A text published at the end of the sixteenth century tells the story of a shipwrecked Scot, Patrick Walton, who went aground in the bay d’Aiguillon in 1235.

He was rescued by the inhabitants of the region and stayed here. He decided to hunt seabirds for a living as he used to do in his country. He stretched nets along the coast between wooden poles driven into the beach. Soon, the hunter was surprised to see many little mussels coming onto his stakes. They were growing quickly. Thereafter, it became more profitable to capture mussels and fatten them rather than hunt birds. This is the way that bouchot mussels farming would be invented.

This bouchot farming method has performed for a long time on the French Atlantic coast where spat naturally fixes on the poles.

After World War 2, people living in the Vivarais area tried different way of mussels breeding (on planks or stones), but the results were not good.