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French Guérande fleur de sel, hand-raked
Global Rare Foods & Ingredients

French Guérande fleur de sel, hand-raked

Delicate, mineral-rich salt crystals hand-raked from Brittany's ancient tidal salt marshes.

OriginGuérande, France
Indian subcontinentNo
CategoryGlobal Rare Foods & Ingredients
Retail price band$$ ($12–$25 per 250g tin retail)
Bulk / trade price bandBulk/wholesale: indicative $4–$9/kg for food-service grade, higher for certified IGP hand-raked premium
Sourcing statusDossier researched from public sources — producer contact not yet established
Compliance statusPreliminary review complete (see below) — not yet legally verified
Request trade sheet More in Global Rare Foods & Ingredients
Dossier researched, photography pending. The sections below are drawn from the cited public sources. This is desk research, not yet verified by direct producer contact or legal counsel — treat pricing, compliance and provenance detail as a working draft for due diligence, not a final trade sheet.

Detailed study

Fleur de sel ('flower of salt') is the thin crust of delicate crystals that forms on the surface of salt-marsh ponds under specific sun/wind conditions, hand-skimmed before it sinks and mixes with the coarser gray salt (sel gris) below; it retains higher moisture and trace-mineral content than refined table salt.

Provenance & producer

Produced in the Guérande peninsula's traditional tidal salt marshes (marais salants) in Loire-Atlantique, Brittany, by paludiers who channel seawater through shallow clay-lined pans and rake the surface crystals with a wooden tool — a technique little-changed since the Middle Ages.

Market & pricing

Guérande is the most internationally recognized French fleur de sel origin, sold globally as a premium finishing salt to fine-dining kitchens, gourmet retailers and artisan food brands; typical annual fleur de sel yield per marsh is very small, keeping supply constrained relative to demand.

Compliance & export

'Sel de Guérande / Fleur de sel de Guérande' holds EU Protected Geographical Indication (IGP) status, restricting the name to salt produced and hand-harvested in the designated Guérande marshland by registered paludiers; buyers should request the IGP certificate and Label Rouge documentation where claimed.

Sources

Image status

A working reference photograph is in place, captured from a freely-licensed Wikimedia Commons source. Fleur de Sel sea salt from Guerande, France, in its original box, Christian Mertes, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Treat this as a placeholder for marketing purposes: exact licence terms should be re-verified on the Commons file page, and original producer photography is recommended before final trade use.