Camouflaged Oyster

This wild oyster from the Isle of Mull looks like it's trying to blend into its surroundings to avoid the shucking knife.

Oyster scrubbing

Scrubbing the mud off a freshly gathered ostrea edulis with my feet in an orange, peat-tinted burn on the Isle of Mull.

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.