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PGI — Poitou-Charentes
« Sel de l'Île de Ré is the white gold of the Atlantic, crystallised by eight centuries of salt-making tradition. »
Spice or condiment from Poitou-Charentes, PGI (IGP) since 2023.
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The Île de Ré boasts one of Europe's longest salt-making traditions, dating back to the 12th century (1191), when the monks of the Abbaye de Saint-Michel-en-l'Herm, lords of the islands of Ars and Loix, undertook the construction of salt marshes there. These natural salt marshes, created through the solar evaporation of seawater, gradually expanded to cover around 1,550 hectares — nearly 20% of the island's total surface area — at their peak.
The peak of salt production arrived in the mid-19th century: the Ré marshes then mobilised nearly a thousand sauniers for an annual output that could reach 30,000 to 31,750 tonnes, serving as a pillar of the island's economy.
From 1850 onwards, the arrival of the railway made it possible to transport cheaper Mediterranean salt, and the wars of 1870 and then 1914–1918, followed by the rise of refrigeration, completed the decline of the industry. The number of sauniers fell from around 1,000 in the 19th century to 316 on the eve of the First World War, then to about sixty in the 1980s. Faced with this crisis, producers first organised themselves into a sales syndicate (1901), followed by a defence committee (1911) and a collective marketing association (1933), before founding the Coopérative des Sauniers de l'Île de Ré in 1942.
Starting in 1995, a recovery programme driven by the Coopérative des Sauniers, local elected officials, and the Chambre d'Agriculture de Charente-Maritime helped install around forty new sauniers and secure the long-term future of salt production on Ré, which had hitherto run at a loss. This renaissance was crowned on 24 November 2023 by the European registration of the PGI 'Sel de l'Île de Ré / Fleur de sel de l'Île de Ré', officially recognising the terroir, the ancestral method, and the savoir-faire of the Ré sauniers.
Gros sel de Ré : Crystals of uneven grain size — at least 90% under 8 mm at harvest —, predominantly cubic or in aggregates. Light grey to white in colour, depending on the proportion of clay (insolubles) present in the product; may exhibit subtle red to yellow tones caused by natural micro-organisms.
Fleur de sel de l'Île de Ré : Light, brittle crystals, mainly shaped like inverted hollow pyramids, floating on the surface of the water at harvest. White in colour, occasionally with subtle red to yellow tones that fade over time.
Minéralité : Unrefined, unwashed, and free from any additives, sel de Ré retains its natural colouring and the minute mineral variations unique to each marsh — unlike industrial salts that are washed and then refined.
Utilisation sensorielle : Coarse salt is well suited to slow cooking (court-bouillons, brining, preserving). Fleur de sel shines as a finishing touch on hot dishes, salads, and caramelised desserts — its aromatic delicacy is at its best when not exposed to heat.
Salt-making on Ré relies on a gravity-fed network stretching several kilometres, arranged in a succession of clay-bottomed basins. Seawater enters with the tides into the vasais, the initial basin that serves as a reservoir and settling pond (30 to 35 g of salt per litre), then flows by gravity via the gros-mat regulating structure into the métière, where small clay ridges (the veltes) extend the evaporation circuit. It then passes through the marsh field — first the muants, then the nourrices, where salinity reaches around 220 g of salt per litre — before being admitted into the aires saunantes, the final 5-metre-by-5-metre basins where the water, saturated at over 250 g/L, crystallises into coarse salt at the bottom and fleur de sel on the surface.
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From June to September, every two days, coarse salt is gathered in the morning using a simoussi, a toothless tool mounted on a long pole that draws the crystals together, then hoisted onto the path with a souvron to form the small pyramids typical of the Ré marshes — around 40 kg per aire saunante. Fleur de sel is gathered each evening from the surface of the water using a lousse à fleur, when weather conditions permit (1 to 3 kg per aire saunante).
The meso-climate of the Île de Ré is exceptionally favourable to evaporation: an average of 2,250 hours of sunshine per year, low rainfall (712 mm over an average of 113 days of precipitation), and brisk breezes generated by the interplay of thermal sea winds and oceanic currents. The PGI stipulates that only seawater drawn with the tides within the geographical boundary of the Île de Ré may be used — with no added fresh water or additives.
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Sel de l'Île de Ré is first and foremost a table condiment to be savoured for its mineral complexity. Fleur de sel excels in particular as a finishing touch on refined ingredients: raw oysters, fish carpaccio, caramelised desserts.
Since: 2023
Area covered: Île de Ré — 10 communes (Ars-en-Ré, Le Bois-Plage-en-Ré, La Couarde-sur-Mer, La Flotte, Loix, Les Portes-en-Ré, Rivedoux-Plage, Saint-Clément-des-Baleines, Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Sainte-Marie-de-Ré)
Key requirements: Solar evaporation, seawater only, no additives or post-harvest washing, manual harvesting (daily for fleur de sel, every two days for coarse salt)
Cooperative
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The Coopérative des Sauniers de l'Île de Ré describes itself as a community of around 70 cooperative members, including 5 women, with diverse backgrounds — some full-time salt harvesters, others with secondary occupations, retirees, or newly establishing themselves. It traces its origins to the decline of salt farming on the Île de Ré: at its peak in the 19th century, the island's salt was harvested by nearly 1,000 salt marsh workers producing close to 30,000 tonnes each summer, before a decline set in after 1850 due to the railways, wars, and the rise of refrigeration. Several associations succeeded one another — a sales syndicate in 1901, a salt-farming defence committee in 1911, and a joint sales association in 1933 — before the Cooperative was created in 1942 to pool the storage, packaging, and marketing of the salt.
The Cooperative states that it is managed by a board of directors of 15 elected producers, and represents the profession before the Communauté de Communes, the Chambre d'Agriculture, the Regional Council, and the European Commission. It places the turning point of its revival in 1995, with a recovery programme conducted alongside local elected officials and the Chambre d'Agriculture of Charente-Maritime, which has reportedly enabled some forty new salt harvesters to set up in thirty years. It claims PGI (IGP) recognition for 'Sel de l'Île de Ré' and 'Fleur de sel de l'Île de Ré' since 2023, and the Agriculture Biologique label since 2024.
Regarding the operation of the salt marshes, the Cooperative describes a sea-water circuit flowing through three successive basins (the vasais, the métière, and then the champ de marais) where solar evaporation progressively concentrates the salinity until crystallisation occurs. It puts its average production at around 2,500 tonnes of coarse salt and 150 tonnes of fleur de sel per summer, a volume that fluctuates depending on the weather (about 160 tonnes during the rainy summer of 2007, up to around 4,000 tonnes during dry summers such as 2003 or 2018) — the cooperative structure enabling it, according to the organisation, to maintain three years of stock to smooth out poor seasons.
It presents the PGI 'Sel de l'île de Ré' and 'Fleur de Sel de l'île de Ré' as a guarantee of traceability for consumers and a shield against counterfeiting, and has recently refreshed its logo and brand signature around the tagline 'Le Bon, Le Brut et La Finesse'.
| Address | 7 Rte de la Prée, 17590 Ars-en-Ré, France |
| 05 46 29 40 27 | |
| accueil@sauniers-iledere.com | |
| sauniers-iledere.com | |
| Facebook page | |
| @sauniers_iledere | |
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Part of the production is certified organic, since 2017. |
