This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
06/21/2017 07:00 AMJoe Dolce has been in love with oysters ever since he started eating them as a kid, and his first job was working as an oyster shucker at McKee’s Oyster House on Sanibel Island way back when.
Now that he is the resident sommelier at Madison Wine Exchange, he decided to put his love for and knowledge of wine, spirits, and oysters to work by organizing and hosting a fundraiser for Save the Sound, a program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment that works on behalf of Long Island Sound, along with its estuaries and watershed.
The fundraiser, on Sunday, June 25 at 1 p.m. at the Madison Wine Exchange, 188 Boston Post Road, Madison will include a selection of Connecticut oysters on the half-shell, curated by Jonathan Waters, an oysterman working out of the Thimble Islands in Branford. Dolce will pair each oyster with a wine, spirit, or beer. Michel Vejar, a food blogger from Madison, will be making oysters in Pernod sauce at the event, and author Jonathan White also will be on hand to talk about and sign his book, Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean. White also will be at a book signing at R. J. Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, Madison, on Saturday, June 24, at 5:30 p.m. Both events will help support Save the Sound.
The events are part of a broader initiative by Save the Sound to tap into community resources to spread the word about the organization’s work, and to help raise funds to support that work, says Joseph DiMaggio, the event manager for Save the Sound.
“So, in terms of how this came about, it was Joe Dolce, really. He brought this event to our attention and we are really grateful to him. It’s ideal in the sense that it’s a model we would like to replicate, here and in the western Long Island Sound basin,” DiMaggio says. “We’ve invited some other sommeliers from southern Connecticut and the Mamaroneck area, hoping they might be able to do something similar for a Save the Sound fundraiser.”
The related book signing the night before at R. J. Julia featuring the author of Tides, Jonathan White, makes it “a duo event,” he says. “We’d love to do more of these events and they could feature anything grown or farmed in this area that’s easily prepared.”
Since Long Island Sound’s watershed includes 16,820 square miles of forests, towns, rivers, and lakes extending throughout New England up into Canada, that potentially covers not only a lot of territory, but also a lot of food, wine, and other options. The events also are an ideal way to educate people about the sound, its estuaries, and its vast watershed, says Curt Johnson, the CFE/Save the Sound executive director, who lives in Branford.
Oysters are an ideal pick for the first event, since oysters have a history in Long Island Sound going back more than 150 years, and their availability now is a testament to the decades of hard work, along with billions of dollars in federal, state, and local funds invested to restore the waters of the sound to health.
Eat an Oyster, Improve the Ecosystem
“The oyster story in Long Island Sound goes back 150 years,” Johnson says. “There was a time when it was the biggest industry on Long Island Sound, but of course that was a time when this area’s population was much smaller and more rural.”
Oystermen on Long Island Sound were among the earliest adopters of aquaculture, a practice that itself goes back to the ancient days of Rome. In this practice, teeny oyster spawn are captured, they are grown to the size of a “spat,” then they are either distributed over oyster beds, or put in bags or cages, or they are even sometimes cultivated in tanks in approved waters.
Oyster farming flourished in Long Island Sound until about the late 1800’s, and then urban areas started to develop, along with very basic—and inadequate—sewers for disposing of waste. The water quality of Long Island Sound, and the rivers that fed into it, suffered, Johnson says. In 1892, about two dozen Wesleyan students became very ill, and the source of the illness was traced back to oysters that had been transferred from Long Island Sound to be fattened up in the waters of the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven. Unfortunately, in this case, the oysters were being fattened up right near private sewers, including one from a household where there had been cases of typhoid, according to an account in Tom Anderson’s This Fine Piece of Water: An Environmental History of Long Island Sound.
The water quality in the Sound and its estuaries like the Quinnipiac River continued to decline, affecting not only oysters, but also the food web, and the entire environment in the area throughout the 1960s, Johnson says.
“And then we had the Clean Water Act established in 1972, and we went from primary treatment, to secondary treatment, and now to advanced nitrogen removal treatment,” he says. Over the course of more than two decades, and about $3 billion, “the oysters came back along with water quality improvements.”
Nationwide, oystering is a multi-million-dollar industry. Connecticut often ranks as a top producer, Johnson says.
“We’re a small state, compared to big coastal states like Mississippi or Louisiana, but we’re very productive,” he says. “Long story short, oysters are central to our culture, to our history, and our identity, and they are also marvelous to eat.”
Oysters are also good for Long Island Sound. Little oysters get bigger in part by filtering water and, in the process, voraciously consuming the tiny little nitrogen-loving phytoplankton and microalgae that remain problematic even in the relatively clean waters of the Sound. When nitrogen levels in Long Island Sound get too high, that can contribute to toxic blooms of algae, which can kill other forms of life in the sound. The algae, public enemy number one when it comes to Long Island Sound, are breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the oysters.
“That’s part of what’s so wonderful about all of our mollusks—including hard clams and soft shell clams and blue mussels, too—all of these are removing those tiny algae,” Johnson says. “Oysters have continued to thrive, and they are important in terms of removing algae.”
Johnson says as long as oyster farming is done sustainably, “which many oystermen have been doing for 150 years,” it is “one of the only forms of eating marine species that actually ends up improving the ecosystem.”
“When you eat an oyster, you can do so with a big smile on your face,” he says.
In the Realm of Poetics
Jonathan Waters of the Thimble Island Shellfish Company in Stony Creek is confident that the smiles on faces of the people attending the upcoming fundraiser will be due at least in part to the taste of oysters. While he’s still finalizing his selection, he’s planning to provide oysters from the Thimble Islands from the Thimble Island Shellfish Company, and also the Mystic River from Noank Shellfish Cooperative. For the third oyster selection, he’s considering something from the Tallmadge Brothers/Bloom Brothers in Norwalk, among other options.
He says there is definitely something to the notion of “merroir”—a variation in the word terroir—which means that the specific taste of each oyster relates to the characteristics of the water where it is born and where it is raised. The degree of salinity, or brinyness, and richness, or fatness, are two major criteria that oyster eaters apply to their favorites. Some oysters have what’s called a mossy, vegetal, or grassy finish. Some have a hint of cucumber. Some are sweet, some are creamy, others taste silky. Some are meaty, some are plump, some are tender. Some are described as having a copper finish, “like sucking on a penny,” according to the book A Celebration in the Raw: Oysters by Jeremy Sewall and Marion Lear Swaybill.
“You can get into the realm of poetics,” Waters says.
Then there is the cup itself—the bottom shell on which the oyster is served. While mainly an aesthetic element, it’s an important element, says Waters.
Behind him as he sits and talks on a sunny afternoon in a shady spot on the dock in the Stony Creek section of Branford where he works, is a wooden board with some beautiful examples of oyster cups, most of them fairly shallow and close to being a pristine white with flecks of golden yellow and a bit of brown shading. Each one is a little work of art. They are shells from Mystic River oysters.
“It is a beautifully designed oyster,” Waters says. “It’s a perfect size. They’re petites. It has a nice cup. They have these nice, beautiful shells that are almost pure white.”
While aesthetics are not generally the first thing people think about when deciding which oyster to eat, it can make eating one more palatable, particularly for the first timer, Waters says.
“Someone puts these on a plate, they look beautiful,” he says.
Waters says a Thimble Island oyster has more wild characteristics, and is considered a great example of a classic, native Connecticut oyster, often with grassy undertones.
The Tallmadge Brothers and Bloom Brothers are among the largest producers of oysters in the state, and can always be relied upon for delicious oysters, Waters says. As to the differences between one oyster and another, Waters shrugs.
“To me, it’s just a lot of poetry. And that’s fine. Oysters have inspired poets, and lovers, and artists. Especially lovers,” he says, throwing back his head and laughing as if remembering a fond memory. “That and a bottle of wine.”
Classic Pairings
That bottle of wine is where Joe Dolce of Madison Wine Exchange comes back into the picture.
“So we’re looking at three different kinds of oysters, and each oyster will have a slightly varied salinity and richness,” he says.
He’s leaning towards some kind of Chablis or maybe a Muscadet, since the terroir of both includes calcareous grasslands, or soils that are influenced by underlying limestone rock.
“Oysters live in a limestone house, so we’re looking for wines that come from limestone rich soil,” he says.
He plans to pick two wines, along with a sparkling wine or champagne. Those are often the classic pairings in the United States when it comes to oysters.
But he’s not stopping there.
“From there, we might consider a dry sherry. We also are considering a sake. Then probably an oyster stout,” he says.
Beer with oysters? Oyster stout?
“Yes, a beer. There are beers where they put oyster shells in the fermentation, and sometimes they actually put the whole oyster in,” he says. “They are made to drink with oysters.
“And possibly one spirit as well,” he adds. “Pimm’s Cups were invented for oysters. Flavored vodkas, chilled down really cold work well, too. Of course, the sauces will change the flavor profile as well, so we will take that into consideration.”
There will be a classic cocktail sauce and a mignonette sauce.
He says he is really looking forward to the event.
“I started my career in the oyster business, so I have a great passion for them,” he says. “We hope to do more of these events in the future. And it’s the perfect fit to work with Save the Sound.”
Anyone interested in hosting an event to help Save the Sound should call Joseph DiMaggio at 203-787-0646. For more information about the event at Madison Wine Exchange, visit Madison Wine Exchange on Facebook, and go to Events on the Madison Wine Exchange Facebook page. For more information about Save the Sound, visit www.ctenvironment.org.