Esprit du Sel — Island of Ré Fennel, Garlic, Parsley

At a glance

What the label says

Quoted as printed, so the claims can be read for what they are.

• Grey Sea Salt Blend · Organic
• Esprit du Sel’s Grey Sea Salt blended with garlic, fennel, thyme and parsley. Use this blend with any fish preparation, grilled, sauteed or baked, or with your next roasted lamb, or autumn vegetable recipe to add a fresh aromatic taste.
• For over 30 years, Esprit du Sel has been harvesting and distributing the highest quality sea salts available from the Isle of Ré, situated off the Atlantic coast of France. From the salt marshes to your table, Esprit du Sel’s sea salt remains 100% natural and authentic.

What we can add

The salt itself is the coarse grey kind raked from the clay-bottomed pans of the French Atlantic coast; the label names the Île de Ré, the island opposite La Rochelle. The grey is clay, not a mineral achievement, and the crystals are damp to the touch out of the jar. What sets this jar apart from a plain sel gris is the herb fraction, which is whole, not powdered: the fennel seeds are intact and the parsley and thyme arrive as visible leaf.

The organic mark covers the herbs, not the salt — the asterisks on the ingredient list are specific about that, and under the US standard salt is not an agricultural product and cannot carry the mark on its own.

The sodium arithmetic

The panel declares 310 mg of sodium in a ¼ teaspoon serving weighing 1 g, which works out to about 310 mg per gram. Pure sodium chloride is 393. Allowing for the rounding the label is permitted, the true figure sits somewhere in the 290–330 band, or roughly 79% of the sodium a gram of table salt would carry.

That gap is what a grey salt should show. Sel gris is sold moist — the Guérande standard allows up to 12% water — and the fennel, thyme, parsley and garlic contain no sodium while taking up weight. This is not a lower-sodium salt. It is a wet one with seeds in it, and a quarter-teaspoon of it carries less salt because less of the spoon is salt.

The price

$13.99 for 250 g (8.8 oz) is $1.59 an ounce, or $25.38 a pound — $5.60 per 100 g, $55.96 a kilo. We paid retail at Whole Foods Market in Deerfield, IL, on August 22, 2026.

Tasting notes

None yet. We publish tasting notes only against a stated method — how many tasters, in what order, on what food — and we have not run that panel on this salt. When we do, they go here.