Once prized for its aromatic wood, sandalwood is now being successfully grown and marketed for its creamy nuts by Connie and Marty Winch-Buist.
Story By Kerry Faulkner
Connie and Marty Winch-Buist are WA Sandalwood Nuts – a self-contained team that harvests, husks, cooks, packages and even delivers its buttery sandalwood nuts to customers. They are so devoted that they have been known, on more than one occasion, to cut short a holiday to tear hundreds of kilometres back home to meet an order. “That’s what you do,” says Marty, when growing a food business and celebrated chef Matt Stone (formerly of Perth’s edgy The Greenhouse restaurant fame) says he wants to try your product. The enormous effort is worth it, they say, because the business is all theirs; they owe no-one anything and that’s the way they like it.
They are one of just two sandalwood-nut enterprises in the state. Last year Connie and Marty sold their entire harvest and that from four other properties where they collect. “Demand has been mental,”
This story excerpt is from Issue #105
Outback Magazine: Feb/Mar 2016
