December has just started and it’s really crazy with little snow falling [a bit irregularly]. You are certainly like us, at Oysters and Caviar, preparing your end of the year celebrations. The various orders for the Christmas holidays are starting to come in and in order to prolong your desire to get together and dive into oysters, we are introducing you to an exceptional French oyster. This concludes our “Oyster of the Month” series for 2022, and we will return to it in January 2023. So after the Gowanbrae, the Eastern Gales, the Sand Dune, here is the Gillardeau oyster from the Maison of the same name!
As oyster specialists, we want to share with you, products that we particularly like and help you discover different flavour profiles. Whether it’s salty, vegetables, Maritime, Western Canadian or from France, you’ll discover all kinds.
The Gillardeau From the Maison Gillardeau
You can recognize it by its shell with the Maison logo. In order to fight against counterfeiting, each oyster they grow, before being placed in a “bourriche” [a wooden crate for transporting oysters], has its shell laser-marked with their emblematic G to guarantee that your oysters are authentic Gillardeau.
The oysters come from the region of Bourcefranc-le-Chapus in the South-West of France, located in the Charente-Maritime department. These are the oysters that delight the Élysée, which are sold at the Halles Paul Bocuse in Lyon and in a variety of gourmet restaurants!
Even if we are in a French oyster, we are more in a “Pacific” type oyster. It is a juicy, creamy, almost crunchy oyster, with a long finish and a lot of flesh to go with its great aromatic finesse and pleasant, lingering flavour. No need to eat several, we recommend 3 to 4 oysters per person, and you will be well satisfied.
What makes Gillardeau oysters different? They are bred for a period of four years according to strict rules: nine months after their birth and a stay on collectors in specially designed pens, they are placed in bags and immersed for over three years in the deep waters of France. And during this period, no less than 60 manipulations are necessary to give them this incredible finesse.
Why not try it with caviar, it’s a wonderful complement! Otherwise, just a drizzle of lemon will take you to cloud nine.
Who is Maison Gillardeau?
At the end of the 19th century, more precisely in 1898, in the heart of the Marennes-Oleron basin, driven by his passion for oyster farming, Henri Gillardeau laid the foundations of Maison Gillardeau. In 1978, Gérard Gillardeau, then head of the company, gave birth to the emblematic Gillardeau oyster that we know today. Its quality, which can be recognized by its appearance, as well as the generosity of its flesh, quickly made it a synonym of excellence among oyster lovers.
Generation after generation, the Gillardeau House has carefully cultivated its know-how. A family commitment that has lasted for more than 100 years to offer you the most refined oysters in the world.