The Cheesemonger's Tales by Arthur Cunynghame

Author:Arthur Cunynghame [Arthur Cunynghame]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907991042
Publisher: Loose Chippings
Published: 2011-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

A WINTER’S TALE

Le Mont d’Or (Or Vacherin du Hauts Doubs): Sancey Richard

There is no surer sign that autumn has arrived than the appearance in the shops of Le Mont d’Or. Just as bonfire night, the clocks going back and the first home rugby games signify the end of summer, so Mont d’Or, to me, heralds the imminent change to the gastronomic joys of winter which lie ahead. Made by dairies which make Comté in summer, Mont d’Or remains a seasonal cheese; available only between September and May. It can actually be made only between 15th August and 15th March but the longer period of availability is to allow for ripening.

Mont d’Or has a stunning appearance, a haunting aroma, a satiny smooth texture and a unique resinous flavour, all of which combine to make it a truly remarkable cheese.

It comes wrapped in a circle of spruce bark, to hold it together, and is presented in a wooden box. The spruce bark gives it a vaguely resinous flavour but there are also hints of nutmeg, mushrooms, cabbage and bacon. These are not always strong flavours but they combine together to great effect, and the result is a full and substantial flavour.

The silky smooth texture of the ivory-coloured paste should be softly flowing but can become exceeding runny. Often the best way to serve the cheese is with a spoon!

The cheese takes its name from the Mont d’Or peak in the mountainous Jura region of eastern France, close by the Swiss border. The area is heavily forested, with lots of timber yards and any number of huge lorries carrying felled trees. Interspersed amongst the trees are open pastures, rich in wild grasses in summer, providing ideal grazing for the local Montbéliarde cows which give wonderful milk for making Comté cheese. In winter, however, the region is snow-covered and, while skiers appear as if out of nowhere, the cows are confined to their sheds. They are fed hay made the previous summer (no silage is permitted) which gives milk which is less fruity and paler in colour and often of insufficient quantity to make a whole 30 kg wheel of Comté. So the dairies had the idea of making a smaller, soft cheese instead, and Mont d’Or was born. How blessed we are that they did so, as otherwise we might never have tasted this outstanding cheese.

For over 200 years farmers on both sides of the border have produced the same style of cheese, known as Vacherin de Mont d’Or; but French production had fallen substantially due to difficulty in distributing the fragile cheese, until the 1960’s when it began to rise again. This prompted the Swiss into action and, in the 1970’s, they were able to appropriate the name for themselves, forcing the French to call their cheeses either Le Mont d’Or or Vacherin du Haut Daubs. The Swiss now use pasteurised milk, and the Mont d’Or peak itself is in France, so I prefer to think of France as the true home to the cheese.

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