Loch Fyne Products

Loch Fyne Oysters Ltd. A company owned and run by its employees. Celebrating their Pearl Anniversary in 2008.

Salmon

Many years ago, we reluctantly but advisedly stopped buying wild salmon for the simple reason that it is now an endangered species. Every time a media food writer rhapsodises about eating wild salmon, we collectively beat our heads. Great idea. Why not offer your guests seared blue whale steaks and confit of tiger to follow.

For this reason, we buy salmon that has been farmed with care and caution by small, independent companies: real farmers and lovers of the sea, as dedicated to looking after the local ecology as they are to their valuable stock.

Loch Duart, run by Nick Joy and Andy Bing, has been our favoured supplier for some years. They were the first salmon farmers to work with the RSPCA and to gain Freedom Foods accreditation, and have worked tirelessly to maintain and even improve their local marine biodiversity and the viability of their local community. They are our own Seafood Heroes, well deserving of our support.

We also have strong ties with Wester Ross salmon, led by Gilpin Bradley, another forward-thinking independent and the second producer, behind Loch Duart, to gain Freedom Foods status.

Our organic salmon comes from Balta in the Shetland Isles.

The Soil Association organic standard has been constantly evolving over the years, and we are now seeing the results in some very high-quality fish. More expensive, but certainly worth the price.

Our message is simple. Please do not eat wild salmon unless or until the stocks show some signs of sustainable recovery. Support the dedicated small local salmon farmer, wherever possible, and actively avoid the rest.

Oysters

Our oysters are grown naturally, on the shore at Ardkinglas at the head of Loch Fyne, and by our partner growers in Argyll and the Islands.

Different sites have their peak seasons at different times of the year. Our Ardkinglas oysters are at their best from spring until early winter, when they can lose condition as high rainfall floods into the loch. In the Islands, by contrast, higher salinity helps to hold condition in the winter but the stock can become too ‘fat’ in the summer. So a cyclical movement of harvesting sites brings consistency while preserving the subtle changes of taste that go along with each season.

Our island oysters come from Andy Abrahams, who grows his shellfish on the strand on Colonsay, where the wind whips in across the Atlantic, all the way from New York. We also take Tony Archibald’s oysters, from his site on the shore at Loch Grunart on Islay. Artisans of the sea in a modern age, we are  very lucky to have such partners.

At all our chosen sites, the oysters feed entirely naturally on plankton. There is no artificial input, of feed or anything else,  at any stage. This is an entirely sustainable activity.

Mussels

Our mussels are reared on ropes near the loch’s headwaters at Ardkinglas, and by our partner growers in Argyll, the Islands and Shetland. The prime season at Ardkinglas runs from October to May, after which the mussel meat shrinks after spawning and does not fully recover until the Autumn. Further out to sea in the Gulf Stream, recovery time after spawning is much quicker. This allows us to supply really good mussels throughout the summer in most years, until the loch season resumes in the autumn.

The mussels’ growing cycle begins when wild mussel spat settles on our ropes in the springtime, growing naturally to market size over a period of 24 to 30 months. We have 12 double ‘headropes’ strung out at Ardkinglas, each 2.5cm thick and 200m long. 1,000 ropes, 1cm thick and 10m long, are strung from each headrope in late March and early April, weighted with a half brick. By June, the only evidence that mussels are forming is a sandy texture to the surface of the ropes: this is made up of many thousands of mussel spat.
A month later, they will have turned black and covered the rope to the thickness of an arm: by the end of August, they will sit as thick as a man’s thigh. At maturity, we have almost 70 miles of rope, covered in columns of mussels as wide and round as a dinner plate, and grown totally naturally. In spite of the scale of the operation, there is little to see from the surface. The farm occupies just a tiny space in the loch and provides a wonderful floating habitat for birds, fish and mammals.

Shellfish

Langoustines:
Our langoustines are landed by local fisherman Ralph Newell, who fishes with creels in the upper reaches of Loch Fyne. Known locally simply as ‘prawns’, the langoustines live in burrows in the hard bed of the loch, at around ten fathoms (c.18.3m) or deeper. Supply is generally consistent and of good size and quality, as the immature crustaceans escape through the mesh of the creels.

Ralph cannot supply all our needs, so we also deal with Isle of Sheil Fisheries near Oban and with Sco-Fro at Fort William.

Both are family-owned operations and only supply us with  creel-caught fish from local boats.

Butter Clams and Cockles:
These are hand raked around the more sheltered shores of Argyll. Only mature shellfish are taken, and there is no lasting harm done to the seabed. Hand raking is a hard and lonely job. Supplies can be inconsistent but are always worth the wait.

Queen Scallops:
Landed mainly at West Loch Tarbert. Gordon Goldsworthy grows them in lantern nets from natural spat collected around the coast; a real local delicacy. Like cultured oysters and mussels, there are no adverse effects on marine life. Rather the opposite.
No chemicals or other pollutants are involved and the scallops feed naturally on plankton.

King Scallops:
Supplied to us by Kenny MacNab in Tarbert and Archie Macmillan in Campbeltown. Kenny has two dive boats that operate around the coast of the Mull Of Kintyre. Archie has
a beautiful traditional wooden dredger ‘Deliverance’ that fishes south of the Mull. These are consistently the best scallops we have ever come across.

Lobster:
Mainly from Orkney, our lobster are supplied in season by John Brailsford and his brother Sanda. The season runs mainly from May to October, after which the lobster are held in tanks or cages for the winter market while the wild stocks lie low in deep water.

White Fish

Farmed:
Halibut – Farmed in at Kilmelford near Oban
Cod – Organic Cod farmed in the Shetland Islands  by No Catch Cod
Trout – Organic sea trout from the Shetlands, Organic Rainbow trout from the Lake District.

Wild:
Most of our wild fish is landed in Cornwall and the South-West, which has the most diverse fishery in the UK and, crucially, a healthy fleet of small day-boats. The day-boats can do little harm to a fishery and land the freshest fish available. Contrast this with a beam-trawler, trundling its vast nets along the sea-bed for long hauls, and maybe only seeing port every 10 days.

With The Food and Agricultural Organisation reporting that 70% of the world’s fish stocks are fully fished or overfished, a move back to supporting smaller, more sustainable methods is urgently needed. This is something we take very seriously. Fortunately,
it seems a growing number of businesses share our commitment, and only do business with like-minded companies that actively support the campaign for cleaner, well-stocked oceans.
We work closely with several marine environmental bodies to ensure that we have the very latest information on fish stocks, organic issues and the marine eco-system. As a result of this collaboration, we were the first in our industry to remove endangered species, like swordfish, from our shelves and restaurant menus. We are pleased to see that many supermarkets and fishmongers are finally following our example.

This is our answer to the exploitation of all the earth’s resources. Support the small producer and encourage sustainable methods. Let people know how much better and healthier these products are, encourage them to buy, and other producers will have
to follow.

Glen Fyne Meat and other Products

The same principals that inform our attitude to fish and seafood are applied to the selection of ingredients and product for all the companies trading under the Loch Fyne name. Our cheeses are bought from small, independent producers using traditional methods, our dry goods mainly from family businesses in the UK, and our wines from family vintners throughout the UK and Europe. We make every effort to get to know them all and to share the stories that enrich their superb products.

Many of them have their own traditions, the complexities of which are essential in the high quality of the product. Beef is just one example. The current problems with beef date back to the intervention of the Supermarkets about 20 years ago, when they insisted on bigger cuts. Within 10 years, more than 90% of the UK’s traditional bull stock had been replaced by huge cattle from Europe. Britain’s native breeds, selected over centuries for their ability to survive on grass in their particular local conditions, were marginalised and all but destroyed.

European breeds cannot survive adequately on grass, hay and silage alone. But the problem with the concentrated foods they need is that they produce bulk without taste, as well as leading to some grotesque distortions of nature. The cow of the massively muscled and supermarket-friendly Belgian Blue breed, for example, has become so deformed by breeding that it is often impossible for her to bear a calf naturally.

Unlike the bland, excessively lean meat of bulls produced under industrial farming conditions, grass-fed animals lay down fats that are rich in Omega 3; nutritious and sweet, and exactly what we are looking for. Our beef is sourced from the Highland region, the Black Isle and Aberdeenshire. We work in partnership with Miller’s of Speyside, a small privately-owned business that represents the more thoughtful end of the meat industry.
They have done a lot of work on animal welfare and how to reduce stress levels in transport. Miller’s handle small numbers of animals and have a close relationship with all their small local farm suppliers.

Our interest in the production of the meat we use even extends to looking at soil and grass type, breeds and husbandry, the slaughterhouse, humane killing, speed and methods of handling, maturation methods and duration, cutting, packing and distribution. Just as with our holistic approach to fish supply, we believe that we all have an obligation to look after animals with kindness, sustain the livelihoods of small, skilful producers and nurture and encourage traditional knowledge and practices.