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The oyster is one of the star products of the end-of-year festivities. And if the heat wave has affected their calibration in places, the producers of the Ile de Ré (Charente-Maritime) have started to lift the oysters.
In Rivedoux-Plage (Charente-Maritime), there is not a minute to lose for Maxime. The oyster bags just taken out of the basin, the oyster farmer empties them into the hopper where they are rinsed and sorted. In the weeks to come, he will repeat this gesture more in the run-up to Christmas. With an average production of 30 tonnes per end-of-year party, his company has to anticipate.
From the week of November 7, the rate of harvesting and sorting will intensify to meet buyer demand. “We don’t necessarily count on weekdays, we count on the tide that we have left before we can lift our oysters. There, we have three weeks of tides left before raising our oysters for the Christmas holidays.”, explains David Flores Prieto, oyster farmer. For a small producer, this is a crucial period which represents 70 to 75% of his turnover. In all, 130,000 tonnes of oysters are produced each year in France. Almost half are consumed between Christmas and New Year’s Day.