Arnaud Tamborini. The marketing is slick. Packets of Sel des Alpes are sold for a few dozen centimes more than the entry-level ‘JuraSel’ salt, produced in Basel. But do the two taste any different? Jura salt from the Rhine is slightly more aggressive on the tip of the tongue, according to the Culinary Heritage of Switzerland. The Bex salt mines have exploited this by producing their own product ‘Fleur des Alpes’, which comes from the mountains. The glacier water that flows there is laden with salt and other minerals. It evaporates in reservoirs. The crystals can then be gathered by hand and spread over larch boards. Three miners for 15 kilometres of tunnel The Bex mines have only three miners. That is enough to produce the required output at Bex, which is set up to supply around 30,000 tonnes of salt fields. At Bex, however, men work through the tunnels in search of veins. The table salt they are looking for is marketed as a craft product. It can be found in department stores and is known as ‘Sel des Alpes’. “It’s a product with a history behind it and is seen as a premium salt,” states Almost all the salt mined every year in the country is for domestic consumption. There are also stringent import controls on salt. Everything, including pricing, is managed by one company: Swiss Saltworks, owned by all the cantons and the Principality of Liechtenstein. An intercantonal convention from 1973 guarantees the supply of salt to every region in Switzerland. This monopoly has created considerable paperwork as it allows the cantons to set salt prices unilaterally and then profit by selling salt to municipalities to grit the roads. The ‘white gold’ comes from three places: Riburg salt works, located to the east of Basel in the canton of Aargau, Schweizerhalle in the canton of Basel and Bex in Vaud. They produce up to 650,000 tonnes of salt every year. On the Central Plateau, salt lies in subterranean layers 20 to 50 metres thick, 250 metres below ground level. The miners drill into the ground as they do in the Texas oilSituated on the side of the Rhône Valley, Bex is surrounded by wonderful Alpine scenery. The saltwater springs at Bex were actually discovered by goats in the 16th century. © Swisstopo “Etat de Vaud” (state of Vaud) above the entrance to the storage building in Bex (left). The entrance to the salt mines deep in the mountain is a little more understated (right). Photos: Stéphane Herzog The mines at Bex have an air temperature of 18°C and a constant relative humidity of 80 per cent. Photo: Saline Bex/ Sedrik Nemeth The salt mined at Bex is stored in a wooden, dome-shaped storage facility. Photo: Stéphane Herzog Swiss Review / December 2023 / No.6 21
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