The Sea Salt Farmers of Gruissan

As we set off for Gruissan plumes of smoke from the largest French wildfire in 50 years still filled the air. It got as close as 10kms away from our house and meant a few road diversions to miss the fire zone.

The meeting was one of the things we were was most looking forward to, a meeting with local sea salt farmers in Gruissan, about 40 minutes south of where were staying in Lezignan-Corbieres. Whilst we are staying in the heartland of one of Frances biggest wine growing regions, the region has a richness in food culture too. L’Aude and the Languedoc hold a special place in my heart as nearly 30 years a ago I spent two magical summers working on the French coast near here. And it’s the coast that has drawn me back again, but this time as a sea salt farmer, keen to meet others who share a passion for making the best sea salt in the world.

[If you haven’t already check out our blogs when we met sea salt farmer in Sicily, Jersey, Ireland, Scotland and the USA]

I reached out to Lony Gabanou over Instagram on the off-chance he or his father and Patrice Gabanou might be up for a meeting. I was in luck and we set a date for when we where staying in the region.

Gruissan lies below Narbonne a pretty, small city on the canal du midi, dripping with ancient roman ruins - roughly mid-way between Bezier, and Perpignan. It’s hot, dry country side pockmarked with salt marshes. The area is known for its love of rugby, bull fighting and wine! So it ticks all my boxes.

Gruissan itself is a small town surrounded by water. Beach, estuary, canals and small port. Dominated by Tour Barberousse, the remnant of a 10th-century castle once used to guard the site against maritime threats.

The marshlands to the north of Gruissan are used to grow rice. But the coast is particularly known for its oysters, mussels and sea salt. The coast with its the long flat beaches draw tourists here every year. Without trying to sound snooty - the beaches along this coast are pretty boring. Wide flat sand dunes and extreme flatness, only broken by the occasional stone groyne that marks the start of a small inlet or harbour.

The area has a long history in sea salt making and the trade has been practiced in these salt marshes by the Romans as early as 100BC. In 1911 a certain Mde Le Danois established what is now known as the modern salines under the Society des Salines de I’ille Saint Martin.

The salines or salt pans cover an area of 4km by 1 km or 400Ha. It’s huge…but it’s the smallest sea salt farm on the French Mediterranean!

There’s a bit of controversy about the set up of “Les Sels de Gruisssan”. A large French conglomerate CSME bought the lease on the salines in the 1970’s but but 2004 deemed it uneconomic and 30 workers lost there jobs when they closed it down. Lony’s, Dad Patrice is a 3rd generation sea salt farmer or “saunier”. He didnt like very much that the big sea salt company closed down the operation and he had a big idea to revitalize it.

Long story short, it went to court and M.Gabanou Snr and his small consortium won. They set up Sels des Gruissan on the old site of L’Ilse St Martin, with a vision of not just making sea salt but also making the operation into a tourist mecca. The base now has a thriving salt shop, art gallery, museum, bike hire (for tripping around the flat flats) oyster farm, restaurant, cocktail bar and terrace. The extra activities have really only been built in the last few years and now attract over 40,000 visitors a year. It’s all very impressive.

The area including the salt farm is a wildlife sanctuary and protected area. The salt marshes providing economic benefits but also habitat for hundreds of species that dwell in the briny environment.

The oyster farm, provides oysters for the restaurant, grapes are grown next to the salt farm which in turn provide wine for the shop and restaurant. They even make their own honey.

The salt farm employs around 35 people year round but expands over the summer to 110. 50 plus of which are needed just to keep the restaurant going. When we arrived at 10.45 am just on opening, the shop was already buzzing and there where queues of people waiting to be served at the salt shop, baskets piled high with Gruissan sea salt.

Les Sels des Gruissan make around 15,000-20,000 tonnes of sea salt a year. 2000 tonnes of which is hand harvested fleur de sel. All the fleur de sel - the finest grade of sea salt goes into the food production process. Its not flavoured in any way. Where as, the bulk of the sea salt goes into leather production. They manage to pack 3000 units of consumer/top grade sea salt per day 360 days a year - around a million packs!

The process to make the sea salt was interesting as it differed slightly from the salt farm in Sicily Saline Culacsi we visited two years ago. There sea salt took around 6 weeks for the sea water to traverse the ponds through to final crystallization. Here the process takes around 4 months and the sea salt is only harvested for a couple of months - August and September. The French sea salt is less minerally and more salty. Lony told us that by law the salt had to be at least 98% sodium chloride.

The same sorts of things happen in the natural solar evaporation aided by the wind, but the longer time in the French ponds means that more calcium precipitates out of the sea water before final crystalization giving a much more salty and “magnesiumy” flavoured sea salt.

At Opito Bay we seek to keep the natural minerals in our sea salt and typically have about 94% sodium chloride. The taste of the sea is what we are aiming for! Our process from harvest through to packing mimics directly the Sel des Gruissan process just at a dramatically smaller scale.

The place has that ethereal, dusty, remote, almost, post apocalyptic feel…if you ignore the tourists. The houses and holiday homes outside Gruissan remind me of the houses in the deep south of the USA - “mobile homes on stilts” as Erin said. Its very hot. High thirties to low forties. So people generally aren’t about through the day unless they are tourists…so the place feels empty.

We were privileged to get a glimpse inside this amazing operation and absolutely loved learning more about Gruissan sea salt. If you get the chance, visit. It was true southern French culture and hospitality at its best.