Royal red rice

A unique part of Southern France grows a delicious nutty flavoured wholesome red rice with a slightly chewy texture.

Not far from the buzz of pretty French towns like Aix and St. Remy, lie the windswept marshlands of the Camargue, an area not only renowned for it's sea salt, a very special breed of black bulls, pony sized white horses and delicate flamingos, but also home to rice paddy fields.

Hosting over a million visitors a year, The Camargue, in the south of Provence covers 140,000 hectares of wetlands including natural marsh, reedbeds and lakes; pastures, dunes and salt flats of which over half is a designated national park nature reserve.

The triangular river delta area has it's tip in Arles and spreads out down to the coast between two branches of the Rhone and the Mediterranean sea. The low lying land is, at best, only a metre above sea level, so fresh water flooding needed for rice paddies stops the soil reverting to salty marshland and allows grass to grow. This forms part of a carefully managed eco-system, where agriculture meets nature.

We visted in spring, driving the flat roads from Arles to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer at the mouth of the delta, enjoying close-up views of shiny large horned black bulls; white horses - some guarding foals which start life black or dark brown - flocks of graceful flamingos, as well as many migrating water birds. We recognised terns, herons and egrets, only a fraction of a reported four hundred different species.

The highlight, however, was meeting with Dominique Lacrotte, charming French wife of the director of Silo de Tourtoulen, a rice production plant at Le Sambuc, on the outskirts of Arles.......please enquire about story availability.

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