A Heritage Drawn from the Sea For as long as anyone can remember, fish sauce has been the one seasoning no Vietnamese family table can do without. More than a condiment, it is a distinctive thread woven into the cultural fabric of Vietnam. The craft of making fish sauce reaches far back in time and has become the traditional trade of Đức Lợi. Speak of Đức Lợi fish sauce, and one thinks at once of a flavour born of the sea — unadorned, yet fragrant and deeply full-bodied, much like the people of this coast: plain-spoken, honest, and rich in feeling. To produce a fine fish sauce, the choice of raw material is everything. As the families of Đức Lợi who have practised the craft for generations will tell you, good fish must be bought between the first and the fourth lunar month of the year. Fish destined for the salt must be fresh and blue-bright, neither too large nor too small. Large fish break down slowly, or unevenly; and when the first sauce is drawn, its aroma falls flat and its colour never deepens — such a sauce can never be truly good. The makers ferment the fish and salt in earthenware jars set out beneath the open sky. Perhaps it is the sun and the sea wind of the Quảng country that give Đức Lợi fish sauce its warm, fragrant depth. Wishing to keep alive and carry forward the traditional craft entrusted to us by our forefathers, I — Dương Văn Dũng — together with a number of neighbouring households, took up the work and nurtured the hope of seeing the Đức Lợi fish sauce trade flourish once more. On 30 December 2021, with a heart full of conviction and the wholehearted encouragement of my family, I set out to build the fish sauce brand Ông Ba Ớt. Ông Ba Ớt fish sauce is made by the traditional handcrafted method of ủ chượp — fish and sea salt layered into wooden barrels and left to mature for fifteen months or more. After a fermentation left entirely to nature, the first drops emerge: a burnished amber-red, clear and luminous as golden straw, carrying a soft, unmistakable aroma. Most telling of all is the taste. Salt greets the tip of the tongue first, then gives way to a sweetness that spreads gently all the way to the back of the throat — a clean, lingering natural sweetness that comes from amino-acid protein, and that no other sauce can imitate. It is for this reason that Ông Ba Ớt fish sauce has earned the trust of local families and of customers across many provinces. That trust is at once our motivation, our reassurance, and our greatest challenge: it calls on us to keep refining our product, so as never to fall short of what our customers expect of the name Ông Ba Ớt.