Criatura was founded in 2022 by Diana Rego, who grew up on a farm in the Penafiel area, in the north of Portugal. The starting point was a problem she had seen first hand. Small growers, often already certified organic, regularly cannot sell perfectly good produce because it fails commercial calibration. Fruit too small, fruit misshapen, or simply a surplus harvest with nowhere to go.
Criatura buys those surpluses from farms across the country and blends them into infusions. Every raw material is organic, most of it comes from small Portuguese producers, and imperfect fruit goes into the blends wherever the recipe allows. The whole process is done by hand.
What is unusual is how far the transparency goes. Criatura publishes a page for each of its growers, with names and details. Igor Pinto grows blueberries at Marco de Canaveses on his grandparents' former vineyard, with soil moisture sensors, drip irrigation and shelters for insects, birds and bats. João Tiago Ferreira grows lemon verbena, thyme and stevia on around two hectares. Eva Moreira supplies peppermint from Quinta das Aromáticas at Vila do Conde, an estate whose origins go back to 1756, and that peppermint won a gold medal at the twelfth national competition for traditional Portuguese aromatic herbs in 2025.
The work has been recognised outside Portugal. In June 2025 Criatura won the Women in Agrifood Female Founder Award at the CERES Awards in Bilbao, given by EIT Food. It also won the Crédito Agrícola prize in the category for resilience of small farmers and rural communities. Packaging is designed with the Portuguese illustrator Teresa Rego.
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