8 MR. OYSTER PURVEYOR

The trip from Paris to the oysterland of Marennes-Oléron takes about four and a half hours via the highway, traveling at or close to the speed limit of 130 kph. I suggested to Edward that we make the trip so I could visit the Oyster Museum in Marennes and absorb a little of the culture up close. Plus, we could stay at the seaside resort of Royan and visit the historic, touristic, and commercial center of Saintes. He agreed, and I took charge of making the car rental reservation, as he was busy traveling for business when we made the decision.

Though we had stopped off in the area before, mostly for meals, going to or coming from Bordeaux or Cognac over the years, we had not experienced the Roman and medieval cathedral towns of the area or quietly smelled the sea and seen the boats that recalled the rustic Cape Cod and Nantucket of my high school year abroad. Here is colorful, low-key tourism at its best… la France profonde. Apart from the boring drive along the highway, I recommend the visit. I mentioned the 130 kph speed limit because two months after my return to Paris, I received a souvenir of the journey in the mail: a speeding ticket with a fine of 180 euros. In France, there are now speed cameras in certain locations that take a photo of your license plate when you exceed the speed limit. Edward did all the driving. The car was rented in my name. We weren’t rushing. I got the souvenir of my first speeding ticket (actually I got two). He laughed.

The museum was fun and informative… and quick. Plan for thirty minutes. Built into the saltwater marshes, the Aventure de l’Huître (www.cite-huitre.com) is a series of five huts in which, through audiovisuals, old photos, and re-creations with antiques, is traced nicely the history of the oyster industry, the workers, the farming technique, the oysters, and the ecosystem of the Marennes basin. There is even an oyster bar if your appetite is stimulated. Plus, the écailler will teach you in two minutes or less how to open an oyster.

VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE

I love Burgundy wine. But there is good and there is great… there is Vosne-Romanée and there is La Tâche. And there are Burgundies made by such esteemed winegrowers and winemakers as Christophe Roumier and Dominique Lafon. Great Burgundies are works of nature, soils, and microclimates (collectively called terroir), and of vignerons and winemakers. Much the same can be said for oysters. When it comes to cupped oysters (creuses) the Marennes-Oléron family name and their company, Gillardeau, as previously noted, are quality references. You just don’t eat a spéciale no. 2, you want to experience a Gillardeau spéciale no. 2.

Planning my visit to oyster country, I asked Régis where I should go. “Papin-Poget,” he began. In his inimitable way, Régis had tasted his way through the Marennes-Oléron basin producers and settled on Papin-Poget as being the best purveyor of creuses. I can say I have never tasted better, and Papin-Poget oysters are a far cry from what one can find at some of the more commercial brasseries and markets. There is Burgundy and then there is Burgundy.

Régis is a loyal follower of these oysters and oystermen. And he works at maintaining a strong personal relationship with all his suppliers and makes periodic visits to see them. His idea of a day off (Mondays, when Huîtrerie Régis is closed) is driving down to the Charente on a Sunday night, sleeping at his sister’s, then saying hello to as many people as he can on Monday, which includes, for example, a woman he has shared only a few words with and who, say, works in an isolated office on the second floor up a back stairs and clears orders.

I wanted to meet the family Papin-Poget.

PAPIN

Yves Papin, who is in his sixties, likes to introduce himself by stating that he became an oyster lover while wearing a bib. As a three-year-old he was given his first oyster to taste, and it was apparently love at first taste. The rest is the recent history of a first-rate ostréiculteur or parqueur (as an oyster grower is sometimes called; as oyster-growing pond areas are called parks). He claims he did the same with his three daughters, though for the girls the oysters had to be cut up into small morsels. As for his métier of ostréiculteur, he likes to say that he was born in the marshes with his cuissardes (high boots that cover the thighs) on. He is a man who works hard and beams joie de vivre. He knows his profession inside and out and is able to help at any stage of the oyster’s life and route to the table.

Monsieur Papin gets very excited (his eyes shine and the smile on his pink cheeks reminds me of a kid opening Christmas presents) talking about oysters, and one can see his passion without a blink. He also likes to compare oysters to wines (another passion). The notion of terroir, of cru, of opening them, eating them, tasting them. An abundance of analogies.

He does not get tired of eating the “pearls,” as he likes to call them, any time of the day or year, though there are some special and obligatory moments like Christmas and New Year’s Eve, birthdays, vacationing in the mountains, hosting meals at home, and… and… and. The pleasure factor comes first when serving oysters to start a meal, he argues. Like a bottle of Champagne, a platter of fresh oysters always connotes pleasure and eating them confirms it. When pressed to elaborate more on “Why do you love oysters?” He adds the “aesthetic” element: “It’s a noble food so wonderful on the table, and it beats carottes rapées [grated carrots].” Who will argue? “Eating oysters,” he says, “makes you dream… of nature, the sea, vacation, and more; the sky is the limit.”

He is also very proud to be in the Marennes-Oléron basin, which has a unique ecosystem. Many oyster farmers, such as Papin, have parcs in Normandy because of the area’s richness in phytoplankton. Later the oysters are brought to Poitou-Charentes for the affinage, which will give them the appellation “Marennes-Oléron.” Affinage, as noted earlier, is the last stage in raising oysters and is unique to the Marennes-Oléron basin. With the goal of improving the quality of the oysters, they are placed in basins/pools (claires) for at least a month and up to six months, where the oysters fatten up and their branches turn greenish, thanks to the presence of a green algae.

His grandmother was what was then called a femme de cabane, which meant she used to be in charge of selling oysters before modern transportation and distribution existed. The work was quite a sacrifice for the family, as the wife would take off with the kids to spend the selling season—in those days, September to March—living in a sort of shack in cities like Angers or Arras and go door-to-door to the bourgeois homes to sell oysters from their bourriches (in this instance very large wicker baskets containing up to 84 pounds [35 kilos] of oysters each) shipped by train. Such a yearly voyage was common from 1890 to 1914, while the man stayed at home, literally a widower. Cell phones would have been handy!

On our first meeting he demonstrated the efficiency of the packaging, now partly mechanized with an assembly line that starts with the sorting of the oysters (mostly done by women as a seasonal job) and ends with wrapping the oysters in small wooden crates to be shipped. As one young woman was taking a break, he took over and performed her work until she returned. Team or family work is essential in the business.

The history of the Papin firm started with Yves’s grandfather, who was a parqueur who owned a few parcs and did some fishing. So did his father. Yves started to work at the age of fourteen. He has strong memories of the disaster of 1965, with the first claires replacing the flat oysters of the old days.

NATURE INTERVENES

Here I want to point out two important things. First, oystermen are farmers and frequently face challenges wrought by nature. From year to year, relative disaster can hit. And second, the oysters that are grown in the Marennes-Oléron, indeed anywhere in France, are not from the same family of oysters rushed to the table of Louis XIV.

The indigenous flat European oysters (Ostrea edulis) that the Romans and the French kings ate virtually disappeared from a combination of violent disease and overharvesting. (A tiny percentage survives today, including the famed Belon.) Back in the 1853–59 period, Monsieur Coste addressed maintaining a sustainable oyster supply by developing the current farming tradition. Disease, though, began hitting the flat European oysters especially hard in the 1920s, which led to their being replaced with a cupped species (Crassostrea angulate), known as Portuguese oysters. These oysters had been introduced as early as 1860 and seemed resistant to what ailed the European flat oysters. The Portuguese oysters ruled almost exclusively into the 1960s, when they, too, succumbed to disease. Introduced next was the current species found to be immune to the Portuguese and European oysters’ problems, the so-called Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas), which are Japanese in origin but widely cultivated worldwide.

While there have been two epic “oyster plagues,” and we are eating the third species to flourish in French waters, year in and year out, farmers of all kinds continue to have numerous worries and encounters with the fickleness of nature and thus some good years and some bad years… and some disaster years. “Nature is a cruel mistress,” as the expression goes.

In 2013, many oysters, especially young ones, succumbed to a killer bacteria (for oysters at least), Vibrio aesturianus. But what caused the growth of the bacteria is not clear. Nature’s turmoil was a likely contributor. Perhaps, people posited, all the rain lowered the salinity of the oyster claires for a period, or the intense heat raised the temperatures too high, or… It must be noted, though, that since the 1980s a new variation of oyster has been introduced widely around the world: sterile oysters that grow faster and bigger and are not milky in summer or thin after spawning. By adding an extra chromosome (or two), something that occasionally occurs in nature, the oysters become sterile. Et voilà. Diploids become triploids not by genetic modification, but by artificial inducement. However, it appears these triploid sterile oysters have less resistance to disease, especially when young, and contribute to the supply swings.

One thing is sure: oyster prices in France are up.

SUSTAINING A FAMILY BUSINESS

Yves Papin explained that in 2000, Thierry Poget became his partner—a sign of the times and succession planning for the next generation of the patrimoine, something taken very seriously in France. Probably the passing of Yves’s two daughters had something to do with his planning direction for the next generation. His third daughter was in education, but some years ago decided to quit teaching and come back (apparently a trend, as many young people don’t want to stay in the business, but somehow one kid in the family tends to return at thirty to thirty-five years of age to keep the family business going), and now she is part of the team. And so is her husband, Matthieu, who handles direct sales including the market in Angoulême, one of their top spots.

Monsieur Papin is proud to see customers come back again and again, as the name of Papin-Poget is renowned for quality all over France. They sell, however, mostly in the region, with La Rochelle and Angoulême as main markets, as well as a few oyster restaurants in Paris, four oyster bars, and the esteemed Huîtrerie Garnier and Huîtrerie Régis. For now, Yves and Thierry are the decision makers.

The partnership with Poget did not happen overnight, but made sense as the industry is facing competition. Although there are still plenty of small businesses in the Marennes-Oléron region, about twelve hundred, the onetime number of seventy major companies is now down to seven. Modernization and cost-cutting are the major challenges, and consolidation is a survival tactic. The Papin-Poget team of thirty is split between Utah Beach, Normandy, where a dozen grow the naissans (baby oysters), and the claires and the headquarters (packaging center and a few offices) in Marennes-Oléron. The work has changed, too, with better material, transportation, and distribution systems and less physical labor than in the old days.

Thierry is younger, the first generation of formally educated people with technical expertise going into the business, and also he comes from an oyster family. He brings a different approach to work and to life than those from his father’s generation, and Yves listens and likes it. It very much looks like a great father-son working relationship. With three young daughters in school, Thierry thinks balance is part of the game. He also has hobbies beyond work—playing the piano and singing, for example—and he is an avid sportsman, enjoying activities from biking to playing tennis and golf.

MOVIE ACTOR, OYSTER PRODUCER

As I came to meet people in the oyster business, I realized that as in the wine or restaurant business, they seemingly all know one another. Plus, many share similar traits. A class of them are true French characters, with passion, joie de vivre, and a sense of humor as key ingredients in their DNA. For them, l’art de vivre means sharing (la convivialité is the sacred French word), getting together with friends around a table and eating, drinking, conversing, joking, and laughing, as well as giving back as a way of life and closing the sharing circle. This is a common thread to their eternal youthfulness and love of being and doing what they do, which often means long days, hard work, and lots of challenges, whether dealing with oysters, vines, or people. They love themselves, their lives, and their jobs. Their work is to make a living and a tad more for little extras, but they are not interested in killing themselves 24/7 to get rich and famous or attain status. Their aim in life is to help people dream and to diffuse as much bonheur (happiness) as possible into every aspect of their lives.

Joël Dupuch is a good example. He came to know Régis through Twiggy and at the previously mentioned brasserie J’go in the Marché Saint-Germain. He is an oyster farmer, seventh generation, as he points out with pride. But today he is better known, even famous, in France as an actor.

The film director and actor Guillaume Canet (who shares his life with Marion Cotillard and a young son) picked Joël, an untrained but natural actor, for parts in both the 2010 Les Petits Mouchoirs (Little White Lies) and the 2013 Jappeloup. He was great in the films. As a result, Joël has been interviewed in the local and national French press, and the statements he made (the values he shared) led a French publisher to convince him to write a book, Sur la Vague du Bonheur (On Happiness’s Wave). Like many people who have published a successful book, he is enjoying the feedback from his readers tremendously. Yet, in his heart and head, he remains an oyster farmer.

Joël’s enterprise is in famous Cap Ferret, south of Marennes-Oléron, in the Bassin d’Arcachon. His company is called Les Parcs de l’Impératrice and produces and wholesales oysters, concentrating on the spéciales. The challenge with ostréiculture, according to Joël, is that it is not an exact science but requires lots of work based on patience, humility, science, savoir faire, and much manipulation. The key to quality obviously has to do with picking the best parcs for growth, but as Joël points out, that’s just the beginning.

Like many children, he had other dreams in his young life, which took him first to try politics (did not last long… the illusion died fast when he saw the “pollution,” he said), and then, at twenty-six, he entered the restaurant business, creating bistros in Paris and all over France. Next, he traveled the world before heading home to get into the family business, a decision he does not regret. “Je vis dans un espace de rêve et vois la vie en rose” (I live in dreamland and see everything through rose-colored glasses).

He heads to Paris almost every Tuesday and spends Wednesdays “feasting” with his pals. He calls these get-together festivities les fêtes de l’inutile (useless feasts). He loves them. One of his favorite joints for meeting his Gascon friends, such as chef/restaurateur Alain Dutournier, is Dutournier’s Le Carré des Feuillants and Au Trou Gascon especially. He often visits friend Olivier at J’go, and occasionally other restaurants where he sells his oysters, such as the famous Brasserie Lipp, for which he is the exclusive oyster provider. So if you have been there and eaten oysters, you have eaten Joël’s.

Joël’s friendship with Régis, whom he likes and admires, began over a meal and no doubt a few glasses of wine at J’go. It is not always easy to regulate supply and demand in the oyster business, and with a surge in his business, coinciding with a period of smaller monthly harvests due to a seasonal bout of disease, Régis could not get enough oysters to satisfy his customers. A worry. “I can help you out short-term,” Joël told Régis. “Let me ship you some spéciales each week.” “No, no,” said Régis, knowing the generosity of the offer and the shortness of supply throughout Paris at the time, and understanding he would be taking oysters previously destined for other establishments. “Mais oui, mais oui,” argued Joël, implicitly saying what are friends for if not to lend help during a rough period. That clincher is something Régis appreciates and practices. “You don’t need to mention my name, just sell the oysters,” Joël offered. The men shook hands.

The motto of France is “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” These oyster guys certainly know about fraternity.