Wanderlands, the nut mix that's on "a mission to transform everyday snacks into an adventure," recently launched in October 2024.
The pecan-based mix has approximately 30 ingredients and multiple textures to create a snack that leverages consumers' olfactory sense to evoke unique terrains and environments, the brand says.
Born out of a partnership between a wine cellar master and a neuroscientist, Wanderlands is the result of over two years of research and recipe development with unexpected ingredients, textures, and aromas—leading to a series of unique integrated flavor combinations that appeal to our olfactory sense to evoke the places that inspire us most, the brand says. Each proprietary blend conjures the essence of its titular surroundings (Mineral Creek Wilds, Mesa After Rain, and Into Snowy Woods) via hand-selected ingredients that echo that setting’s atmosphere, flora, and earth.
Founder Sofia Rovirosa grew up in New Mexico on her family’s fourth-generation pecan estate with a strong sense of connection to both food and land, something that was reinforced during her global travels and eventual career in viticulture as a cellar master at a winery in Napa, CA. This hands-on experience working closely with the land instilled in Sofia a deep passion for the concept of “terroir”—echoing the essence of a place and season in what consumers eat and drink. Yet it wasn’t until she met Jane Ko, a brand marketer with a PhD in neuroscience who leveraged her understanding of how our brains construct experiences from sensory inputs, that she was inspired to revisit her family business through this new lens. Drawing on their unique individual experiences with the power of smell to impact experience, Rovirosa & Ko worked closely with a chef to translate their vision into a tangible reality.
Wanderlands was born from a mission to viscerally capture (and share) this powerful sense of "somewhereness," or infusing the essence of a specific time and place into a transportive snack food. Inspired by techniques long employed by the candle and scent industries, Rovirosa & Ko leveraged the power of our olfactory sense—the one most directly connected to the memory and emotion centers in consumers' brains. Each mix begins with Stahmann's estate-grown, non-GMO Project Verified, 100% vertically integrated pecans as a base. The high level of healthy fats present in the pecans makes them the ideal foundation for blending and integrating the flavors that will evoke the atmosphere, flora, and earth of specific locations, the brand says. To this base, Wanderlands adds a dynamically-textured mix of seeds, vegetables, and legumes, followed by spice blends of up to nine aromatic ingredients. The result is three initial distinct medleys based on New Mexico landscapes that reportedly evoke specific memories of time and place.
The pecan mixes include:
- Mesa After Rain:
- Tasting notes from the brand: Earthy. Umami. Grassy
- Setting: Summer thunderstorms wash over desert dust and flora.
- Ingredients: [Atmosphere]: horseradish, hatch green chile, fennel, yuzu, [Flora]: pepitas, fava beans, matcha, and [Earth]: pecans, roasted black soybeans, red miso.
- Tasting notes from the brand: Spicy. Tangy. Hint of Smoke.
- Setting: Sweet smell of fall leaves on damp soil. Hatch chiles roasting in the distance.
- Ingredients: [Atmosphere]: hatch red chile, fire roasted pepper, [Flora]: carrots, crunchy corn and [Earth]: pecans, fava beans, habanero chiles
- Tasting note from the brand: Savory. Peaty. Piney.
- Setting: Crisp mountain air, mushroomy forest floor, resinous woodsmoke, and fresh snow
- Ingredients: [Atmosphere]: Lapsang Souchong tea, black cardamom, [Flora]: yuzu, pepitas, and [Earth]: pecans, beets, and cremini mushrooms evoke the Earth/land.
The mixes retail for $12.99 for one pack or $38.97 for a three-pack.
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