The Quéméner family has been growing onions in Roscoff since 1850, specifically the ones for which the small port town on the English Channel is famous: the Rosa onion, which has been AOC since 2009 and has been France's only onion with AOP since 2013. The farm is called Ferme de Kergus, while the brand has been Maison Quéméner since 2021, in honor of the generations before them.
Their father, Marcel Quéméner, was a "Johnnie", as were his father and grandfather. This was what the British called the Breton onion sellers who, from 1828 onwards, travelled by boat to Wales, England and Scotland, where they went from door to door on bicycles with braids of onions. In 1929, at their peak, there were around 1,400 Johnnies who sold 9,000 tonnes of onions. The Welsh miners are said to have eaten the onions like apples.
In 2018, Tiphaine and her brother Éric took over the farm. Éric had already been working in the fields, while Tiphaine returned to Roscoff after working in marketing in Paris and Nantes. Together with their father, they farm ten hectares in the sandy, limestone-rich coastal strip between Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Roscoff and Santec. Half of the land is certified organic, while the other half is farmed according to AOP rules, which the family applies more strictly than required: a five-year crop rotation instead of three, weeds are removed by hand, and no irrigation is used, as the mild, damp climate by the sea takes care of that.
They braid the onions in the old shed as they always have, with twelve to fifteen onions per braid, always starting with the "penn kapitenn", the largest onion, the captain. Anyone visiting Roscoff can watch them work in the sales shed. In addition to onions, the farm grows Breton shallots, purple garlic, artichokes, potatoes and pumpkins, and Tiphaine makes onion confit and onion powder from the onions. Maison Quéméner is a member of the Collège Culinaire de France, and their onions end up in Parisian restaurants, delivered once a month by cargo bike, as a small tribute to the Johnnies.
Here you will find the Quéméner family's onion braids and purple garlic braids, available every year from late summer, as long as the harvest lasts.
Maison Quéméner, Ferme de Kergus
Chemin du Roc'h Trévigner
29680 Roscoff
France
Tel. +33 6 51 43 98 53
contact@maison-quemener.fr
maison-quemener.fr
