Salt of Guerande : The salt guérandais has its roots in history. It was harvested on the peninsula since the Iron Age. The first salt works using the storage capacities of the lagoon date back to the XNUMXrd century, shortly after the Roman conquest. The poet Venance Fortunat ( 530 AD J.-C - 609 after AD) then spoke in his “life of Saint Aubin, the white” of the rocks “where the breaking waves deposit the salt”. But the real face of the salt marshes is the monks of Landévennec Abbey, who created the priory of Batz in 945 and carved it out. By studying the tides, the wind, the sun, the monks traced the plan of the salt pans, the contours of which have changed very little since. This titanic work ensured the prosperity of Guérande for many centuries by opening the first trading routes to Europe, the El Dorado of Brittany. The current exploitation technique predates the XNUMXth century; at least five salt works from the Carolingian era are still exploited on the marsh. This tradition of the profession of salt worker and the perpetuation of the same gestures have truly allowed the marshes of Guérande to live until today.
The Guérande salt marshes are an area of French salt marshes located on the territory of the communes of Guérande, Batz-sur-Mer, Le Croisic and La Turballe, in the west of the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la region. Loire.
About twenty kilometers to the north is another salt basin, the Mès marshes, which are associated with those of Guérande as part of the “Salt basin of the Guérande peninsula”.
History of salt: The development of the salt trade salt aroused the interest of men of power and in 1343, salt became a state monopoly by an order from King Philippe VI of Valois, who instituted the gabelle (*), the tax on salt. From the establishment of this tax, false salt workers were born, smugglers who went to buy, for example in Brittany, on the other bank of the Vilaine, salt which they resold in Maine, after having smuggled it. without paying the gabelle. They risked being sentenced to the galleys if they worked without weapons, and the death penalty if they had weapons.
After numerous uprisings by the population, the gabelle was finally abolished by the National Constituent Assembly on December 1, 1790.
(*) Gabelle: The gabelle comes from a word of Arabic origin “kabala” which means tax.
Economy and evolution of Guérande salt: On average, the Guérande salt works produce around 10 tonnes of salt each year, a production much lower in quantity than the more industrial salt works of the Mediterranean coast such as Salin-de-Giraud and Salins-d’Hyères.
The exploitation of the Guérande salt marshes was in the process of being abandoned around 1970, but a recovery has begun since this awareness.
In 1979, professional training was created to provide training for the profession of salt worker, the professional certificate for agricultural operations manager, salt farming option.
In 1989, the group of salt producers formed an agricultural cooperative to which most salt workers joined. In 1992, it bought Salines de Guérande, a production and sales company, in order to better distribute its production.
In 1991, obtaining the Label Rouge within the agricultural cooperative.
In 1992, Creation of the commercial subsidiary Les Salines de Guérande and purchase of the company Le Guérandais in Pradel which will be absorbed in 2001.
In 2002, inauguration of the “Terre de Sel” tourist reception structure.
On March 20, 2012, Guérande salt obtained the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) from the European Commission.
This IGP largely repeats the specifications previously submitted to obtain a “protected designation of origin” under the French standard of “Atlantic sea salt” protecting and encompassing the production of Ré, Noirmoutier and Guérande, and produced thanks to the groupings of producers in the 1970s in the face of competition from industrialized salt works in the South, and imports from other European countries (Portugal and Spain in particular) sold under ambiguous names. These first specifications resulted in the obtaining of the red “Guérande salt” label in 1991 and the inclusion of the salt marshes in the “Remarkable Sites of Taste” in 1995.
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