French connoisseurs in rural areas are hoarding wild snails in anticipation of severe shortages to come. Once cooked, they can be kept in a cool place, though preferably not a fridge, more or less indefinitely and eaten at leisure.

In one of those endearing eccentricities of French law, the Burgundian snail is a protected species but can still be legitimately pursued by professional snail-hunters for sale or by anyone else for personal consumption. It thrives on wet weather, is at its most active at dusk and first light, and has been decimated by recent long, dry summers.

As wild snails become increasingly difficult to obtain, even the finest restaurants in France are rumoured to use some processed snails, whose taste, or lack of it, can be disguised by the traditional, garlic-based bourguignon sauce served with butter and parsley. The processed variety is harvested in the forests of Hungary and Poland, but many of the regular snail-pickers instead have become plumbers or au pairs in the European Union. They are no longer interested in earning a pittance by conducting torchlight searches on soaking wet days soon after dawn.

More than 700 million snails are eaten by the French each year. They already cost the equivalent of half a Euro each when supplied ready cooked, complete with sauce. Experts gloomily predict that the era of the one Euro snail cannot long be delayed.

From our August 2008 e-newsletter