Meroir: Definitions and Distinctions

Meroir is the sampling of salinity from its source. As oysters filter out the microorganisms within their own local sea, the salt and brine of the water flows through that calcite shell and establishes a dominance in the eventual taste sensation. We taste meroir, and salty volatiles connect us to our own past stories with the water.

-Nora Hantula (Edited by Lliam Carlton, Glenn Tippy)

Before this quarter, I have had the chances to try more than a handful of distinct oysters, and I have always been able to distinguish oysters from different genetic pools (as well as literal ones). Interestingly, I believe that the concept of terroir is reasonably beyond human sensory capacity, but that says nothing to our imaginative capacity. Soil is to terroir as water is to meroir, which is to say: the nutritive substrate of oysters. I am convinced that despite our obsession with tasting the land, or the sea in our food, those nuances are slightly beyond our conscious abilities. In lieu of contradicting personal experience, its seems likely that the mere suggestion that two mollusk species, or two estuaries, taste different is enough for any individual to imagine worlds of variation or even the taste of the sea.

-Lliam Carlton (Edited by Nora Hantula)

 

 

 

Photos taken by Nora Hantula