B5
THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, JANuARy 22, 2022
Michael Bendixen/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Travis Oja and Rita Welch of Nevør Shellfish Farm work with oysters at low tide in Netarts Bay.
Oyster taste influenced by where they live
By MICHAEL BENDIXEN
Oregon Public Broadcasting
The oyster. This is a creature of the sea.
It tastes like the sea, it smells like the sea. It
smacks of sea-essence in that boundless way
that escapes words. Some oysters have been
known to filter 50 gallons of water a day.
Essentially, when you eat an oyster, you
are eating what that oyster ate. You taste the
flavor of its home, for better or worse.
Season has an outsized influence. Hood
Canal’s Hama Hamas, for example, taste
sweet and briny in autumn, buttery when
rain has swelled the Hamma Hamma River
in the spring. They are thin and salty in sum-
mer after they spawned.
Many oysters taste their sweetest mid-
winter when they are loaded with nourishing
stores of glycogen and glycine in prepara-
tion for dormancy. You’d have to chew your
oyster a lot to taste the sweetness of glyco-
gen, the oyster’s stored form of glucose.
Few are willing to do that. Glycine,
an amino acid, tastes sweet to us and may
be more recognizable in crab and shrimp.
THERE IS TENDERNESS IN THE TASTING OF
PLACE — SOMEWHERE IN THE ACT OF GETTING
TO KNOW IT, OF CONNECTING, OF BEING THERE,
SOMEWHERE, EVEN FOR A MOMENT.
As the oyster depletes its glycine reserves
through winter, it starts to taste thin.
The taste of oysters is influenced by
where they live. An oyster that dwells near
a bay’s entrance may taste brinier, where the
impact from seawater is strong.
An oyster that lives far up a narrow inlet
can taste minerally, even metallic, where the
influence from land overpowers the sea.
Some say the Belon, a famous French
oyster named after the river where it orig-
inates, tastes like sucking a copper penny.
More specifically, an oyster’s taste can be
influenced by its depth in the water column.
So, by definition, when you eat an oyster,
you are eating place; in that particular slice
of time, in that particular bay, in that partic-
ular inlet and within that particular foot by
foot column of water.
If there’s algae unique to that locale, you
taste that. If there’s pollution, you taste that,
too. Because oysters are literally cemented to
the substrate, it’s hard to find any other food
where you taste place with such specificity.
The closest analogy would be “terroir,”
the wine-making expression that speaks
to how the land influences the character of
wine. That’s why the term “merroir” is apro-
pos for oysters — how the sea subtly influ-
ences the character of oysters.
Oysters in the raw are adult food. Let’s
be honest. The squishy, gooey, sea-smell-
ing creature is typically not high on a tod-
dler’s list of food requests. There’s risk. It’s
spelled out clearly on a menu. Getting sick
from consuming a raw filter feeder is a gen-
uine possibility.
But there is something in that risk that is
alluring.
As food writer Rowan Jacobsen, author
of the book “A Geography of Oysters,” says:
“When you eat an oyster, you wake up. Your
senses become sharper — touch and smell
and sight and taste.”
In growing older, there’s often a rever-
ence for subtle things. An appreciation for
pleasures that sneak up on you. Maybe the
love for tasting oysters comes from aging,
from memory stacked upon memory of
time spent in the sand and surf — the potent
memory of the vegetable-brine smell as you
played with seaweed when you were 3.
What does the sea taste like? It’s this and
more.
But there is an attraction to the ritual.
The careful shucking of the shell, the furtive
squirt of mignonette. The meticulous turning
and admiring of shells when done.
There is tenderness in the tasting of place
— somewhere in the act of getting to know
it, of connecting, of being there, somewhere,
even for a moment.