America. Visitors watch bakers hand-twist soft pretzels using century-old methods and can try twisting their own.
Best for Hand-twisted pretzel history and bakery tours
Julius Sturgis opened this bakery in Lititz, Pennsylvania in 1861, and it is recognized today as America's first commercial pretzel bakery. The Sturgis name has stayed attached to pretzel-making ever since, and the family is credited as the country's oldest pretzel-baking lineage, a claim the business has built its identity around for more than a century and a half.
The bakery no longer operates as a working pretzel factory; it now functions primarily as a historic site open to visitors, with retail hours six days a week and reduced Sunday hours. What draws people through the door is the chance to watch bakers "twisting old-fashioned soft pretzels by hand," using the same methods and some of the same ovens as the original operation. Visitors can also try the twist themselves with a playdough mixture during hands-on lessons, and groups of twenty or more can book dedicated tours.
Beyond the pretzels, the shop sells a range of shapes, sizes and souvenir packaging tied to the site's history. For a business built on a single, repetitive hand movement — dough rolled, looped and twisted into shape — the draw is less about novelty than continuity: a 165-year-old process still performed the way it was first done on the same Lititz street.
Ripple Tea is the consumer brand of Kanan Devan Hills Plantations, an employee-owned company formed in 2005 on tea gardens planted in 1880; it sells high-grown Munnar black, green and flavoured teas, coffee and plantation goods online and through Munnar outlets including the KDHP Tea Museum.
Best for It sells high-grown Munnar black, green and flavoured teas
Ripple Tea is the retail brand of Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP), the company that today farms the tea gardens around Munnar whose history runs back to 1880, when the first tea bushes were planted in the hills, and to 1886, when the Kanan Devan Hills Produce Company was formally established to run them. Ownership changed hands in April 2005, when Tata Tea transferred its Munnar plantations into a new company, KDHP, structured with substantial employee ownership - a structural detail that separates it from a conventional corporate estate. KDHP launched Ripple Tea as its own consumer-facing brand in 2010, selling high-grown black and green teas alongside specialty, iced and flavoured styles such as masala and elaichi-infused black tea, and broadened into e-commerce in 2015 to reach buyers beyond Kerala. The brand's range extends past tea into coffee, Kundaly Naturals essential oils, Parisudh incense sticks and handmade chocolates, all shipped direct from Munnar. On the ground, Ripple Tea connects to KDHP House and the KDHP Tea Museum, established in April 2004 as the first tea museum in India (also known as the Tata Tea Museum, on the former Nullathanni Estate), giving visitors a direct route from the plantation's 19th-century origins to the tea they can buy in the gift shop on the way out.
The business works with Ligurian bees that have been protected on Kangaroo Island since 1885, a lineage kept pure by the island's isolation from mainland pests and cross-breeding. It sells single-origin, creamed, and raw organic honey along with beeswax candles and mead, and runs in-person hive tours near Kingscote.
Best for Single-origin honey, beeswax candles, mead
Established in 1898 on Goodale Boulevard, Krema roasts nuts by hand in small batches and grinds fresh peanut butter on-site. Its shop sells nut butters, chocolate-covered nuts, and candies made in-house.
Best for Fresh-ground peanut butter and roasted nuts
Founded in 1867 by Pavel Kousmichoff in St Petersburg and relocated to Paris after the Russian Revolution, Kusmi Tea now produces its organic, B Corp-certified blends — including the historic Anastasia recipe — in Normandy.
Best for Anastasia blend and colorful tins from the 1867 St Petersburg house
Kusmi Tea's founder, Pavel Kousmichoff, left home at 14 to work for a St Petersburg tea merchant, and was given a small tea house of his own on his marriage in 1867 — the year the brand now dates itself to. The business grew quickly under him: a favorite of Russian nobility by 1880, and a chain of roughly ten tea houses by 1901. That history ended with the Russian Revolution, when the family relocated the business to Paris in 1917, carrying the Russian tea tradition — and recipes like the historic Anastasia blend — into French retail.
The brand now operates from Paris with production based in Normandy, where it makes its teas to organic and B Corp-certified standards — a very different operational footprint from the imperial-era tea houses it descends from. The catalog runs past 100 varieties, spanning the historic Russian-style recipes alongside newer wellness-oriented lines, including the organic Detox series launched in 2007. What ties the current business to its 1867 origin is mostly Anastasia and the brand's colorful tin packaging, both treated as a throughline to the St Petersburg tea house Kousmichoff built before the family ever set foot in Paris.
Route de la Fin 44, 1874 Champéry / Champéry / Switzerland
La Cavagne 1874 Champéry offers local cheese, meat, jam, bread, wine and cooperative produce. The range centers on a direct, edible reading of the valley rather than a generic souvenir, with production associated with Switzerland.
Best for A direct, edible reading of the valley rather than a generic souvenir
Founded 1888 by Annette and Victor Poulard at Mont-Saint-Michel; Annette's wood-fire-cooked omelette, created to occupy waiting guests, became the inn's signature dish and namesake.
Best for Mont-Saint-Michel sablé biscuits in collectible tins
La Mère Poulard traces to Annette Poulard, born Anne Boutiaut in Nevers in 1851, who came to Mont-Saint-Michel as a servant to architect Édouard Corroyer during his 1870s restoration of the abbey. There she met Victor Poulard, son of a local baker who leased one of the small inns on the Grand Rue; they married in 1873. To keep guests occupied while their meal cooked, Annette began serving a rustic omelette cooked over an open wood fire, whisked and cooked quickly so it emerged puffed and creamy. In 1888 the couple bought the Hôtel du Lion d'Or, had it rebuilt, and renamed the new establishment after the omelette's growing reputation. The dish and the address became inseparable, drawing later visitors including Hemingway, Mitterrand, and Picasso. The original recipe is still kept as a closely guarded house secret. What began as a single inn has grown into several adjoining guest houses ('Maisons d'Annette') at the base of Mont-Saint-Michel, and the shop now also sells the house's butter sablé biscuits in tins, extending the Poulard name from the dining room to a packaged souvenir.
La Perle des Dieux has hand-packed Atlantic sardines in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie since 1887, with the Gendreau family running the cannery since 1906. Each collectible tin is still filled by hand, with Label Rouge sardines matured for four months.
Best for Vintage-label Vendée sardine tins
La Perle des Dieux was established in 1887 in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie on France's Atlantic coast in the Vendée. Purchased by the Gendreau family in 1906, the cannery has perpetuated sardine tradition through 130+ years of expertise. In 2005, the brand La Perle des Dieux was created as an exceptional line representing the cannery's finest sardines and preparation methods. The sardines are caught off the coast of Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie in the small fishing area between the Island of Yeu, Noirmoutier, and Île de Ré. Each tin is hand-filled: sardines are sorted, cut, and arranged by hand, one by one, maintaining the same gesture as 130 years ago. Label Rouge sardines are matured for four months, achieving tender texture and remarkable finesse with an exceptional fat rate exceeding 12%. These sardines age extremely well for up to 10 years. The brand offers various recipes and vintage collections, featuring artistic designs by local painters on collectible tins that celebrate Atlantic heritage and Vendée maritime tradition.
The Parisian macaron maison since 1862 — pastel towers, double-decker macarons and salon-de-thé romance. Pierre Desfontaines, Louis-Ernest Ladurée's second cousin, joined two macaron shells with a filling; Jeanne Souchard (Ernest's wife) is credited with creating one of the first Paris tea rooms at Rue Royale.
Best for Pastel macaron boxes.
Ladurée began as a Parisian bakery in 1862, and its tea salon on Rue Royale — with ceiling cherubs painted by Jules Chéret — helped establish the salon de thé as an institution where women could meet unaccompanied. The house's claim on posterity is the double-decker macaron: two almond-meringue shells joined with ganache, an assembly Ladurée popularized in the twentieth century and turned into the pastel-boxed emblem of Parisian sweetness worldwide. The Rome address on Via Borgognona delivers the full ritual — the mint-green livery, the pyramid of shells in rotating seasonal flavors, the pastries beyond macarons that reward attention: the Ispahan's rose-lychee-raspberry combination has entered the pastry canon. Buy macarons to carry, but sit if there is time; the salon experience, unhurried and slightly theatrical, is the original product.
Macarons travel poorly beyond a day; buy the last morning, and choose the seasonal flavors over the permanent ones — the pastry kitchen's invention shows there.
The Jay family has milled walnut oil in Chatte since 1830, crushing kernels under a two-ton stone wheel for about fifteen minutes before pressing. The mill also makes walnut wine-vinegar and walnut mustard, and presses to order for local growers.
Set in a former bank dating to 1830, this Hudson, NY bakery bakes bread in a 17-ton wood-fired oven shipped brick by brick from France's Le Perche region, for which it's named. Owners Jeff and Nina Gimmel run it as a daytime café serving French baguettes, croissants and pastries.
Best for Wood-fired French bread and pastries
Le Perche occupies a building in Hudson, New York that dates to 1830 and once operated as a bank, a history the bakery's French-inspired menu doesn't reference but the architecture still shows. It's owned by Jeff and Nina Gimmel, who also run the nearby restaurant Swoon, and is named for the Le Perche region of France.
The bakery's defining feature is its oven: a 17-ton circular wood-fired oven transported brick by brick from the Le Perche region and rebuilt on site. French baguettes, organic sourdough breads, croissants and pastries all come out of that oven, baked in a two-story carriage house that looks out over a covered garden and courtyard. The choice to import a French oven wholesale, rather than build a domestic equivalent, reflects how central that piece of equipment is to what the bakery makes.
By day the space runs as a café serving breakfast, brunch and lunch with reservations available through Resy; it also does wholesale, private events and gift cards. The Times Union has called it a place with "superb baked goods," a description that points back to the oven the whole building was arranged around.
Founded in 1840, Lefevre-Lemoine sells macarons de Nancy, bergamottes, pain d'epices and mirabelle specialties. Its Au Duche de Lorraine shop opposite the station, with heritage-listed fittings, is open daily alongside an online boutique.
Best for Confiserie, biscuiterie, chocolate, macarons de Nancy
Madrid’s gilded pantry since 1839 — consommé from the silver samovar downstairs, Isabelline salons above. serving yourself consommé from the samovar at street level has been a house tradition since 1839.
Best for Consommé, croquetas, the takeaway counter
A butcher-charcutier-traiteur established in Arles in 1877, Maison Genin is one of the last authentic makers of the protected saucisson d'Arles, a donkey-and-beef sausage. It also produces a range of Provencal charcuterie.
Best for Authentic saucisson d'Arles and Provencal charcuterie
Founded in 1845 and run by the same family ever since, Isautier is a Réunion rum house, best loved today for its rhums arrangés — vanilla, banane flambée, spiced citrus — steeped in the island's own harvest. The Saint-Pierre maison anchors nearly two centuries of Creole distilling.
Best for Arranged rums from the island's oldest family house
Maison Reignier has traded as a fine-food épicerie in Le Mans since 1885, stocking wine, champagne, foie gras, terrines and regional specialties from its Rue de Bolton shop. It has since added a traiteur service, preparing meal trays and buffets delivered across the Sarthe.
Best for Regional fine-food gifts and prepared traiteur trays
Founded in 1859 near Kurseong and farmed biodynamically since the 1970s, Makaibari was the first tea garden in India certified organic and the first worldwide certified biodynamic; its silver-tip and moonlight-harvest lots, including a record $302/kg first flush, ship direct from the estate.
Best for Biodynamic Darjeeling silver-tip and moonlight teas
Makaibari, in the hills above Kurseong, dates its founding to 1859 by its own account and calls itself the world's first tea factory - one of the oldest continuously run gardens in Darjeeling. For generations the estate stayed in the hands of the Banerjee family, who began shifting cultivation toward biodynamic and organic methods in the 1970s under planter Swaraj Kumar Banerjee; by 1988 Makaibari had become the first tea garden in India certified fully organic, and later the first in the world certified biodynamic under the Demeter standard. The estate uses a permaculture system spread across six ridges, letting native forest and wildlife share the land with the tea bushes rather than clearing them out, and times some of its harvesting to the lunar calendar - the basis for its 'Full Moon Harvest' and moonlight lots. Its silver-tip teas, picked from the youngest, unopened buds, sit at the top of the range. The estate sells direct, without intermediary brokers, and its lots have set records at auction: a 2017 first-flush batch sold for $302 per kilogram, among the highest prices ever paid for first flush Darjeeling. Beyond tea sales, Makaibari runs a homestay and ecotourism program, putting visitors on the same ridges the biodynamic system was built to protect.
Manuel Tavares has sold cheese, charcuterie, salt cod and vintage port from its narrow Rua da Betesga storefront since 1860, the shelves stacked floor to ceiling behind a marble-topped counter. The Financial Times named it among the world's best food shops in 2021, citing a selection built on direct relationships with small Portuguese producers.
Marne has milled Groninger mustard since 1895, when it began as a local employment project, and still makes the region's coarse, sharp mustard along with Dijon, honey, and whole-grain varieties. The company works from Van der Hoopstraat in Groningen and sells its jars through a webshop.
S. Martinelli & Co has pressed apple juice and sparkling cider in Watsonville, California since 1868, and opened a Company Store & Tasting Room there in 2015 offering free daily samples. Visitors can buy branded merchandise and products by the case at 345 Harvest Drive, while the wider range is available through retailers nationwide.
Brewing under the Harajiroemon name since 1899, Maruhara presses miso and soy sauce in Hita through long, slow cellar fermentation. The maker is known for its Ayame sashimi soy sauce and for developing seasonings meant to enhance other condiments, and it runs a second shopping site at maruhara.jp.
Founded in 1869, Mori Naraduketen makes naraduke, the sake-lees pickles native to Nara, through a long multi-stage fermentation. Its shop stands on the grounds of Todaiji Temple, directly in front of the South Gate.
Murchie's has blended teas and roasted coffee in British Columbia since 1894, running eight retail locations across Victoria and the Lower Mainland alongside an online shop offering the same catalog plus its exclusive Tasting Lab. Every batch passes multiple quality inspections before reaching the shelf in its classic blends and collectible tins.
Best for Classic tea and coffee blends and the Tasting Lab
Founded in 1899 in Piazza di Basilicanova near Parma by brothers Marcellino and Callisto Mutti, descendants of a family that had farmed tomatoes locally since the 1800s, this company registered its Due Leoni trademark in 1911 and won gold at Rome's International Industry and Agriculture Exhibition that year.
Best for Italian passata, peeled tomatoes and tomato concentrate
Mutti's tomato business traces back to Giovanni Mutti (1804-1894), a Piazza di Basilicanova farmer near Parma noted for applying early crop-rotation techniques to his land. In 1899, his nephews Marcellino and Callisto Mutti took the family's tomato growing into commercial processing, founding the company under the name Fratelli Mutti (Mutti Brothers) to preserve and sell tomato products at scale rather than sell the raw crop. The young company built its reputation quickly: in 1911 it registered its Due Leoni (Two Lions) trademark and won a First-Class Gold Medal at the International Industry and Agriculture Exhibition in Rome that same year, an early public validation of its processing methods in the tomato-growing heartland of the Po Valley. The company has remained headquartered in Basilicanova, in the province of Parma, an area whose soil and climate are associated with high-quality processing tomatoes, and continues to be controlled by the Mutti family more than a century after its founding, now selling passata, peeled tomatoes and other tomato products internationally under the Mutti name and the Due Leoni mark.
Nerada grows tea in the Atherton Tablelands foothills on land first planted by Dr. Allan Maruff after he revived a defunct 1882 plantation. Now Australia's largest tea estate, it holds Rainforest Alliance certification since 2018.
Best for Estate-grown Australian tea from the country's largest tea plantation
Australia's tea-growing history begins in 1882, when the Cutten brothers planted the country's first commercial tea at Bingil Bay in Far North Queensland, overlooking the Great Barrier Reef, an operation cyclones wiped out by the early 1900s. It was revived decades later by Dr. Allan Maruff, who migrated from India in the 1950s, found remnants of the abandoned Cutten plantation, propagated seedlings from them near Cairns, and then planted his own tea rows on land he bought in the Nerada Valley, in the foothills of the Atherton Tablelands.
Maruff partnered with the trading company Burns Philp in the 1960s to form Nerada Tea Estates and build Australia's first tea-processing factory; a rival venture, Tea Estates of Australia, later absorbed Nerada's assets and consolidated everything under the Nerada name by the 1970s. International growers J.A. Russell and James Finlay joined in the 1980s and 1990s, a modern processing facility opened in nearby Malanda in 1991, and the operation grew into what remains Australia's largest tea plantation, holding Rainforest Alliance certification since 2018 and producing more than 85 black, green, white and herbal products. The estate paused black tea harvesting in June 2023 as it shifts toward higher-value offerings, a notable pivot for a plantation built on more than a century of on-and-off Australian tea growing.
Founded in 1806 on Breite Straße, Niederegger has shaped Lübeck's identity as the marzipan capital of Germany, working the city's traditional recipe of finely ground almonds and sugar into loaves, marzipan potatoes, and chocolate-dipped confections. The flagship building houses a café and a marzipan museum where confectioners hand-shape the paste using techniques largely unchanged for two centuries.
Baking bread and rolling pasta in Bologna since 1880, Paolo Atti & Figli makes handmade tortellini, tortelloni, and the almond-and-spice Certosino cake, along with panettone and pastries. The family runs two central shops, on Via Caprarie and Via Drapperie, where sfogline still roll pasta by hand.
Milan gastronomy hall founded in 1883 by Francesco Peck, a Prague-born salumiere; moved to its Via Spadari 9 address in 1912 under Eliseo Magnaghi and was an official supplier to Italy's Royal House by 1890.
Best for Milanese gourmet hampers of serious pedigree.
Peck is a Milanese food hall founded in 1883 by Francesco Peck, a charcuterie maker originally from Prague, who opened a shop specializing in cured meats and smoked goods. The business quickly attracted an upscale clientele and, by 1890, was named an official supplier to Italy's Royal House. In 1912 new owner Eliseo Magnaghi moved the business to its present address at Via Spadari 9, near Milan's Duomo, and broadened the offer to fresh pasta and prepared gastronomy. Over the twentieth century Peck became a meeting place for Milanese cultural figures, reportedly including the writer Gabriele D'Annunzio.
Perm Confectionery Factory (АО "Кондитерская фабрика Пермская") is a working candy and chocolate maker founded in 1892, producing over 120 confections including Perm-themed gift sets. It sells through its own branded retail stores and online shop, alongside distribution across Russia and abroad.
Best for Confectioner, Chocolate, Candy, Souvenirs
Peter Luger has grilled dry-aged USDA Prime steak at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, aging its beef on the premises. The cash-only steakhouse also runs a butcher shop selling its cuts and bacon.
Italian confectioners the Pomatti brothers opened Königsberg's first marzipan factory in 1809 and went on to supply the royal court; the revived Kaliningrad brand still works from Mediterranean almonds for its bars and chocolate-dipped marzipan. The company runs its own factory tours and marzipan museum alongside its production line.
Best for Historic Königsberg marzipan brand, chocolate-dipped varieties
Rischart, Munich's family Backerei-Konditorei "Munchner Genuss seit 1883", baking Brezn, Brot, Kuchen and seasonal specialities like Zwetschgenzeit across its own city cafes. First-party door live with history, quality and product pages.
Best for Breads, pretzels, cakes and seasonal pastries
Robern Menz is the Adelaide confectioner behind FruChocs, the apricot-and-peach centres coated in chocolate, along with Crown Mints and Violet Crumble. The brand's heritage dates to 1850.
Best for FruChocs and classic South Australian confectionery
The Santa Barbara Olive Company traces its roots to 1850 and produces table olives, olive oils and gourmet products under its own brand from Santa Barbara County fruit. Its goods sell through the company's site and a store locator.
Trading in Belfast since 1897, Sawers is a delicatessen and fine-food emporium stocking local cheeses, cured meats and seafood. Its shelves lean heavily on Irish artisan produce and hampers.
Founded in 1807, Şekerci Cafer Erol is a historic Istanbul confectioner known for Turkish delight, akide candies, chocolates, marzipan, other traditional sweets and seasonal gift boxes. Its flagship at Yasa Cad. No:19 in Kadıköy anchors a wider Istanbul network that includes Göztepe, Akasya AVM, İstinye Park AVM and Galataport, while the official online shop extends the same confectionery range beyond the physical stores.
Best for Confectionery, turkish delight, chocolate, candy
Siroperie Meurens has slow-cooked Belgian apples and pears in open cauldrons in Aubel since 1880, reducing the fruit alone without added sugar, preservatives or colorants. The company still brands itself Du Vrai Sirop de Liège and sells Classic, 100% Fruit and Apricot varieties in jars and squeeze bottles.
Topping & Company's Bath branch, open since 2007, moved in 2021 into a former Quaker meeting house designed in 1818 by William Wilkins. Rolling ladders reach floor-to-ceiling shelves, free tea is poured for browsers, and author events run regularly.
Best for Sliding-ladder bookcases and free tea in Bath
Topping & Company opened its Bath branch in 2007, the second shop from Robert and Louise Topping after their original Ely store launched in 2002. After fourteen years on The Paragon, the Bath shop relocated in December 2021 into the former Friends Meeting House on York Street, a building designed in 1818 by William Wilkins, the architect later responsible for London's National Gallery. The building has cycled through several identities since then -- Masonic lodge, chapel, assembly rooms, and Quaker meeting house -- before becoming a bookshop. Inside, the shop follows the chain's signature look: floor-to-ceiling bookcases reached by rolling ladders, hand-painted section signs, and stock that runs into the tens of thousands of titles across multiple floors. True to the Topping house style found at its other branches (Edinburgh, Ely, St Andrews, York), staff pour free tea and coffee for browsing customers, and the shop runs a regular programme of ticketed author events. It's a shop built around lingering rather than a quick errand -- tall shelves, a ladder to reach them, and a cup of tea to make the browsing last.
The world's largest truffle company, Umbrian since 1852 — fresh and preserved truffles from the Valnerina. museum opened to the public in March 2012 in what was the first Urbani plant, founded by Paolo Urbani at the end of the 19th century in his own house in Scheggino.
Best for Truffles fresh, preserved, and gift-boxed.
Milwaukee sausage maker founded in 1880 by German immigrant Fred Usinger, now run by a fifth generation of his family. Its riverfront deli and gift store sell the full range of old-world wursts, franks and specialty meats, also stocked in stores nationwide.
Best for Old-world wursts and franks from a fifth-generation Milwaukee sausage maker.
Fred Usinger arrived in Milwaukee from Wehen, Germany, in the late 1870s as an apprentice sausage maker. He took work at a small butcher shop on 3rd Street run by the widow Julia Gaertner, eventually buying the business from her, marrying her niece Louise, and moving into the living quarters above the store — the founding of what became Usinger's in 1880.
The company has stayed in family hands since. After Fred Usinger's death in 1930, his son Fred Jr. led the business; Fredrick Usinger III took over in 1953 and remained at the helm into the 1990s, when fourth-generation siblings Fritz and Debra Usinger assumed day-to-day control during a period of expansion. A 2005 civic proclamation marked the company's 136 years and four generations of family ownership; a fifth generation is now involved.
Today Usinger's makes its wursts, franks and specialty meats to what it describes as the same old-world recipes, sold from its Milwaukee riverfront deli and gift store as well as through retailers across the country.
Hadji Sadık Bey, an Albanian migrant who arrived in Istanbul in 1870, spent six years carrying his improved boza recipe through the streets in copper containers before opening a permanent shop in Vefa in 1876. His fourth-generation descendants still run it today, serving the fermented millet drink alongside grape vinegar and Ottoman-style syrups made to the original recipe.
Secondo Vergani has made Cremona's classic torrone since 1881, pressing honey, egg white and toasted almonds into hard nougat bars alongside marrons glacés and candied mostarda. The confectionery on Via Tacito also turns out chocolate pralines, truffles and seasonal specialties under the historic Vergani name.
Wagh Bakri traces to 1892, when Narandas Desai first owned a tea estate in Durban, South Africa, before founding the Gujarat Tea Depot Co. in Ahmedabad in 1919. The company remains headquartered in Ahmedabad and privately run by his descendants.
Best for Everyday Indian chai blends from a Gujarat house dating
Wagh Bakri traces to 1892, when Narandas Desai first owned a tea estate in Durban, South Africa. Racial prejudice pushed him to leave, and by 1919, back in India and carrying a letter of recommendation from Mahatma Gandhi praising his integrity and skill in the tea trade, he used it to found the Gujarat Tea Depot Co. in Ahmedabad, aiming to bring quality tea blends to India's working class, particularly the city's textile mill workers who had little access to it before.
The brand name Wagh Bakri — tiger and goat — was registered in 1934, paired with a logo showing the two animals sharing a teacup. The image was chosen deliberately: it represented social harmony and the breaking down of caste and class divisions, a message built directly into the company's branding rather than added as marketing after the fact.
More than a century after Desai founded the Gujarat Tea Depot Co., Wagh Bakri remains headquartered in Ahmedabad and privately run by his descendants, one of India's oldest continuously operating tea houses. Its founding story — a South African tea estate, a Gandhi reference letter, and a logo built around social equality — is unusually well documented for a company of its age.
Xie Yuda dates to 1875, when Xie Zheng'an created Huangshan Maofeng near Fuxi in the Huangshan foothills. Six generations later the company still processes Maofeng, Taiping Houkui and Keemun black tea, now recognized as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage.
Best for Huangshan Maofeng green tea
Xie Yuda traces to 1875, when Xie Zheng'an, born into a Huizhou tea-merchant family whose fortunes had been wrecked by the Taiping Rebellion decades earlier, rebuilt the business and created Huangshan Maofeng at Caoxi (now Fuxi), in the foothills of Huangshan. His method — picking especially tender leaf and refining the traditional firing and rolling process — produced a silver-tipped tea that sold out on its first shipment to Shanghai and quickly became a fixture among the city's tea-drinking elite. The house grew into the leading name among Huizhou's five major historical tea merchants, and its Huangshan Maofeng processing technique is now recognized as part of China's UNESCO-listed intangible cultural heritage. Six generations later, the company — now operating as Huangshan Xie Yuda Tea Leaf Co., Ltd — still processes tea from gardens around Huangshan, producing roughly 2,000 tons a year across Maofeng, Taiping Houkui and Keemun black tea, with 2022 revenue near 197 million yuan. The business markets a "state-gift tea" line alongside its retail range and sells through Tmall and its own storefronts as well as its Huizhou headquarters. It's a rare case of a single 1875 recipe still anchoring the company that invented it, six generations and roughly a century and a half on.
Yamada Jozo has brewed soy sauce and miso in Niigata since 1891, using its own resident kura yeast. The Kuzuduka store and online shop sell miso, soy sauce, amazake, pickles and fermented specialties.
Best for Miso, soy sauce, fermented foods, amazake
Visit official site ↗
Visit Instagram ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Open city/visitor reference ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗