Saturday 19 September 2009

Guérande, the sea salt capital of France/Britanny!

marais salants GuérandeGuérande musee du sel








The village Guérande is famous for its sea salt production - still the old-fashioned way: by hand! All over Western Europe if you sometimes buy/have bought salted butter, most of the time the salt inside is from there:-) The salt evaporation ponds surrounding Guérande is where everything takes place under the sky. The salt concentration from the ocean is 35gr/l, in the ponds it goes down to 300gr/l within 15 days!!!

Guérande Fortification

I was very lucky and happy to be there end of August when is the actual harvesting-time. There are 2 salt products: the "gros sel"(heavy grey salt this one stays at the bottom of the pond) and the "fleur du sel"(salt flower = the light one, that stays at the surface). One salt evaporation pond (with a size of 7x10m) usually brings a harvest of 50-100kg "gros sel" and 2-4 kg "fleur du sel"...

Guérande paludier dans les marais salants

3 comments:

WebbieLady said...

Although there was plenty of salt farms/processing area in the place where I grew, I actually never went so near as you do! Very very interesting experience..

Jana said...

hey Roj,i did not know there are salt farms in the Philippines, but i suppose they produce salt from sea water everywhere there is sea/ocean:)like at home, in Bulgaria too...

WebbieLady said...

Yup, usually the salt farms are located near the coastal areas where there are seas around. Well, Philippines is made up of 7100 more or less islands (depending on the tide) so there are always seas whereever you go... You may put it in your next trip. :) Lovely there. :)