Sud de France 2.8: Blessed Are the Cheese makers

When Charles de Gaulle became President of France in the 1950s he famously said, “How can you govern a country that has 261 kinds of cheese?” 

Well, it turns out that the tall Gaul was underestimating the scale of the problem.  A quick Wikipedia check finds that there were 350-400 officially recognized traditional types of cheeses back in the 1950s. Today it is closer to 1000. Variety may be the spice of life but this is a case of too many choices. 

A typical cheese market display

Wednesday is market day in Clermont and there are a half dozen or more cheese vendors in attendance. Some come with vans full of cheeses from all over France while others are farmer’s who sell their “fermier” or homemade cheeses from simple stands. Talking to one of them I learned that there are four categories of French cheese production. 

“Fermier” or farmer cheeses are home made cheeses produced on the farm where the milk is produced and according to several fermiers are naturally the best. Tolerable and often quite good I am told are the artisanal cheeses made in relatively small quantities by farmers using their own milk and milk from their neighbors. The cheeses the fermiers don’t like are the big wheels of cheese and the packaged cheeses produced by cooperative or “industriel” factories. 

Within these categories though there are hundreds of different types of cheeses and it going to take a long time to get out my brain and our lips wrapped around them which is which. 

More cheeses

Talking to friends I’ve learned about some specific Languedoc-Roussillon cheeses. Roquefort, for instance, is a blue cheese that comes from Roquefort and is made from sheep’s milk and has been aged in the caves of Roquefort. Not aged in caves or from Roquefort, France it isn’t real Roquefort.

But of course those in the know with a tap of their nose would say that the better than Roquefort is the local Bleu d’Auvergne which is made from cow’s milk and is milder and less salty.

And that’s the thing about cheeses. Just like wine the are different flavors within a single type of cheese and they vary all over the place. Brie from one fermier will have a slightly different flavor and texture than the brie from the farmer down the road. 

At the market one of the farmers sells discs of cheese that look to me to be chèvre. The farmer offers me a taste. It is like chèvre but has a little bite to it. I really like it. It's called Pélardon or pélardou and it’s a locally made in the Languedoc of goat’s milk. To help distnguish it from chèvre it is made into larger rounds.

One of the pleasures of walking through a French farmers' market it trying the samples of products that producers offer you. The cheese on the right (below) is I believe a fermier version of a mimolette. The cheese maker gave me a taste and despite its rough look it had an almost caramel sweet taste.

There’s a lot to learn about the 1000 French cheeses and we've discovered that it’s just a microcosm of the hundreds of details to France. 

When we planned to move here the last thing we thought we’d have to do is learn about was food. Well we are just neophytes. After cheese the next project is to learn about the dozens of types of sausage. 

Who would have thought that it would be so much work to resettle in France?

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer