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Michael Watchorn is widely
renowned for his Hog Island oysters, which he cultivates in
the waters of Tomales Bay; anyone who’s around when he cranks
up the grill is in for a memorable feast.
Photo by Rory McNamara
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Farming Tomales
Bay Oysters
By Linda Murphy
The Wine News Magazine
The oyster has eight enemies, not counting man who is the greatest,
since he protects her from the others only to eat her himself,”
Fisher wrote in 1941’s Consider the Oyster. Nowhere is this guardianship
more vigilant than on Marin County’s Tomales Bay — just an hour’s
drive from the Sonoma Valley home in which Fisher lived at the time
of her death in 1992. In the waters of Tomales Bay grows a most
pampered and precious oyster, one Fisher would not only have considered,
but slurped with great joy.
Oysters have been raised in Northern California for decades, yet
the buzz has grown quite loud lately for Tomales Bay, where a handful
of growers lift beautifully shaped, plump, sea-sweet oysters from
their tidal beds and send them off to the nation’s finest restaurants
and seafood bars. This predilection
is not, however, a culinary trend, but rather a renaissance or
rebirth of sorts. America’s passion for oysters predates the Pilgrims,
as Native Americans harvested and ate indigenous bivalves in great
quantities. Since then, we have grilled, roasted, stewed, stir-fried,
deep-fried, smoked, scalloped and Rockefellered oysters; stuffed
them into turkeys; chopped them into bisques, chowders, loaves
and mousses; scrambled them with eggs and bacon (the Hangtown Fry);
and knocked them back spiked with cocktail sauce from shot glasses.
Yet purists insist there is only one way to eat an oyster: Raw,
ice-cold and gulped from the half-shell. For this culinary cult,
the Tomales Bay oysters exist. When eaten alive, its just-shucked
body still pulsing as it passes the lips, the oyster has a sweet,
clean, mineral-like taste of the sea. From the
familiar Long Island bluepoints and Cape Cod Wellfleets to new-kid
Malaspinas from British Columbia and Spiny Creek Flats from
Maine, raw oysters share ocean-fresh aroma and flavor characteristics.
Yet each type has nuances that reflect the water, climate and nutrients
of the place in which they are raised. Like wine, oysters are products
of their terroir. In West Marin County, that terroir is in Tomales
Bay, a narrow, 22-mile-long Pacific Ocean-fed inlet 50 miles north
of San Francisco, whose landscape resembles the rolling green hills
and misty moors of Scotland (in contrast to the shopping center-clogged
Marin one sees while driving Highway 101). Oysters thrive in Tomales
Bay, particularly in the open north end, where salt water from the
sea meets fresh spring water from Walker Creek. The water temperature
stays cool throughout the year, and the oysters dine on a healthy
population of phytoplankton.
Here, in the tiny West Marin County town of Marshall (population
50), the Hog Island Oyster Company was born in 1982. A century earlier,
Marshall had been a hub for commercial seafood fishing, a haven
for tourists and a stop on the railway that transported lumber and
seafood up and down the Northern California coast. When marine biologists
and Hog Island proprietors Michael Watchorn and John Finger bought
the dilapidated Marshall general store and post office in 1982,
they appreciated the history, but chose the location for its aquacultural
potential. It had all the right stuff — fresh, clean, cold water;
plenty of nutrients; and tidal action that would help produce
superior oysters. Presentation is as important as taste for half-shell
oysters sold to
high-end restaurants, and the Hog Island oyster has been meticulously
bred for both.
Perfecting the oyster has been a long, slow process for Hog Island,
but now its four varieties of oysters and its Manila clams
have found their way onto the menus of some of the nation’s best
eateries, including Baleen (Miami); Shaw’s Crab House (Chicago);
Spago (Las Vegas); The Four Seasons (New York City); and Masa’s,
Farallon and Zuni Café (San Francisco). Freshness is crucial: A
Hog Island oyster plucked from Tomales Bay today can depart San
Francisco International Airport tonight and be on ice in New York
City tomorrow.
Watchorn and Finger, who were joined in the business by Terry Sawyer
in 1988, met while working in aquaculture in Monterey Bay. Bill
Marinelli, one of Finger’s former roommates at Southampton College
in New York, wanted to open a seafood distributorship in the
early 1980s and convinced Watchorn and Finger to make a serious
attempt at oyster farming on Tomales Bay. “Bill created the market
for West Coast oysters,” Watchorn says. “He advised us to start
the business, then started contacting restaurateurs, talking up
the product to folks like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. Since we
started growing oysters here, we’ve never had enough to meet
demand.”
Hog Island and its neighbors, Tomales Bay Oyster Company, Marin
Oyster Company and Point Reyes Oyster Company, use the French rack-and-bag
method of farming. The process begins when they buy seedlings from
hatcheries and transplant the seeds, called spats, onto pieces of
shell. The fingernail-size spats are raised in mesh cylinders in
an aqua nursery until they are about an inch long, then are transferred
to mesh bags and tethered to racks and cables in the water to grow
to a size of three to four inches — an 18-month-long process.
“Most of the work is in manipulating the oyster from the quarter-inch
stage to one inch, which leads to an attractive shell,” Watchorn
says. “As the cylinders roll up and down with the tide, there’s
a gentle washing-machine motion that roughs up the shells
a bit as the oysters grow, thickens the shells and creates the deep
cup. We pride ourselves on our shells — pretty fluting, and colors
of black, brown and purple — as much as we do thetaste.”
While Hog Island has made a name for itself as a purveyor of oysters
to fine dining establishments, it’s also become a destination for
those wanting to eat fresh oysters there or at home. Located near
Marin County’s Point Reyes National Seashore on Highway 1, Hog Island
provides shucking gloves, knives, instructions, barbecue grills
and picnic tables to those buying its oysters and clams.
“Twenty years ago we were entirely wholesale, but now retail is
about to surpass wholesale,” says Watchorn, who predicts he will
sell four million oysters in 2002, many via oyster bars that Hog
Island sets up for special events, including winery functions and
tastings. Some 5,000 “Hogs” are served at the annual Chalone Wine
Group Shareholders Celebration (Chalone co-founder Phil Woodward
is an investor in Hog Island and recommends oysters with Chalone
Pinot Blanc). This winter, Domaine Chandon in Napa Valley set up
a Hog Island oyster bar in its Tasting Salon every Sunday, pairing
just-farmed Hogs with its Etoile and Brut Classic sparkling wines.
In fact, “Oyster Sundays” proved so popular that the Hog Island
staff — which brings the oysters to the winery and shucks them on
the spot — served more than 600 Hogs during the inaugural event.
Given the success, Chandon plans on continuing “Oyster Sundays”
throughout the year.
“We’re small by industry standards,” Watchorn says. “We started
with a ten-acre lease and now lease 160 acres in north Tomales Bay.
We’ve petitioned the Department of Fish and Game to lease more acres,
but the process is slow.”
Five types of oysters are grown in North America and Hog Island
has four of them: The Pacific (also called the Japanese or Miyagi
oyster); Eastern or Atlantic; European; and Kumamoto. The trademarked
Hog Island Sweetwater is a Pacific oyster that is sweet, mild and
firm, with a hint of minerals and smoke and a shell groomed for
raw service. The Kumamoto, native to Japan, is a slow-growing, small,
plump, somewhat salty oyster with a deep cup and a buttery texture.
The French Belon — Watchorn calls it the “French Hog” — is a European
with a stronger, brinier flavor and round, flat shell. Then
there is the Atlantic, transplanted in Tomales Bay from East Coast
seedlings.
This “bi-coastal” bivalve is salty yet delicate, with a more minerally
finish than a Pacific.
Oddly, the one North American oyster species not being produced
in Marin County, the Olympia, was the only oyster in the area until
the early 1900s, when over-harvesting, pollution and sediment from
rapid urban development wiped out the species and decimated the
region’s commercial fishing industry.
After passage of the Clean Water Act in 1977, which established
water-quality standards, Bay Area waters began to regenerate, and
today Tomales Bay is a safe, thriving aquacultural site. The tasty
yet tiny Olympia oyster could again grow in Tomales Bay, but Marin
County farmers have ceded the honor to Washington State, where the
oyster is grown on the coast near the city of Olympia.
The safety of the raw oysters they eat is of particular interest
to consumers. Because oysters act as water filters, they can absorb
bacteria found in their environment. Tomales Bay growers say scrupulous
farming practices, temperature control, federally regulated testing
of farming waters, harvest closures (when bacteria counts go up)
and proper storage are all assurances.
“We have more regulation than most food industries,” says Drew Alden,
owner of Tomales Bay Oyster Company. “We’re under strict regulatory
scrutiny and our practices are safer than they need to be. We also
give something back: Oysters filter water and keep algae levels
in check. Algae blooms can rob the bay of oxygen, but oysters help
keep Tomales Bay clean and alive.”
Alden’s company originated in 1906 on San Francisco Bay and later
moved to Tomales Bay. Since 1989, Alden has raised Pacific oysters,
selling about 600,000 per year, all through retail sales at the
farm. In November, he will sell a new type of Pacific oyster
he calls the Golden Nugget, with sweet meat that fills the oyster’s
very deep shell. “It’s the best oyster I’ve ever tasted,” Alden
says.
The ideal time of year to eat raw oysters is when the waters are
coldest, generally from October through April in the Northern Hemisphere
(months that contain the letter “R”). Summer is spawning season
for oysters, and as the water warms, they can become milky and soft
as they prepare to release eggs and sperm. In typical years in the
summer, Northern California waters are too cool for the oysters
to actually spawn, but instinct tells them to try, and while their
flabby texture isn’t appealing when eaten raw, they are fine for
barbecuing.
In addition to having its beds in the coldest parts of Tomales Bay,
Hog Island addresses the spawning issue with a state-of-the-art
wet-storage system — designed by Sawyer, a former aquarist at the
Monterey Bay Aquarium — that continuously pumps sea water into tanks
from the bay and runs it through an ultraviolet light sterilizer.
When bay temperatures rise, the system chills the tank water
to below 50 degrees, tricking the oysters into thinking it’s still
winter. The tanks are also used for keeping a fresh supply of live
oysters when winter storms and agricultural runoff require harvest
closures.
Oyster service is now booming in America, with specialists like
the Grand Central Oyster Bar (New York City), Elliott’s Oyster House
(Seattle) and P.J.’s Oyster Bed (San Francisco) offering an astonishing
variety of “designer” oysters such as Port Medway Flats Europeans
from Nova Scotia, Hama Hama Pacifics from Washington State and Watch
Hill Easterns from Rhode Island. Even smaller eateries, such as
Nickie and Pete Zellersuch’s Pearl restaurant (Napa Valley), sell
hundreds each day.
Oysters are the signature dish at Pearl, which opened in 1995 (named
for Nickie’s love of pearls and oysters; she says it’s a coincidence
that the restaurant is on Pearl Street). The restaurant offers at
least five half-shell choices each day, and while Malpeques from
Prince Edward Island and Pearl Points from Oregon make the menu
occasionally, Nickie prefers oysters from Hog Island and Point Reyes
Oyster Company. “We’re selling
more oysters than ever before and rely on local growers,” she says.
“Our customers like the idea of eating local products.”
Point Reyes proprietor Martin Strain, a former CPA who grew up in
West Marin, has been in aquaculture for 16 years. He began with
mussels and now grows oysters and clams. “When I started, you couldn’t
buy hatchery seed as you can now,” he says. “I switched to oysters
and now can produce about a million a year. Most of them go to restaurants
in the greater Bay Area, although we do ship some out of state.”
Strain farms Pacifics, Atlantics and his favorite, the European
Belon.“While it doesn’t have a long shelf life, the Belon is a saltier
and yet sweeter oyster,” he says. “The liquid in its shell contains
a lot of salt but its body is sweet with a crunchy texture like
a clam. It passes over the tongue, you get a taste of salt, then
a taste of sweet, then a coppery finish.”
Colin Lafrenz, sales manager for Royal Hawaiian Seafood in San Francisco,
which distributes Hog Island and Point Reyes oysters, explains why
they’re valued: “First, the growers are able to sustain year-round
availability,” he says. “Second, the shape and beauty of the
shell and meat suits the half-shell market. Third, these guys
know how and where to grow oysters, and how to meet customer demand.
Fourth, they can get oysters to market overnight, in pristine condition.”
According to distributor Gary Palmer of Costarella Seafood in San
Francisco, Marin Oyster Company’s Miyagis are served at Bacar, EOS,
Gary Danko and Farallon (San Francisco) and Charlie Palmer’s Dry
Creek Kitchen (Healdsburg).
“If you want a half-shell oyster from the West Coast, you want one
from Tomales Bay,” he says. Johnson’s Drakes Bay Oysters cultivates
its bivalves in Drakes Estero, in
the protected waters of the Point Reyes National Seashore near Inverness.
Charles Johnson founded the company in 1954 after learning the hanging
culture farming method when he was in Japan. His grandson, Mark,
now runs the company, under a lease agreement with the Department
of Fish and Game and the National Park Service, and grows Pacific
oysters in clusters suspended on strings from platforms anchored
in an estuary of Drakes Bay. Most of Johnson’s oysters are sold
on-site, for barbecuing and in take-home jars.
Whether you like your oysters raw or cooked, you’ll probably want
to enjoy them with a glass of wine. Leave the reds in the cellar
and choose a cold, bracing white that lets the oyster taste
like an oyster — refreshing, of the sea.
The maxim that Champagne, Chablis, Muscadet and Sauvignon Blanc
are oysters’ best buddies is helpful, although the flavors and texture
an oyster develops from its environment and how it’s prepared complicate
things a bit. A good general rule is to drink white wines (like
those above) that are dry, have firm acidity and are not overly
fruity or oaky.
Like many wines, oysters have earned cult status and followers seek
out new, unique and hard-to-get varieties as the choices multiply.
Will it be long before asking for the oyster list is as common as
asking for the wine list?
Linda Murphy
is a Sonoma County-based wine and food writer and the former managing
editor of WineToday.com, The New York Times on the Web.
Article
first published in The Wine News
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