Binet 1660: The King’s Salt from the Marshes of Batz

The name is a date. In 1660 Georges Binet, a chamberlain to Louis XIV, brought salt from the marshes of Batz to the royal table, and a rule was handed down with it: the king’s salt shall crystallize in the marshes of Batz, never mixed, never crushed. Binet 1660, the salt label of the house Grand Cru de Batz, still works by it at Batz-sur-Mer, on the Guérande peninsula in southern Brittany.

A thousand-year-old marsh

The marshes are far older than the name. Their clay basins, laid over an extremely rich blue clay, were traced by Benedictine monks roughly a thousand years ago, and the knowledge of working them has passed from paludier to paludier ever since. Batz-sur-Mer calls itself the historic capital of salt.

The tools have not changed. The las pushes the water to roll coarse gray salt toward the edge of the pan; the lousse skims the surface to lift the fragile fleur de sel that forms on top. The rest is water, earth, wind, sun and the paludier’s judgment.

Nine months, then grain by grain

What happens after the harvest is what sets the house apart. The salt drains naturally for around nine months to keep its minerals. Every grain is then sorted by hand, a task entrusted to a team of workers with disabilities whose precision and patience the house singles out, and the salt is packed by hand into vintage-dated, numbered tins. No additives, no washing, no grinding.

One pan, three winds

The heart of the range is its wind harvests: fleur de sel gathered only when a particular wind is skimming the pans. West Wind gives generous, exceptionally crunchy crystals for meat, fish and vegetables. East Wind forms lighter, airier flakes, suited to fish, pastry and dessert. South Wind, the rarest, sold here as Snow Fleur de Sel, is a fine, powdery crystal for raw fish, scallops and anything where subtlety matters.

Two smoked salts complete the range. The Smoked Fleur de Sel is cold-smoked slowly over beech, and the Smoked & XO Cognac Flamed Fleur de Sel is smoked over oak and chestnut, then flamed with XO Cognac. The unrefined coarse gray salt, crystallized on the clay floor of the pans, is the everyday cooking salt.

How we use them

• West Wind on a steak or roasted vegetables, right at the table.
• East Wind on caramel, a chocolate tart or a butter cookie.
• Snow Fleur de Sel on scallop carpaccio or a raw fish crudo.
• The Cognac-flamed salt on foie gras, a piece of dark chocolate or an aged cheese.

The full story of the house is on our Binet 1660 page, and every tin in the Binet 1660 collection.