From Gildas and conservas to saline wines and savoury martinis, the rise of coastal flavour reveals something bigger about modern taste. Freshness has become aspirational.
A decade ago, if you wanted to signal culinary sophistication, you ordered truffle fries. Today, you order a Gilda.
Little more than an olive, an anchovy and a pickled guindilla pepper skewered on a cocktail stick – it’s salty, sharp and aggressively unfussy. Yet, this humble Basque pintxo has become the unofficial mascot of contemporary food culture, usually accompanied by a martini, a chilled glass of Albariño or somebody explaining the superiority of Cantabrian anchovies.
The Gilda isn’t the only beneficiary of this trend. Conservas, premium preserved seafood usually sold in tins or jars, have undergone a remarkable rebrand, graduating from emergency cupboard provisions to East London menu darlings.
The sea is having a moment.
Food writers have begun reaching for a new word to describe this phenomenon. Borrowing from the concept of terroir, which describes the influence of land on flavour, merroir uses the French word mer (sea) to capture the influence of the ocean.
What makes merroir interesting, however, is that it isn’t really about the sea – it is about what the sea represents.
The Taste of the Coast
Part of merroir’s appeal lies in its ability to transform flavour into geography.
A Gilda tastes of anchovy, certainly, but it also tastes of San Sebastián. Albariño tastes of citrus and acidity, but also of Atlantic fishing villages and long lunches overlooking the water.
Food and drink have always traded in this sort of transportation, yet merroir feels different because it arrives at a moment when consumers seem increasingly preoccupied with place.
Perhaps that is inevitable. The internet has made the world more connected than ever, but it has also made it feel strangely uniform. Every high street contains the same brands, and increasingly, everybody appears to be dressed from the same mood board.
Against that backdrop, products with a strong sense of place acquire unusual power. Consumers increasingly seem less interested in generic luxury than specific luxury. Not simply a good wine, but a wine from a particular coastline. Not simply seafood, but seafood tied to a harbour, a landscape and a way of life.
When Freshness Became Fashionable
For much of the late twentieth century and early 2000s, aspiration tended to arrive in concentrated forms. In wine, critics rewarded power. The most celebrated bottles were often the ripest, richest and most heavily oaked. Higher alcohol was tolerated, even admired and bigger was frequently mistaken for better.
The same instinct could be seen elsewhere. Restaurants competed on abundance, whether through oversized portions, towering burgers, molten chocolate desserts or truffle shaved onto anything that passed by. Cocktail menus became engineering projects involving smoke, foam, infusions and enough equipment to resemble a GCSE chemistry practical. The underlying assumption was that luxury should announce itself loudly.
Today, the mood feels different.
Fashion, an industry that tends to register cultural shifts faster than food and drink, has already given us quiet luxury. The logos have shrunk, and obvious displays of wealth have become faintly embarrassing. Taste has moved from being something you broadcast to something you signal more discreetly.
Food and drink are following a similar trajectory. The over-engineered cocktails of the 2010s have gradually given way to the martini – which embodies the qualities contemporary drinkers increasingly seem to value: simplicity, precision and refreshment. Likewise, foods currently having a moment are remarkably humble; think sardines and pickles.
Some of this is undoubtedly connected to wellness culture, although perhaps not in the way wellness culture would like to imagine. Most people do not seem particularly interested in abandoning pleasure. They still want the martini and the wine. They simply prefer these pleasures to arrive looking a little lighter, cleaner and perhaps vaguely Mediterranean, carrying the faint suggestion that this is essentially how they do it in the blue zones.
The appeal of merroir lies in its ability to occupy the sweet spot between indulgence and restraint. It feels decadent without feeling excessive, which may be one of the defining aesthetic preferences of the decade.
The Future Tastes Fresh
The popularity of merroir also arrives at a moment when freshness feels more valuable than it once did.
Luxury has always been shaped by scarcity. A century ago, it was sugar. Later it was spice, then richness, then abundance.
Freshness in wine often comes from cooling influences, whether ocean breezes, altitude or northern latitudes, while seafood depends on waters cool enough to sustain it. In a warming world, coolness itself is beginning to feel scarce.
Twenty years ago luxury tasted rich. Today luxury tastes refreshing – or perhaps more accurately, it tastes like the world isn’t on fire.
If this has left you craving a taste of the coast, we’ve rounded up ten coastal white wines that capture the freshness, salinity and sea-breeze character driving the trend.