For my now fourth shoot for the Kabel Eins show "Abenteuer Leben täglich", we went to the Île de Ré in early July. This beautiful island in Brittany is supposedly the place in France with the most hours of sunshine after Corsica. This year, however, the weather was unfortunately not so reliable, which has a direct impact on the existence of the many salt farmers who live and work on the island and produce fleur de sel (salt flower) in their so-called salt gardens. Fleur de sel is a very special fine salt that is very delicate in taste, is not used for cooking, but gently enhances dishes. How the production looks in detail, what you have to pay attention to and what is special about this famous salt, we wanted to find out and so we equipped Maud Alexandre and James Reno, the two salt farmers from „Le comptoir des Pertuis“, whose Fleur de sel we also carry in our range, with a visit.
Maud and James actually come from the mainland and had absolutely nothing to do with salt for a very long time. Maud is a trained graphic designer (she also takes care of the packaging design and the own homepage), while James is a lighting and sound designer. They met and fell in love in the event scene. They came to the island for the first time in 2001 to work in a friend's salt garden. This collaboration lasted several years and then the two were clear that they saw their future in salt and on the island. They found an abandoned salt garden, which they restored from 2007. In 2009 they could finally begin production.
When we arrived, however, the production did not look good at all: due to the bad weather that prevailed in the days before our arrival, no significant salt crust had formed – there was almost nothing to harvest! So we started sending desperate prayers to Petrus (Maud and James always refer to Dame Nature, so Mother Nature, in this context), may the next few days be consistently sunny and we looked at everything else that belongs to salt production besides harvesting: cleaning the salt with the help of a vacuum cleaner specially converted for this purpose, mixing the herb and spice salts, packaging, the boutique …
In the evening James cooked for us all and it was a real feast! There was duck breast with potatoes from the island, with braised apples, everything seasoned with Fleur de sel. For the appetizer the most beautiful combination of the summer: a perfectly ripe honeydew melon, sprinkled with a pinch of Fleur de sel. Some may already know the trick – I myself like to apply it to pineapple or watermelon: the salt, which is a natural flavor enhancer, draws liquid and flavor out of the fruit and makes sure that everything – and in this case the wonderfully ripe melon – tastes even juicier and more aromatic.
The main course also clearly benefited from the delicate extra ingredient: the combination of sweet and salty was very successful. Thank you James!
The next day it already looked much better, apparently our prayers had been answered: since the previous day the sun had shone continuously and it had not rained, the salt flower had begun to form in the water basins of the salt garden. The shoot was secured!
But why do I always ride on the weather? Because with the weather the harvest stands or falls!
The salt flower is produced from seawater under the open sky in so-called salt gardens (frz. marais) and only forms under very specific conditions: it needs sun and high temperatures, a certain thermal wind and it must not rain or otherwise exist too high humidity under no circumstances. If even one factor is not right or a rainy day follows two beautiful days, everything is ruined. Then it means waiting again. And praying. If you think about it once, you quickly realize that the production of the salt flower depends heavily on nature and also on chance. That, its elaborate production and of course its special taste explain the higher price compared to industrially produced or rock salt.
The salt garden itself consists of three parts:
1) a water reservoir, which is fed directly from the sea. This is a large basin with a flap on the bottom, whose cover opens when the pressure of the tide is high enough. Then the salty seawater flows in.
2) This reservoir is connected to the next part, the heating system: this consists of a winding channel system, whose channels or basins become flatter and flatter. Here the water winds through and is heated first by the flow speed, secondly by the sun, which warms the water in the ever flatter basins. Here the salt content is now regulated: in the last basin of this system, the salt content is 270 grams per 1 liter. In comparison: "normal" seawater has 30 grams per 1 liter!
3) From here, the highly concentrated salt brine is led into the actual salt garden, which consists of several basins that are connected to each other by an elaborate system of valves. Here the Fleur de sel, the coveted salt flower, now forms.
The Fleur de sel is harvested with the help of a special rake, which is gently pushed under the salt layer. At the same time, you have to make sure that you do not touch the bottom of the basin or stir it up, because it consists of clay. If it is stirred up, the salt flower discolors, is no longer pure and white and cannot be sold as such. In addition, coarse sea salt forms on the bottom of the basin, which also has nothing to do with the salt flower.
The harvested salt, which is still full of brine and very moist here, is transported with the wheelbarrow to the drying facility. Soaked with brine, it smells even more intense than when it is finally dried. It then has a really floral and incredibly aromatic scent. In addition, it can happen that it is slightly pink colored, which is due to small plankton-like microorganisms that are in the water, but die with the drying, so that the discoloration also disappears.
The drying goes more or less by itself and usually only takes one night. The next day the Fleur de sel can then already be further processed. However, not much is left to do, because the natural product is now already almost finished. Maud and James, however, have a very high standard for the quality of their product, which is why the special vacuum cleaner mentioned earlier now comes into play. With it, the smallest impurities are vacuumed out of the salt. And then it really only needs to be filled. For herb and spice salts, such as the flower mixture "Fleur d’helios" (with rose, cornflower and marigold), Maud prepares corresponding dry preparations for the salt. I was also allowed to help mix and could observe an exciting transformation: in the dried state, the flowers smell more like tea or hay than flowers. But already after a short time, they take up the moisture that is still in the Fleur de sel and they already smell fresh and floral again.
And with that I have already named one of the quality characteristics of the Fleur de sel: on the one hand, it is characterized by the fact that it always retains a residue of moisture, which gives it its special (floral) bouquet. So that the salt does not stick to the fingers, a small spoon is also often used for dosing. A second quality characteristic is its structure: the salt flower consists of many very fine crystals, which under the magnifying glass have beautiful geometric shapes and in which the light refracts in rainbow colors. A third characteristic is its "fine crumbly" nature: you must be able to rub it between your fingers.
In terms of taste, it differs from industrially produced salt in that it is much less aggressive and much rounder in taste. As a natural flavor enhancer, it enhances every dish.
This also includes sweets, as we already had the chance to taste at our joint dinner with Maud and James. Therefore, it is no wonder that especially in Brittany, where butter is also usually salted (small tip: you should also definitely try our fantastic salted raw milk butter), many sweets are enriched with salt to intensify their taste. In addition to the fabulous and richly buttery typical Breton galettes and palets with Fleur de sel (also available in our store), caramel with Fleur de sel is also a regional specialty. It is available in all possible forms: as candies, as pralines or coulis and spreadable caramel cream for all kinds of desserts, for the breakfast roll or just so.
To see how the crème caramel au beurre salé is made, we visited the factory of Île de Ré chocolats in la Rochelle one afternoon and were allowed to watch how from sugar, butter, milk and … salt flower a sinfully fragrant brown mass was made, which then took all conceivable shapes. While the guys from the camera team were filming and the other guys in the factory were doing their work, I had the pleasure of walking through the facility with Eric, the director, looking at everything and trying everything that Eric handed me by the way. Of course, there was a sweet-salty-buttery scent in the air everywhere ... in short: it was simply heavenly!
After a difficult start to the season, the summer has developed very well for Maud and James by the way: they have worked practically through half of July and all of August and produced so many tons of salt that they no longer have to worry until the next season. After all the hard work, the two treated themselves to a little vacation in early September and we are keeping our fingers crossed that "Dame Nature" will continue to be kind to them in the future and they can continue to enjoy this exhausting but undoubtedly beautiful profession together for many more years.
We will definitely come back to the island again sometime …
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Since unfortunately my device storage made a run for it this time, there is no original video of the trip here. However, anyone who wants to watch the accompanying film can do so in the Kabel Eins Media Library. Have fun watching!
