Credit Crunch "Champagne"

Not quite Champagne but surprisingly drinkable. Would you order it in a bar? Or serve it at your wedding? A good one to get tongues wagging.

Tiny lobster... not ready to eat

This lively little lobster was fished in Butley Creek, Suffolk but was put straight back into the water to grow for another decade or two. Trip organised by Polly at Food Safari, Suffolk.

Razor Clams (or 'Spoots')

These are live razor clams from the Isle of Arran just about to go into the frying pan. They're locally known as spoots perhaps because they spoot water out of their little burrows when you're trying to grab them off the beach. The French call them couteaux (as in knives) and the edge of the shell is certainly quite sharp when you open them up. But the heat of the frying pan will open them up for you if you put them in whole.

Scottish Ostrea Edulis

These are more native wild oysters gathered at low tide off the Isle of Mull. I've opened them (with great difficulty as, being so fresh and 'lively', they're very tightly clamped shut). The locals call these oysters clams but sadly show no interest whatsoever in gathering them. The flesh is very firm, almost chewy, and the iodine hit you get when eating one is akin to that of a sea urchin albeit more bitter. They cry out for crisp, chilled Muscadet, white Sancerre or lean, minerally Chablis. Indeed, the soil in Chablis (and in Champagne for that matter) is made up of fossilised oyster shells so the wine & food marriage is doubly appropriate.

Native wild oysters gathered at low tide, Isle of Mull

These oysters were picked at low tide off the coast of the Isle of Mull in the inner Hebrides.

They went down a treat with a magnum of chilled Chablis 1er cru 1998 from Jean-Marc Brocard.