Super fun to have been a part of both Night Tide Oyster Soirees this year up at Taylor Shellfish’s Samish Bay farm. I’ve attended these as a regular guest for the past couple years but it is way cool to be on the other side of the table pouring my Chenin for the attendees. With Daylight Savings, this time were able to enjoy some daylight on the beach and I was stoked to see the flip bags where the Shigokus are raised. Shigokus were the gateway mollusc that transformed me from a casual Kumamoto orderer to full blown oyster fiend.

I tasted Shigokus for the first time at Taste Washington probably in 2010? and I took a photo of the signage so I wouldn’t forget the Japanese name. My departed friend Jon Rowley claimed his favorite oyster was a perfect Totten Inlet Virginica and when he said this I thought he was nuts given how firm and crisp and deliciously cucumbery the Japanese oysters like Kusshi, Kumamoto and Shigoku are. I half expected him to say Olympias were his favorite just because of their local origins. But I’m converted now, those Virginicas I tasted last weekend were stunning, they’re bigger than what I’m used to, less simple flavor, plump textured and a little more generous all the way around. Virginicas are grown down in at Taylor’s farm in Shelton in the south sound.

My home school PhD in slurping and shucking reading list

https://www.oysterguide.com/

Rowan Jacobsen’s A Geography of Oysters

Rowan Jacobsen’s The Essential Oyster

https://www.oysterguide.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/chow_oyster_guide.pdf

Left to right, Kumos, Pacifics and Totten Inlet Virginicas

Low tide exposed the flip bags that are used to raise the Shigokus. The bags keep the oysters suspended up out of the mud and the tidal flips promote a deep cup and a less brittle shell.

The foreground is a demo of a “long line” Pacific oyster seed grown on old shells strung up on a line up above the muddy ocean floor. Behind you can see the tidal flip bags for the Shigokus.

My friend Wren helped me pour my ORR Chenin blanc for the guests.