On a typical evening in Manhattan, deep in the heart of the trendy East Village, the foodies at Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar are gobbling up Maine oysters and calling them downright “creamy.”
“Have you noticed the seaweed finish on this Pemaquid?” you might overhear someone saying in a phrase worthy of a wine connoisseur.
In the world of the gourmet, Maine oysters enjoy a national reputation for being particularly clean and crisp with a perfect briny flavor. They fetch a pretty price in fancy restaurants were oyster connoisseurs order up sampler plates of these delicacies – rolling each one around in their mouth, commenting on its “tinny,” or perhaps its “buttery” quality.
“I tell my customers that Maine oysters are the Burgundy of oysters,” enthuses Jack Lamb, owner of Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar.
Here at home, the boutique business of oyster farming in Maine is thriving, with more than 25 competing local varieties on the market grossing over $2.5 million last year, according to the Maine Aquaculture Association. And each farmer will proudly tell you his own “private-label” oyster was raised strictly in the very best of salt water under the most labor-intensive conditions, over a period of years.
The secret is in our water, and the subtle distinction from one Maine oyster to the next – as any connoisseur well knows – is all about salt and phytoplankton.
“We are working with naturally nutritious water off the coast of Maine,” explains Peter Horne, owner of Maine Oyster Farms, in Freeport. “The cold water has more dissolved oxygen in it, which helps phytoplankton bloom and also helps the oyster to feed.”
The great success of Horne’s gourmet oyster, the “Winter Point,” is in large part due to its fine taste. But people also like its catchy geography-friendly name. “Winter Point is a better name for marketing because it is a much tastier name than Mill Cove, where they oysters are actually grown,” explains Horne.
When Horne’s son and daughter-in-law, Eric Horne and Valy Steverlynck, began raising oysters of their own, the couple named their creation “Flying Points,” after a nearby peninsula that had the requisite “flair that people both appreciate and remember,” they explain. The water conditions, Horne and Steverlynck will tell you, also boasts a lot of nuance that directly affects the taste of their product.
“The flavor of our oysters is influenced by a strong tidal exchange,” explains Eric Horne. “On an incoming tide they are nourished by cold, briny ocean water. On an outgoing tide, they feed on the nutrients produced in the vast marshes to the north of our site.”
The result? “A complex flavor characterized by a hint of saltiness and a pronounced sweetness.”
The sweetness of Maine’s oysters is part of their mystique. Quite literally, it’s all in the glycogen. “Maine oysters taste sweeter because our water is so cold that they think it’s winter all the time, so they fatten up and put on more glycogen,” explains Chris Davis, co-owner of the Pemaquid Oyster Company, who actually trademarked his oyster and boasts a Ph.D. in oyster biology.
The name “Pemaquid” gets bandied about in a luxury restaurant these days, and it applies to the oysters grown on the Damariscotta River. And it is well known in the business that Dick Clime, of Dodge Cove Marine Farm, has been growing his Pemaquids since 1977 – before Davis trademarked them in 1989. But there appears to be enough business to keep everyone happy these days.
“The demand has always exceeded the numbers grown,” explains Clime, “so we have never felt that other growers are in competition in Maine.”
Nevertheless, each Maine oyster farmer does take particular pride in the uniqueness of his or her “vintage” oyster. “Every cove location has its own particular taste,” explains Adam Campbell, of North Haven. Campbell is a lobsterman who now spends 50 percent of his time raising his “Penobscot Bay oysters.”
“The water where my oysters grow has a particularly high salt content, so they have a really fresh kind of zing to them,” boasts Campbell.
Many Maine oyster farmers move their oysters about – say, from the mucky bottom of a river bed to surface tanks closer to open ocean, so the oysters can purge themselves of undesirable grit. But this, too, has become part of the legend of our local delicacy. “Our growers often move oysters to a different salinity finishing site, which is kind of like polishing the vintage,” muses Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Acquaculture Association
The water, of course, has to be pristine. Jack Lamb tells his New York City oyster connoisseurs that “the waters of Maine are clean like nowhere else.”
Only the best oysters qualify for out-of-state consumption, of course. Amy Fitzpatrick, director of the Public Health Division of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, makes sure this remains the case. “Our program is so strict,” she flatly states, “that if we have the area open for harvest, the oysters are definitely safe to eat.”
In fact, the waters of Maine are such a selling point in the oyster business, that many national companies ship their product here for a clean up before going to market. At Spinney Creek, the depuration plant takes in oysters from “away” (places like Chesapeake Bay). The oysters then sit in ultra-violet-zapped, sterile water for 48 hours. Then Spinney Creek sends them off to fancy oyster bars with a quality-insurance promise.
“Spinney Creek Shellfish are cleansed inside and out in pure Maine seawater, tested for quality, and packed to order,” reads the company’s Winter Oyster Menu 2004. “We produce the cleanest, safest, freshest shellfish available.”
This winter, Spinney Creek has a “Kittery Point” oyster on its Menu, that indeed began life in the Chesapeake Bay, but the company is proud of the mixed heritage of their product. “These Chesapeake beauties have a classic shape and cup,” the marketing material reads. “Our high salinity waters impart a sweet, salty flavor and a mild flinty finish.”
Purists, of course, might take issue with the whole business of depuration. When you labor three years to produce the perfect oyster, it’s something of a passion. “People who grow oysters take pride in making sure they are grown in naturally clean waters,” boasts Peter Horne.
And after all his hard work, what does Peter Horne suggest to the oyster connoisseurs at Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar in the East Village of Manhattan?
“Some people will have a shot of vodka and then an oyster,” observes Horne. “I think that’s kind of macho. And we prefer it if you didn’t eat them with hot sauce – just use a little fresh lemon juice – it doesn’t overpower the taste.”