France

France gathers French specialties from Brittany to Provence

At nur Gutes, France stands for salted butter from Saint-Malo, vintage sardines from Quiberon, and mustard from Beaune and Orléans. This is joined by single-origin chocolate from Voiron, champagne from Urville and Béthon, tea from Paris, and lemonade from Morteau. For the table, the Vosges mountains weave Jacquard linens, and enameled cast iron comes from Picardy. French specialties from houses that sign their craft with their name and location.

French specialties at nur Gutes are what France brings to the table, region by region, collected by us in Nordhorn since 2002. We carry food and drink from France, from butter and sardines to mustard, jam, and chocolate, right up to champagne. We also offer living and cooking essentials, including woven tablecloths and cast-iron roasting pans. French delicacies with a place name on the label—that is the common thread of this site.

Where butter and olive oil share the land

France eats in two halves. In the north and west, people cook with butter and cream; in the south, with olive oil, garlic, and herbs. In between, every department makes its cuisine a chapter of its own.

In Brittany, salt goes into the butter, and butter goes into almost everything. Butter is in the kouign-amann just as it is in the buckwheat galette, which is traditionally enjoyed with cider drunk from a bowl. Normandy next door provides Camembert, crème, and Calvados, and in Burgundy, Dijon mustard, boeuf bourguignon, and snails in herb butter draw every traveler to the table.

Further south, the air is fragrant with thyme and lavender, with bouillabaisse in Marseille and black olive tapenade. In the Basque Country, Piment d'Espelette colors the piperade and the Bayonne ham. The gourmet Brillat-Savarin summed it up in one sentence in 1825: "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are." In France, the answer still varies by region to this day.

What France pours, from Sancerre to cider

French wine is the standard by which half the world measures itself, and every region has the grape variety that made it famous.

Bordeaux builds on Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Burgundy on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The Loire sends Sancerre made from Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc from Touraine, while Syrah and Grenache reign in the Rhône. Alsace fills Riesling and Gewürztraminer into slender flutes. In Champagne, the sparkling wine effervesces, owing its finesse to the traditional method of bottle fermentation.

For us, what primarily makes it into the glass from France is what sparkles or refreshes. Drappier has been crafting champagne in Urville in the Côte des Bar since 1808, using plenty of Pinot Noir and minimal sulfur. Le Brun de Neuville is located in Béthon in the Côte de Sézanne, where Chardonnay grows primarily on chalk soil. The House of Pannier from Château-Thierry also occupies a place on our shelf with its champagne.

For non-alcoholic refreshment, there is lemonade from La Mortuacienne in swing-top bottles, which the Rième family has been bottling in Morteau since 1921. Cider and pear cider from Maison Sassy in Normandy are pressed from whole fruit. Alain Milliat, a fruit grower from Orliénas near Lyon, bottles juices that taste of a single variety. The accompanying tea has been packed into colorful tins by Kusmi in Paris since 1917.

Butter from Saint-Malo, sardines from Quiberon, mustard from Beaune

At our shop, fine foods from France come from houses whose addresses you can find on a map, most of them in Brittany, close to the water.

In Saint-Malo, Maison Bordier kneads the butter by hand on a wooden board after churning, for longer in winter than in summer. It is salted while being worked, using finely ground salt instead of coarse grains. In Quiberon, la belle-iloise has been placing sardines in cans since 1932, such as the sardines in oil with lemon. A few streets away, La Maison d'Armorine cooks its salted butter caramel in 120-kilo batches in copper kettles.

Vintage sardines come from Les Mouettes d'Arvor in Concarneau, where about forty workers head and clean every sardine by hand. Pont-Aven sends butter cookies from Traou Mad, and Guérande sends the fleur de sel that the paludiers scoop from the surface of the salt pans in the evening. At the other end of the Atlantic coast, the Conserverie Jean de Luz puts Basque fish into jars and writes the fisherman's name on the label.

Mustard comes in three variations: Edmond Fallot crushes the seeds between millstones in Beaune, and Martin-Pouret in Orléans is the last vinegar house to use the Orléanaise method. Maison Bornibus began in the Les Halles district of Paris in 1855 and still whisks mayonnaise with fresh egg yolks today. Provence contributes olives from Arnaud in Fontvieille and almond cakes from the Biscuiterie de Provence, while Languedoc provides the tartines from Rue Traversette.

Setting the table with Jacquard, braising in cast iron

For us, France does not end at the edge of the plate, because dining includes the table it is served on and the pot it comes from.

Le Jacquard Français has been weaving tablecloths, runners, and tea towels in Gérardmer in the Vosges since 1888. The patterns are woven into the fabric itself, thread by thread—exotic fruits, cottage gardens, salt marshes, and honey pots. Since 1925, Le Creuset has been casting iron roasting pans in Picardy and enameling them in cherry red, volcanic orange, and meringue. In a pan like this, a boeuf bourguignon braises just as it should.

A gift from France needs little packaging, as the tins and jars are packaging enough. A tin of tea from Avenue Niel, the Biscuits Roses from Maison Fossier in Reims—baked since 1756 and used to provide the structure for charlottes and tiramisu—paired with a bar of Madagascar chocolate from Bonnat and half a bottle from Urville. If you add the butter, you are gifting a breakfast that begins that very same morning.

The people behind the butter, cocoa, and sardines

Those who know the names on the labels read the shelves differently; in France, many labels represent families in their third or fourth generation.

Jean-Yves Bordier, son of a cheese and butter family, took over a dairy dating back to 1927 in Saint-Malo in 1985. He brought back the *malaxage*—the hand-kneading process that makes the butter supple and soft. In 2003, the Guide Champérard named him France's best artisan of fine foods; he retired in 2015. Since 2023, the house has continued under the name Maison Bordier.

In Voiron in the Isère valley, the Bonnat family has been roasting its own cocoa since 1884, bean by bean. To this day, Stéphane Bonnat travels to the plantations whose names appear on his bars, from Madagascar to the Hacienda El Rosario. Between May and September, his chocolate stays in our cool storage because it does not handle the heat of the postal service well.

In 1932, at the age of 22, Georges Hilliet opened his cannery in Port-Maria, Quiberon. Today, his granddaughter Caroline Hilliet Le Branchu leads the house and remains committed to the family's own shops, for which they chose to turn their backs on supermarkets in 1967. In Champsac in the Limousin, far from Champagne, Gaël Brabant at Delouis soaks his mustard seeds for two hours before adding the house-made vinegar.

A French year on the table

France has a shelf for every season. In summer, lemonade and sardines sit on the balcony table; in autumn, cider kicks off the apple season. In winter, truffles from Mathez in Anjou and cocoa confectionery from Bruntz in Alsace return, and New Year's Eve belongs to champagne.

For gifting, you will find French specialties ready-packed in our gifts section, ranging from a breakfast with butter and jam to an evening with sardines, mustard, and a bottle from Champagne.

Those who wish to travel further can change countries in our regions section, and the next border is never far. On the other side of the Pyrenees lies Spain, where tuna is called bonito and paprika is known as pimentón. Until then, remember what every French grandmother knew: good bread, good butter, and the day is saved.