Fleur de sel is a rare, unrefined salt that is made by evaporating seawater slowly in 2-centimeter-deep ponds. It's made in western France using centuries-old methods. Just locally, it can cost 230 times more than table salt. Outside French borders, it can reach $420 per kilogram.
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00:00 In just a few hours, these salt crystals will disappear.
00:05 They are fleur de sel crystals,
00:07 unique to salt marshes like this one
00:09 in Batsur-Mer, Western France.
00:12 CĂ©dric has to harvest the fleur de sel now,
00:15 or it will sink to the bottom of the pond,
00:17 ruining the properties that make it unique.
00:20 Fleur de sel is a salt that dissolves slowly,
00:25 so its taste lingers in the mouth.
00:28 I can feel the crystal in my mouth.
00:29 I can feel the crunchy, toothy texture.
00:32 That's part of why it sells for 230 times more
00:36 than table salt domestically,
00:38 and for up to $420 per kilogram outside French borders.
00:43 But just about every step of the process
00:45 to get this salt is difficult.
00:48 Before harvesting, the wind has to be perfect.
00:51 And during the harvest, salt producers like CĂ©dric
00:54 need to be ready to collect the precious salt
00:57 at any moment, or they won't make a profit.
01:00 Even if they seize the right moment,
01:10 the salt has to dry for an entire year
01:13 before it can be sold.
01:14 So is it always worth it to produce fleur de sel?
01:19 And why is it so expensive?
01:22 It's 5 p.m. and we're going to the swamp
01:25 to collect the fleur de sel.
01:27 The conditions are perfect.
01:28 It's sunny, we're in the middle of the season,
01:31 the fleur de sel will form from the beginning of the afternoon
01:34 and will continue to accumulate until the end of the day.
01:36 And so it's the wind, the wind's action on the surface of the water
01:40 that will allow the salt to crystallize.
01:43 There, we can see there's fleur de sel.
01:45 CĂ©dric is a paludier,
01:47 what salt harvesters are known as in Bades-sur-Mer.
01:50 Here, the close proximity to the sea
01:53 allows salt producers to easily divert water to shallow ponds,
01:57 dug in blue clay.
01:59 Unlike table salt, which is typically mined from underground,
02:02 fleur de sel is a very expensive product.
02:05 It's a very expensive product,
02:07 and it's a very expensive product.
02:09 Unlike table salt, which is typically mined from underground,
02:12 fleur de sel comes to the surface of the pond naturally.
02:15 It's seawater that is slowly evaporating in the summer heat.
02:19 The water must be sufficiently dense in terms of salt.
02:24 And then, it's the wind that will dry the surface of the water.
02:29 And there, little grains will start to form.
02:32 And as they form,
02:34 they will agglomerate, a bit like molecules that will come together.
02:38 On a funnel, we'll have 2 to 3 cm maximum on the sides of the water.
02:45 And in the middle, we'll have less, about 0.5 cm to 1 cm maximum.
02:50 And we'll put water in the morning, and as the day goes on,
02:53 the water will evaporate to leave room for the crystals.
02:57 So, the job of a funnel maker is a job of passion.
03:02 It's a job you can't do if you don't like the land you're on,
03:07 the one you're working on, because you spend a lot of time there.
03:10 We get up very early in the morning,
03:12 we get up at the same time as the sun,
03:14 we start working at the same time as the sun.
03:16 Fleur de sel literally translates to 'flower of salt',
03:23 but there are no flowers in it.
03:25 Its name is a play on words with the French verb effleurer,
03:29 which means 'coming up to the surface'.
03:31 Since it's 2 cm, there's 2 cm of water at most underneath.
03:35 It's a very delicate job.
03:37 We're going to effleur the surface of the water to collect the salt.
03:41 If I lift the clay, my flower will be all black.
03:45 And I'm not sure that a black fleur de sel will please people.
03:48 The grain is quite big, it's quite crystalline,
04:00 so there's a nice flower here tonight.
04:02 You have to be here to collect it.
04:07 It's not you who makes the salt, it's the weather that makes the salt.
04:11 It's a season that puts the organisms to the test,
04:24 for a simple reason, it's extremely hot,
04:26 and the eels are very difficult to manage,
04:28 because they rise very quickly in temperature.
04:30 So you have to constantly monitor, but to monitor your water very, very closely,
04:34 so that the water doesn't rise too high in temperature,
04:38 because otherwise, in crystallisation, it's not the sodium chloride that crystallises,
04:43 but it's the calcium chloride.
04:45 And here we're no longer on food salt.
04:47 So the humidity rate, we're going to have a very high rate,
05:00 which is going to be 20, 30, 40% when we take the salt out of the water.
05:03 And for me, the ideal hygrometry in a salt is 6 to 8%.
05:08 It keeps a little bit of the fat,
05:10 it keeps the salty taste in the mouth.
05:14 When a salt crystal is high in moisture, it doesn't contain just water.
05:19 So the salt flower is a multitude of minerals.
05:22 On one side there's the sodium chloride, which is the crystal.
05:26 And inside this crystal, we have humidity.
05:30 And here we have potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride.
05:34 The more the season advances, the more salinity the water will be.
05:39 Sea water is 30g of salt per litre of water.
05:43 Here it's 300g of salt per litre of water.
05:46 To lower the moisture but preserve the nutrients inside the salt crystals,
05:52 CĂ©dric cannot speed up the drying process.
05:55 He needs to let it dry slowly for an entire year before it's ready to be sold.
06:02 When you dry the salt, it destroys some of the impurities.
06:06 Because it's dried at high temperature,
06:08 but it also potentially destroys the nutrients of the salt.
06:11 Whereas a salt that's just been drained,
06:13 you're going to have little impurities inside.
06:15 But you keep all the nutrients.
06:17 So it can be several things.
06:19 It can be insects, little insects,
06:21 that are caught during crystallization.
06:23 It can be a little herb, or it can be a little clay ball.
06:27 So you have a little more work,
06:29 and that's why we have a sorting process behind it,
06:31 to keep the quality of the product.
06:33 The difference is that the fleur de sel will be much whiter,
06:36 much thinner, lighter, more aerated,
06:38 much more crystalline.
06:40 There will be that crystalline side of the fleur de sel.
06:42 And it's true that it's a salt that we use
06:45 almost only as a table salt,
06:48 in terms of its texture, in terms of its colour,
06:51 in terms of all its features.
06:53 This is what sets fleur de sel apart from table salt,
06:58 which contains little to no moisture,
07:01 but also from other wet salts that are dried naturally,
07:04 but have been harvested differently.
07:06 CĂ©dric wanted to be even more specific,
07:09 so he started to classify his salts
07:11 based on the different winds blowing here.
07:14 This had never been done before.
07:18 The predominant winds here blow from the west and northwest.
07:24 Today we have a pure west wind,
07:26 it blows quite strongly.
07:27 The fleur is a bit thicker,
07:29 but it's often very white.
07:31 I like the west wind because I really like the crunchy side of the salt.
07:35 The west winds are sea winds,
07:37 so they are more humid winds,
07:39 and the grain, when it forms, is bigger,
07:41 because the atmospheric pressures are also less strong.
07:44 While the east winds are the earth winds,
07:46 they are warmer, more abrasive,
07:48 and the crystal is thinner when it forms.
07:52 There are two different fleurs de sel.
07:55 Here we have the south wind fleur de sel,
07:57 with the grain that is very, very thin, extremely thin.
08:01 And here we have the fleur de sel that is a west wind,
08:05 with a grain that is bigger,
08:07 with more cork,
08:09 a much crunchier side.
08:11 You see, we won't hear this one when it falls,
08:13 there will be almost no noise.
08:15 Because it is extremely thin.
08:17 While this one, with the grain that is bigger,
08:20 will be more crunchy.
08:22 We will hear when it falls.
08:27 In France, CĂ©dric's custom salt can sell
08:32 for over 10 times as much as other types of fleur de sel.
08:36 Abroad, it can reach $420 per kilogram.
08:40 Fleur de sel is a niche product
08:43 because there are many people who have preconceived ideas about salt.
08:47 Many people say that salt is not good for your health,
08:49 but it is not salt that is not good for your health.
08:51 It is the bad salt that is not good for your health.
08:53 But people today,
08:55 if they compare it to industrial salt,
08:58 it will not be the same price at all.
09:00 Because it is not the same activity at all,
09:02 it is not the same salt at all.
09:04 So we can't compare them at all.
09:06 His most expensive fleur de sel is this one,
09:08 nicknamed "Snow".
09:10 A 100-gram box sells for 23 euros.
09:14 CĂ©dric created it by studying the salinity levels in the pond,
09:18 combined with a very rare wind.
09:21 So this is a fleur de sel "Snow".
09:23 This fleur de sel is a fleur de sel that is produced by south winds.
09:27 South winds are rather rare on the Pasquille.
09:30 In general, we do it at the end of the season.
09:33 It gives it an extremely fine texture, extremely soft.
09:36 We will make some years we will not have any at all,
09:39 and other years we will make between 200 and 400 kilos
09:41 on the whole of the production.
09:43 So it's really very small in terms of quantity.
09:46 It will be a third more expensive,
09:48 compared to the rarity of the product.
09:50 It looks like snowballs.
09:52 In fact, the salt is much more compact.
09:54 It's because it's much thinner,
09:56 when it dries, the grains will cluster together.
09:59 It's much more powerful than the other one.
10:06 And you have much more length.
10:08 There I will feel the crystal in my mouth,
10:13 I will have the crunchy side under the tooth,
10:15 that I would not have at all with the fleur de sel "Snow".
10:17 The snow will melt when we make the cuisine,
10:20 while the fleur de sel "West" will crunch under the tooth.
10:24 CĂ©dric wasn't born into this job.
10:28 He started harvesting salt as a hobby
10:30 with friends 20 years ago.
10:32 At the time, he had an office job in Paris.
10:35 It's a radical change.
10:39 I have a company in the field of human resources
10:42 in the Paris region,
10:44 and tomorrow morning I become a farmer.
10:47 It's a change that is organized, that is anticipated.
10:50 And this preparation time was also the learning time.
10:54 And at some point, you feel ready, you go and you say,
10:57 "OK, stop, I stop getting on the train,
10:59 I stay here and I start harvesting salt seriously."
11:03 Today, he works with another paludier on 62 salt ponds,
11:07 and he collaborates with 10 other companies
11:10 on over 100 ponds.
11:13 Some paludiers have taught me,
11:15 over time, people who have given me their know-how.
11:19 And it's something very noble.
11:22 It's important that we have a real added value
11:25 in what we do and the way we do it.
11:27 Fleur de sel is actually a by-product
11:31 of another type of salt, coarse salt.
11:34 Under the fleur de sel, you can see it here,
11:37 there is coarse salt,
11:39 which crystallized directly on the clay.
11:42 In the pond, it's a symphony between the two.
11:45 Sivrik can only harvest coarse salt in the morning,
12:04 before fleur de sel forms,
12:06 or just after harvesting it, in the late afternoon.
12:11 These movements are too harsh for fleur de sel
12:14 and would instantly destroy it.
12:16 For a paludier, coarse salt takes up most of the time at work,
12:32 and also most of the harvest.
12:34 For every 10 kilos of coarse salt,
12:37 there is only one kilogram of fleur de sel.
12:40 Still, because of the hand-harvest method,
12:43 this coarse salt remains seven times as expensive as table salt.
12:47 But Sivrik didn't want to stop at the whims with his salt.
12:53 He now plays with moisture to develop new flavors.
12:56 His most successful creation was this one, smoked salt.
13:01 I really liked the idea of having the smoker in my garden.
13:05 I built the smoker here.
13:10 The idea was to integrate the two smokers
13:13 into the space next to the house,
13:15 to be always present, because I work in the evening.
13:18 I smoke the salt in the evening,
13:21 so that it doesn't rise in temperature
13:23 and stays on a cold smoke.
13:29 Sivrik uses a mix of west and east wind salts
13:33 that have already dried for one year.
13:36 The salt smokes for 12 hours.
13:43 This is the smoked salt.
13:45 It has a crust on top.
13:48 Look, the bottom is much lighter.
13:51 It is less smoked.
13:53 And then it is by shaking that it will spread.
13:56 It won't change the texture.
13:59 The texture will stay the same.
14:01 It is the moisture that will absorb and then spread.
14:06 Can I say that it smells like smoke and wood?
14:10 There are two smells of smoke.
14:13 There is the smoked side,
14:15 with the sawdust from the oak,
14:17 because it is the one that is smoked in oak.
14:19 And there is a barrel that is made of oak
14:22 and that will spread the wood smells.
14:26 It goes well with a lot of things.
14:28 With fish, it will give the smoked side.
14:30 With meat, it will give the barbecue side.
14:32 Can I put it on a chocolate mousse?
14:34 You have to try it, see what you like and what you don't.
14:38 I love it on a fresh cheese.
14:40 Fresh cheese, smoked salt, just like that.
14:43 It's a little bit like a cheese,
14:45 but it's a little bit more like a cheese.
14:47 It's a little bit like a cheese,
14:49 but it's a little bit more like a cheese.
14:51 It's a little bit like a cheese,
14:53 but it's a little bit more like a cheese.
14:55 Fresh cheese, smoked salt, just a drizzle of oil.
14:57 I think it's very, very good.
14:59 He's now collaborating with chefs to create custom salts.
15:04 For me, it's...
15:07 In fact, there is a real personal satisfaction.
15:11 It's a reconnection with your environment,
15:14 something that makes sense.
15:16 It makes sense to be a paludier.
15:18 That is, every day we will produce something
15:20 that will embody itself in reality.
15:22 And if we do our job well,
15:24 in addition, what we will produce will have a nice use.
15:28 And beyond that, it's actually an ancestral work.
15:32 We are here to transmit.
15:34 Today we do it, tomorrow it will be someone else.
15:37 And the day after tomorrow, he will also transmit to someone else.
15:40 [Music]
15:47 [Music fades]