Even “The Economist” thought it worthy of devoting an article to French mustard recently: (“Why there is a shortage of Dijon mustard in France” - August 9, 2022). Not any mustard of course, but the Dijon variety, that, as the article puts it, “comes with a nose-tingling kick, not the milder and sweeter sauce slathered on hot dogs in Britain or America.”
It is the variety that is used for making proper vinaigrette and it has indeed disappeared from all shops and supermarkets that I have visited in the past two months. Ever since my French mother-in-law, who lived in Dijon, showed me how to make real vinaigrette over 50 years ago, starting with a liberal dose of Dijon mustard, it has become a staple for the evening salad or avocado starter and has proved popular with my extended and recomposed family, even attracting the approval of children brought up in America, who were the first to initiate the habit of dipping a piece of baguette into the empty salad bowl to mop up the last drop of “sauce” – a ritual we have all adopted since. I get through a medium sized jar every six weeks, so it is no small matter that there are gaping holes in the shelves of convenience stores and supermarkets alike, sometimes adorned with a typewritten sheet saying, “this product is no longer available” or more optimistically, but misleadingly, “in view of the shortage of this product, purchases are limited to one jar per basket”. Enquiries to a shelve-stacking student doing a summer job or the manager of a convenience store elicit little more than a Gallic shrug, at best a cryptic comment, “we shan’t get any more until November.”
The root cause, or so we read in the press and hear on the radio, is that most mustard seeds used for Dijon mustard are imported from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, where the harvest failed last year. And to add to the misery, sunflower oil, the other essential ingredient, comes from Ukraine, now unable to export it. All this is undoubtedly true, although as far as sunflower oil is concerned, after an initial scare in the spring, it has now clearly been sourced from other countries and seems to be regularly restocked. But of mustard there is none.
Not having the millennials’ reflex to look on the Internet for everything that is not immediately available in a shop, it took me a little time to turn to Amazon. And there a surprise awaits. The first jar of Dijon mustard that appears on the screen is the French brand “Maille”, a subsidiary of the food giant Unilever. It is supposedly more authentic than the private label competitors’ offerings, even if the latter probably come off the same production lines. However, it is not possible to buy one standard jar but only a minimum purchase of six for a total of over €40! Very strange for a product that is supposed to be in short supply! A foray onto Carrefour’s website initially showed that their own Dijon mustard was on offer in single jars, but it was only after registering on the website and agreeing to receive emails on every special offer under the sun that the jar of mustard became “unavailable”.
The vague suspicion that there is more to the story than simply a lack of mustard seeds and sunflower oil was further stoked by a chance conversation with another customer in a small shop selling only organic produce, who overheard me asking for organic mustard (of which, as I suspected, there was none either). He said that he is a lorry driver and recently delivered a consignment of goods to the warehouse of a major supermarket chain. There, he was surprised to see, in one corner of the building, pallets stacked from floor to ceiling holding hundreds of jars of mustard. When he asked how come there were so many jars in the warehouse but none in the shops, he was told “we cannot comment on that”!
Scrolling further down the Amazon pages, I came across a small jar of Dijon mustard sold with a Marks and Spencer label and dispatched from the UK. I ordered two (at €10 each including carriage!) and was told that delivery would take two weeks. The small package turned up within a week, with the two jars carefully bubble-wrapped and a large Brexit approved customs label on the front.
A very small compensation for Marks and Spencer that have been forced to close all their stores in France after Brexit and a big killing for an enterprising British businessman. As for me, I can now, at a price, continue making my time-honoured vinaigrette every evening and wait patiently for the shops to start restocking the product normally.
