Not only are the oysters tastier than connoisseurs can remember, but they are maturing for the holiday season, a month earlier than usual.

“We are exceptionally lucky,” Goulven Brest, president of the French Shell Fish Federation, said.

The heatwave may have killed 13,000 people and plunged the Government into turmoil but it was a boon for gourmets, M Brest said.

“It helped oyster reproduction because the heat led to a multiplication of the phytoplankton that oysters eat,” he told Le Figaro.

About 40 per cent of the 136,800 tonnes of oysters produced in France this year will be prised open and sucked out of their shells during Christmas and new year.

M Brest said revellers would be able to savour as never before the different flavours of the 100 varieties of oysters that exist in France.

The uninitiated would be able to distinguish between oysters from Brittany and Normandy, which have a strong taste, and those from the Atlantic coast, which have a more subtle flavour.

But he added that a true connoisseur would be able draw far finer distinctions. “In my own farm, there are already four different tastes depending on the depth at which they grow.” The French are the world’s biggest oyster eaters, each consuming an average of 2kg a year.

Production had been in decline for seven years in seas around France. Last year saw a particularly poor harvest and many oyster producers said they were facing financial difficulties.

The gloom was compounded by a shortage of seasonal workers to harvest oysters and by a criminal gang that specialised in stealing oyster boat engines in the Poitou-Charentes region.

But the pessimism has disappeared with the arrival of this year’s harvest and M Brest is predicting a happy future for France’s 3,391 oyster producers, who employ 20,000 people.

Two new oyster beds are planned, one of 40 hectares (100 acres) in Normandy, and the other of 200 hectares in Brittany, and there is a proposal to expand production by installing deep-sea platforms upon which the shells would grow.

The only question disturbing Gallic good humour is how to eat the oysters. Purists say they should be consumed as they come, with nothing on them. But many sprinkle them with lemon juice or a mixture of vinegar and shallots.

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