A French family dynasty reinvents the oyster (IHT)

By Steven Erlanger
Monday, October 27, 2008
BOURCEFRANC-LE-CHAPUS, France: For Thierry and Véronique Gillardeau, the oyster has become their world.
A member of the fourth generation of a family of oyster farmers, Thierry, 37, has brought an economics education to what has become the most famous name in oysters: Gillardeau.
The family's small private company, founded 110 years ago here by the sea near La Rochelle and the Île d'Oléron in western France, produces only "spéciales," oysters that are fleshier and, consequently, more expensive than the standard. The Gillardeau name has become associated with fine oysters, rather like Hermès for neckties.
Thierry's father, Gérard Gillardeau, 61, took over the business from his father, Jean, who ran it after his father, Henri, who began as an illiterate farmhand before turning his hand to oysters. Oyster farming then dominated the economy of the region, where the Charente and Seudre Rivers add their fresh water to the salt flats and estuaries.
Henri did well enough to build a large house opposite City Hall in this village of 3,500 people, a house he called "Ça m'suffit," or "That'll do." Thierry and Véronique live there today with their two children.
"My grandfather couldn't read, but he knew how to count," Gérard said. "Now, oyster farmers know how to read but not how to count."
Many of his neighbors still farm oysters "the way they did in the Middle Ages," he said, by taking the seedlings to full growth in small oyster basins next to the sea, farming them in small, flat-bottomed boats and doing much of the work by hand. "They could be more profitable," he said. "But the past is so important to them that they don't want to change."
That attitude makes the Gillardeau family something of an anomaly in a nation famously resistant to change, especially in how it produces food and wine.
In 1978, Gérard sought to expand beyond his village and found a partner in the huge wholesale market in Rungis, just outside of Paris, a step that helped the Gillardeau company make a name for itself. For the past 15 years, sales have increased roughly 20 percent a year, Thierry said at a conference in May. As a private company, it does not reveal its accounts.
"In some business schools, they are studying our case like a case of marketing," he said. "But you have to know that there is no marketing behind Gillardeau, only quality." In fact, he said, marketing is by word of mouth. "Because our oysters are good people want to eat them again and again," he said. "They will go to a restaurant and say, 'Why don't you serve Gillardeau?'"
The number of local oyster farmers here in western France has dropped from more than 3,000 two decades ago to 700 now. Gillardeau no longer farms its oysters here. It now produces roughly half its oysters in Normandy, near Utah Beach, and half in County Cork, in Ireland, where the waters are cleaner and the sites easier to farm with tractors, and where there are fewer parasites and less agricultural runoff.
It employs some 100 people in all, but still sorts, finishes and packs its oysters here, producing about 2,000 tons a year of an annual French production of some 130,000 tons.
Unlike many other companies, Gillardeau buys seedling oysters that are one to two years old. That way it avoided most of the impact of the widespread death of younger French seedling oysters this year, believed to have been caused by a warm winter, heavy spring rains and possibly excess runoff of fertilizer and pesticides from local vegetable farms.
To protect the future, Thierry bought 20 million seedlings unaffected by the blight at a premium in Ireland, where the company will raise them itself.
Gillardeau normally farms the two-year-old oysters it buys for the next two years, coaxing them into a shape like a lemon and maximizing the quantity of the flesh by carefully adjusting the depth and salinity of the water. The company tries to keep its oysters from clumping together, putting 135 to 150 oysters in each of the thick plastic-screening sacks that can hold 1,000.
Workers with tractors turn the sacks every two weeks or so, to break the small shells that the oysters produce, to "stress" the oyster to eat more and to grow in the desired form. "You shape an oyster a little like a piece of furniture," Thierry said.
Oysters are then trucked here to be finished and packed. They spend several weeks in oyster ponds, with water changed regularly and salinity measured carefully, before being washed and sorted by size.
Before a batch is packed, one Gillardeau or another makes sure to taste a few oysters. Theirs are less briny than many others' — nuttier, fleshier and almost sweet.
The family firm is a tradition in France, but one extending four or five generations is rare. "I didn't want to work with my father," Thierry admitted. He went to a university and studied economics, starting his first company at 19, renting surfboards and selling drinks on the beach. After his military service, he cast around in import-export.
"But my father was in difficulties with his partner in Rungis," Thierry said. "He asked me to look into it." Since the age of 17, Thierry had worked every Christmas, high oyster season, at the huge Paris market, and he always fought with the partner, he said, smiling. "So I got rid of him" and invested in another Rungis company, he said.
"It was Rungis that gave me a love of oysters," he said. It was also in Paris, at a New Year's Eve party, that he met Véronique, a Belgian who was working at the fashionable Escada store. They married, and he brought her here 10 years ago.
"She worked for Escada, and now she can wear rubber boots and a hat pulled down to here," Thierry said, slightly ruefully.
Véronique is good-natured and proud of the company. "Of course there is jealousy," she said, when asked about competitors. "It's a small village, and everyone does the same thing." Gérard said neighbors had sneaked some oysters out of Gillardeau ponds, just to taste them.
Michael Moreau, an oyster farmer here, said the active oystering life that he remembered from when he was a boy had changed. "I could hear everyone laugh and drink and yell at each other, but that doesn't exist any more," he said. "Now it's abandoned. It's over. It's been industrialized."
Of course there is jealousy of the Gillardeau firm, Moreau said. "But he could have gone to Normandy, and instead he stayed here."
Bernard Jaulin, 57, gave up oyster farming nine years ago with great regret, in part because his two daughters had no interest in the business. He is now remodeling a bar-restaurant he bought in nearby Fouras. "Now it's different," he said. "It's bigger, more modern, more technological." The local oyster beds, he said, "don't give any more."
Asked about Gillardeau, his eyes lighted up. "Have you tasted them? The taste is exquisite. They have that extra body," he said, crunching his jaws.

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country

Ian Walthew


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

Globalization battle plays out in French cheese industry (IHT)

Philippe Alléosse holding up one of his cheeses in his cellar in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. (Ed Alcock for The International Herald Tribune)

Globalization battle plays out in French cheese industry
By Matthew Saltmarsh
Friday, October 17, 2008
PARIS: Philippe Alléosse's cellar in Paris is an Aladdin's cave for lovers of French cheese.
His temperature- and humidity-controlled subterranean storage rooms in the 17th Arrondissement are packed with carefully aged varieties, among them Brin d'Amour from Corsica, Bethmale from the Pyrénées and Bleu de Gex from Haut-Jura. He knows just when to add a dash of water or Chablis to the rind and when the product should finally be released to the public.
But Alléosse, premier maître artisan fromager affineur, or master cheese ager, fears that he is one of a dying breed.
He is worried that industrial processes - from sourcing through production and distribution - are squeezing small farmers and threatening to deny consumers the choice, complexity and quality of a product that is considered a luxury in many countries but a staple on French tables.
The giant producers counter that such complaints are sour grapes and that traditionalists are scared of losing market share to new techniques, resentful of their profit. Consumers, they say, are happy with the products available and prices charged.
The debate seems to go to the heart of an acutely French dilemma: whether to embrace globalization, or to fight to preserve heritage. For now, the tussle is centered on the process of pasteurization and the effect that it is having on the product and the market.
"Raw milk is the battlefield," said Pierre Boisard, a sociologist who is author of "Camembert: A National Myth." One mass producer in particular, Lactalis, has altered the landscape through its production of traditional products using industrial methods, he said.
"It's a problem," he added. "It hurts the brands of the traditional producers" who have "legitimate grievances."
Citing health concerns, and related import restrictions imposed by large markets like the United States, Lactalis moved away from making cheese from raw, or unpasteurized, milk, favoring pasteurization, which it says helps kill harmful bacteria. Small producers say that pasteurization wipes out positive bacteria as well. Both sides can produce scientific studies to back their claims.
Tensions recently bubbled over after Lactalis and the Isigny Sainte-Mère cooperative, a smaller rival, began to treat the milk used in their Camembert, which previously had been made with raw milk.
Lactalis, a private group based in Normandy, is the largest cheese and milk producer in Europe and also the world's biggest producer of unpasteurized cheeses. Globally, it is No.2 to Kraft of the United States.
It started using a gentle form of pasteurization that heats the milk to a lower temperature than is the norm for pasteurization. This so-called thermizing process removes potentially harmful bacteria, the company says.
Champions of small producers say that the health concerns are a smokescreen for seeking greater profit through increased volume and efficiency, as pasteurized cheeses are allowed to stay longer on supermarket shelves.
In thermizing its milk, Lactalis sacrificed its Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, or AOC, status, a label supplied by a government body to verify that a product has achieved certain standards. But the industrial giant subsequently led a fight to win back the precious stamp, arguing that pasteurized cheeses should be included.
Camembert lovers were relieved when, after a long public battle, the authorities said in March that they would protect small producers by reserving the AOC only for Normandy Camembert made in the traditional way. The small producers won that battle, but the broader war continues, as many are wondering whether Lactalis will open up a new front.
Cheese is big business here. There are an estimated 400 types of cheese in France, and no other country offers the creativity and range in its cheese making. In addition to world-famous AOC cheeses like Roquefort and Brie de Meaux, there are hundreds of cheeses with regional nuances.
At first glance, the industry appears healthy. According to the Maison du Lait, which represents dairy producers, French cheese production rose 1.7 percent to 1.9 million tons last year from a year earlier. Sales at large stores rose 2.2 percent and French exports were 4 percent higher. But production of AOC cheese was down 1.2 percent last year and raw milk cheese production fell 3.8 percent.
"The big worry is whether we will be able to preserve what we have inherited," Alléosse said as he darted around his cellar, tapping a maturing Tomme de Brebis Ottavi with his "sonde," one end of which is a small hammer used to test density. The other end bores into the rich interior to produce a "carotte" for tasting.
"There's a scarcity of producers," he said. "They are leaving the regions for the towns. No one wants to run these small businesses. They have been built over centuries, and in a matter of years, we are losing them in many parts of France."
Lactalis, meanwhile, employs 15,000 people in France in 74 locations, of which 19 are in mountainous regions. While it mass-produces brands like Président Camembert and Bridel Emmental, it is also makes a swath of AOC cheeses.
Dairy prices have risen alongside nearly all food prices in the past year, but small producers say the price that farmers get for their milk has not risen in line and hence only the distributors and the big players like Lactilis have benefited.
"We never wanted to kill small producers; they have the capacity to kill themselves," said Luc Morelon, director of communications at Lactalis. "We have other objectives: to develop a French company and to increase the consumption of cheeses and dairy products worldwide with good brands and consumer confidence due to quality."
"It is a silly debate," he added. "We have invested a lot of money in modernizing these facilities. It is a clear that our consumers are satisfied."
Alléosse bemoaned the passing of an era, noting that his children were not interested in taking over his business after his retirement. "It's a taste, a texture, an ideology," he said. "Cheese brings pleasure, and if we can't provide that people will look elsewhere."
He is supported in his battle by Véronique Richez-Lerouge, founder of a regional cheese association. She complains about a "standardization" of the product as the mass market elbows out smaller producers by buying their land, pooling milk and hence deteriorating the final product.
"It's not just big industrial groups that are responsible," Richez-Lerouge said. "It's the public, it's society, it's government - we've accepted, we've compromised."
Richez-Lerouge has even produced a calendar of French women posing in their underwear to try to bring publicity to the cause. She wants certain producing areas to be protected from sale to large groups in the way that Champagne producers are, and for the benefits of price rises to be passed on to small producers rather than distributors and large groups. Others hope a solution can occur without such intervention. "The battle is not lost yet," Boisard said. "There are still cheese shops, there is still choice. We must hope that there are enough passionate people out there to preserve what we have."

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew

Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

Pigs from A Place in the Auvergne

A Place in the Auvergne went to get their pigs on Saturday, four that they will share with five families.

The barn temperature at the farm was 28 degrees Celsius for the piglets on the sow, 25 once off the sow and 20 thereafter.

We're worried ours won't take the shock and warmth is 1/3 of pig management. We've yet to plank the concrete floor of our pig-sty too. So work to be done.

For more on the day out and pictures of a typical mixed French farm in the Auvergne that we went to pick up our 25-28kg pigs from, visit A Place in the Auvergne.

A Sow

The Dad

Two of the new arrivals

Their new home

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

French bees find a haven in Paris (IHT)

Jean Paucton's bees crawl over honeycomb

on the roof of the Palais Garnier in Paris.

Corinne Moncelli offers guests at her Eiffel Park Hotel more than a view of the Paris landmark. She serves them honey from bees she keeps on the rooftop.
There are more than 300 known colonies in the French capital, up from about 250 five years ago, according to the National Beekeepers' Association. Hives have appeared on the roof of the Opéra Garnier, on balconies and in parks.
Bees are thriving in cities because "flowers and plants are changed constantly and there aren't pesticides," said Moncelli, who co-owns the hotel with her husband, Pascal.
The success of a three-year-old French program to encourage beekeeping in cities, the largest such project in the world, is sparking hope of a revival among their country cousins. Global agriculture, valued at € 153 billion, or $214 billion, relies on pollination by bees, according to the French National Institute of Agricultural Research, or INRA.
As in the United States and in Britain, where bee colonies are dying, about 300,000 to 400,000 French hives have disappeared every year between 1995 and 2007, victims of pesticides, pollution and disease.
"We need bees in the countryside," said Henri Clément, president of the Paris-based National Apiculture Association, which ran the project. "The potential of cities is limited. Our operation in the city is one of creating awareness."
The Eiffel Park Hotel began beekeeping three years ago, when it turned one of its terraces into a site for two to three hives, which produce 150 kilograms, or 331 pounds, of honey a year. The hotel gives honey out as gifts and serves it at breakfast.
"We say 'close the jars when you're done and avoid wearing lots of perfume or the bees may think you're a big flower,"' Moncelli said.
The apiculture association rolled out the French urban program in 2005, and will present its results next year in Montpellier, France, at a conference organized by Apimondia, a global group of beekeepers' associations, based in Rome.
The United States and Britain also have used cities as breeding grounds for bees, although the "French program is very well developed and has huge scale compared to others," said Asger Sogaard Jorgensen, the president of Apimondia. "In many countries, the countryside has become a desert for bees."
The United States saw large hive losses in 2006, 90 percent or more in some cases. Colony Collapse Disorder, the sudden, massive disappearance of bees, was found in 35 states and has harmed hives in Asia, Europe and South America, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Pesticides, mites and viruses are among leading causes.
In Europe, about 84 percent of crop species depend directly on insect pollinators, especially bees, according to a June report co-authored by Bernard Vaissière, the head of research at the INRA. France is Europe's biggest agricultural producer.
"There is mounting evidence of pollinator decline all over the world and consequences in many agricultural areas could be significant," the report said.
Jean Paucton, who has kept bees on the roof of Paris's opera house for about 25 years, has seen that rural decline first hand. The retired opera house accessory artist said that the hives, which overlook the Galeries Lafayette department store in central Paris, are healthier than the ones he keeps in the country.
Paucton's city hives produce 450 kilograms of honey a year. He sells little jars of it to the opera house gift shop for about €4, which are resold for €14.50. Paucton, 75, said losses in the countryside can be as much as 50 percent, while the number in the city doesn't even approach 5 percent. Some years, he doesn't lose any in the city, he said.
"The harvest is worse and worse in the countryside," he said. "There aren't farmers anymore. There are only agricultural companies and they use pesticides."
His experience is mirrored by that of Michèle Bonnefond and Armand Malvezin, the beekeepers who maintain the Eiffel Park Hotel's hives. The couple also keeps hives in Corrèze, one of France's most rural regions, and there have been bigger losses there.
On a recent weekday, they sprayed smoke on the hotel terrace to calm the bees before extracting honey. They scraped a layer of wax off the honeycombs, placing it in a centrifuge machine, catching the honey that flew against the sides of the machine, through a faucet into jars. They said they don't obtain such rich supplies from their Corrèze hives.
The apiculture association has called on the French government to block the use in the country of some pesticides, which it says harms bees. Like with its city project, it is also encouraging more people to keep bees in rural areas.
Meanwhile, Olivier Darne, 37, an artist and beekeeper who designed an exhibition at the Parc de la Villette in Paris, that ran through Sept. 28 and included a glass-walled bedroom near a hive to bring people closer to the bee, said he's worried.
"Bees are dying everywhere but in cities," he said. "The bees are speaking to us."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/01/healthscience/parisbees.php

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew

Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

French market pictures

Many of the bloggers on Farm Blogs From Around the World sell their produce at weekly markets.

I go to our weekly local market every Thursday, sometimes helping out my cheese making friends and neighbours, or selling my books in July and August, and as a customer virtually every week.

In fact, as a family of five, we do nearly all our food shopping at the market, save staples like rice and pasta, and some other meat which we get on barter or buy from a friend who produces organic beef or from our local butcher.

We also do other barter (e.g. hay for potatoes), have our own garden, orchard and chickens, and best of all, there is our very generous 86 year old neighbour Jean-Baptiste who has to be the best vegetable gardener I have ever met, and who gives us lots of produce and advice.

If you'd like to look at photos of our local French market here in the Auvergne, you can visit my blog A Place in the Auvergne and click onto the label 'Marche' or look for any posting titled a Thursday.

I started this blog at the beginning of the year (but the labels only later in the year, so again, look for postings from any week entitled Thursday) so you can see the produce, colours and crowds of the market right through an entire year.

For my follower The Dairy Princess in particular, here are some photos of the goats cheeses made by another of my local friends, photos you can also find at A Place in the Auvergne, Thursday, 11th September, 2008.

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

Pasteurised milk v. Raw Milk in Cheese

I've done some posts on French cheeses and Auvergne cheeses (25% of all French cheese comes from our region) as a result in taking part in a session of the summer university of the French branch of the global organisation Slow Food.

The first session was on 'The Cheeses of the Auvergne' but the second one was a wider discussion about the pros and cons of raw milk versus pasteurised milk in cheese production and then a bling tasting.

Marie de Metz Noblat began by talking about what we mean by cheese (under French law) and also how to taste cheese.

Tasting a Cheese

Look, touch, smell, chew, swallow.

Notice the flavours, the smells, the trigeminal sensations (e.g texture on the tongue) and how the taste of the cheese remains with you after you have swallowed.

As regards raw milk versus pasteurised milk we tried three blue cheeses (one raw milk, one pasteurised, one pasteurised 'industriel' as opposed to 'fermier'), two Cantals (raw and pasteurised) and two St. Nectaires (raw and pasteurised).

The French Legal Definition of what is a Cheese.

Tasting card

Milk definitions:

• Lait cru (raw milk - never heated above 40 degrees Celsius)
• Lait pasteurise (Pasteurised milk - heated to at least 72 degrees Celsius for 15 seconds)
• Lait thermise (Semi-pasteurised milk - heated above 40 but below 72 degrees Celsius)
• Lait microfiltre (Micro-filtered pasteurised milk)

Essentially most cheese (in overall tonnage) is made from pasteurised milk because most cheese is made in cheese-making factories.

What they want is milk that can keep during the transportation phase, keep at the factory; eliminate problematic bacteria which cause inconsistency in the taste of the cheese (and the modern world likes consistency), spoiling, shorten the cheese's shelf-life or cause any health risks (lastly).

A litre of milk will have about one million germs in it; pasteurising reduces that by 95% to 5%. (50,000.)

Personally, I drink organic 'lait cru' which I buy at the market or get given by my neighbours, and I always prefer 'fermier' cheese over 'laitier'. I'm not dead yet.

No self-respecting French rural woman would alter such a dairy diet just because she was pregnant. That's not to say that more and more pregnant women are not avoiding unpasteurised products, but they remain very much in the minority and, here in the Auvergne, I have yet to meet one.

If cheese is made from 'lait thermique' it must be clearly visible on the packaging.

Fermier - Farm cheese: cheese made at the farm by the farmer with milk from his/her own herd. It is often made with 'lait cru' but NOT always.

Laitier - Cheese made from the milk of several herds in a 'fromagerie'/laitier i.e an industrial plant of some level. The milk used can be raw (rare for transportation reasons) 'pasteurised', 'thermique' or 'micro-filtered'.

The primary ingredient of cheese is water.

The origins of a cheese's aroma.

The milk is sterile when it comes out of the cow.

For flavour and smell: more important than the food or the race of the cow - the bacteria in the milk's environment.

Unlike wine tasters who tend to be more poetic in their descriptions, the French cheese making community sees itself as more scientific, and as such, has designed 'approved' technical terms to help people describe the flavour of a cheese. (Yes, this is true.) These diagrams are these tasting term charts that professional cheese tasters use.

As a result, any given cheese has a 'sensory' profile, explained graphically as below for four different types of cheese.

A 2002 study concluded there were 1000 distinct cheeses in France, so you can forget Charles de Gaulle's famous saying about the impossibility of being able to effectively govern a country with 360-odd cheeses.

That figure is climbing as a new generation of young cheese makers are doing remarkably well in France.

Why don't we make cheese from women's breast milk? The problem is that it is very low in proteins compared with the milk of cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, horses etc. (There might be other reasons too I imagine.)

Why does France have so many cheeses? Because it has so many 'terroires', a very French notion and a difficult to translate word meaning a combination of geological conditions, climate and people.

The four cheese making stages

And the results of the blind tasting? The 'lait cru fermier' cheese won out, in all three types of cheese, by a clear margin.

Interestingly however, from a marketing perspective, what seems to give added consumer value to cheese are not the words 'lait cru' but 'fermier'. And 'fermier' does not always equal 'lait cru'.

A Place in the Auvergne

A Place in My Country

Ian Walthew


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France

Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental