Everything you wanted to know about cheese but were afraid to ask!

If you go to a 'serious' dinner party in France, you will inevitably have a long conversation about the cheese selection and the origins of each of the cheeses which have been chosen - and of course the wine served with them.

So that you don't feel stupid, here is a lot of interesting facts about cheese so that you can seem 'informed' the next time this conversation crops up!

Gen. Charles de Gaulle, remarking on the difficulty of uniting the French on a single issue after WWII, famously grumbled: "you cannot easily bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese." Charlie’s comments need updating: These days, France’s cheese count is upwards of 500 types. These include both famous and individual variations and types that exist only locally in regional France.

Only the French produce a variety of cheeses that graphically reflect their regional landscape and the many kinds of soil, climate, and vegetation.

The French consume lots of cheese: they eat about 42 pounds per person per year, compared to our 20 pounds in the USA for example. Camembert is the undisputed favorite.


How is it made? In a nutshell...

French cheese is made from cow, goat or sheep milk. The milk can be pasturalized or raw – the French prefer cheese made from unpasteruized milk.

A French cheese can be:
Soft – uncooked and unpressed – and simply shaped in a mold;
Soft with its rind washed in brine, beer, eau-de-vie or marc or covered with mold, ashes or leaves;
Streaked with blue veins;
Semi-hard and pressed but not cooked;
Hard after being cooked and pressed.

The cheese you eat in France and the French cheese you eat in the elsewhere. aren’t necessarily the same. A major reason they don’t taste the same is that some regulations bar the importation of cheese made from unpasteurised milk that has been aged less than 60 days. Pasteurisation may make cheese "safe" but it kills all the microbes that give the cheese its character and flavour and keeps it a live, ever-changing organism. This regulation sometimes rules out the exportation of Frances’ finest fresh young cheese, including raw-milk camembert and brie.
If you want to try fresh French cheese ask for fromage fermier or au lait cru.

A Cheese Board (should always contain at least one example from each of the following)
The French cheese world is complex. But, as a word of introduction, here are main categories:
Fromage de chevre (goat cheese): usually creamy and both sweet and a little salty when fresh; as it matures, it hardens and gets much saltier.
Bleu or fromage a pate persillee (veined or blue cheese): Blue cheese is also called persille because the veins often resemble parsley.
Fromage a pate molle (soft cheese): Examples include camembert de Normandie, brie de Meaux and Munster.
Hard cheese - like the UK's cheddar.


The Fromagerie
Unlike US and UK cheese shops that buy and sell cheese, in France, the very serious cheese merchants age the cheese they sell. They buy the cheese ready-made from the farmer and take it to their cellars where they take the cheese from its young, raw state to full maturity.

This process is called affinage and it can last from days to months, depending on the cheese. As each cheese matures, it takes on its own personality, influenced by the person responsible for its development. Each merchant has his own style of aging. There are varying opinions on how cold and how humid the cellar should be; whether the cheese should be aged on clean straw or old straw, paper or even plastic; whether the cheese should be turned daily or just every now and then. Each also has a different opinion on when the cheese is ripe and ready to sell.

Maturing cheese needs daily attention: Some varieties are washed with beer, some with a blend of salt and water, some with eau-de-vie (any colorless, potent brandy or other spirit distilled from fermented fruit juice. Kirsch and framboise are the two of the most popular eaux de vie).

Provence Cheese

Provence specializes in goat cheese or cheese made from ewe’s milk,
In Provence many variations are flavoured with local herbs. Some examples:

Banon – piquant, strong, and nutty; sprinkled with savory, wrapped chestnut leaves and tied in a small brown bundle. It is then dipped in a bath of eau-de-vie or marc and fermented for five weeks in a sealed jar.

Poivre d’ane – enriched with savory or rosemary, the aromas of Provence.

Camargue – Fresh sheep’s milk rolled in thyme and other fragrant herbs.

Brousse – Fresh creamy cheese to eat with fresh fruits or as a spread mixed with garlic or fines herbs.

Roquefort – the king of cheeses, made from ewe’s milk. As it has for centuries, the noble blue cheese ages and matures in natural caves in Roguefort, located in the Aveyron of the Haut Languedoc above Montpellier. Each round is turned by hand and tested by the master foreman.

Cheesy Tips

Ask for the seasonal specialties.
When in a restaurant, select cheese for a degustation (a sample selection for tasting), choose three or four varieties, to include a semi-soft cheese, a goat cheese and a blue. Eat the mild cheese first, moving to the stronger.
Don’t be afraid of a bit of mold. Bluish film on goat’s milk cheese is a sign that the cheese is made with raw milk and has been ripened on fresh straw.

At the end of the meal give a cheesy grin ;-)