Cooking sauces, gourmet condiments
and divine mushrooms !

The rules are always the same, use the best ingredients and give them time to get acquainted, it’s not rocket science.

Aromatics was started by Chef Noel Crawford, ‘The Saucerer’, in 2001. The initial recipes for our launch products had slowly been tweaked and refined during a 35+ year career in kitchens around the world. The launch of the Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Market provided the opportunity to bring Noel’s passion for flavour to a receptive audience, and they kept coming back for more. Since then, the Aromatics’ product range has grown, fed by Noel's passion and the love of flavour that is still at our heart.

Noel Crawford began his career in late 1966.

“I walked into the legendary La Boheme Restaurant in Auckland New Zealand with a strong desire to become a chef. The smell of coffee and fresh baguettes, a stove top full of bubbling pots and the friendly face of an Italian chef gave me an intense feeling of déjà vu. I knew that’s where I wanted to be, I was taken in as a member of a large family and treated with warmth and respect, I learned so much there that would shape my life. The generosity of spirit shown by the chefs manifested itself in the food that they produced, and set a benchmark for me to aspire to in my work.”

After a life of pursuing what he called "big flavour", Noel passed away in late 2013, but this essence of generosity still persists in everything we do at Aromatics.

As the Saucerer himself once said “the rules are always the same, use the best ingredients and give them time to get acquainted, it’s not rocket science.”