Trifter

The first thing you have to understand about French cheese is that each cheese is tied to its location. I remember being in one little town in the South of France when their local goat’s cheese was made an AOC (Apellation d’Origine Controlée, an official recognition). The streets was hung with flags, the brass band was playing, and everyone I met was keen to tell me just why their cheese was so marvellous. This kind of local patriotism still marks the world of French cheese – even though much of it is now made by multinationals in huge factories, local small producers supply many of the markets.

The AOC determines the character of the cheese. It may state where the milk has to come from, what kind of cows must produce the milk, what the livestock should be fed on (some cheese is made with milk from particularly rich pastures, others comes from hay-fed cows), how the cheese should be made, and where it is to be matured. It’s not just about where the cheese comes from, but the entire interconected process of milk production, cheese making and maturation.

In the north of France you’ll find Maroilles, a rectangular soft cheese with an orange skin; it’s quite smelly, but still creamy tasting though strong in flavour. You’ll also find a hard cheese, Mimolette, which looks like a canteloupe melon with a grey crust, often crumbly and worn away. Inside, it’s rich orange. Eaten young, it’s a little like a Parmesan, slightly nutty in flavour; older (’extra-vieille’), it has a much more pronounced nutty flavour and becomes almost transparent and hard, a real connoisseur’s cheese.

Normandy, on the Atlantic coast, is famed for its Camembert – a small circular cheese with soft white skin and a creamy texture. Though many ‘Camemberts’ exist, to be an AOC ‘Camembert de Normandie’ the cheese has to be made with unpasteurised milk.It becomes softer, oozier and more strongly flavoured as it ages; overripe, it can become quite ammoniac.

Normandy also produces the less well known Livarot,soft and pungent, a little round cheese with an orange rind, bound around its width with bullrushes. It’s soft and pungent, with a slightly earthy aroma; I like it far more than Camembert, though I know some people can’t stand it because of its mustiness (some say it ’smells of the stables’).

The plains north-east of Paris produce Brie, from Meaux or Melun, which Frech diplomat Talleyrand called the ‘knig of cheeses’. It’s made in huge floppy white disks, and has a pleasantly nutty flavour and creamy texture. Served too young, or too cold, it has a slightly chalky texture, so leave it to relax for a few days before serving. Brie goes particularly well with walnuts (try it on walnut bread), and can also be baked (like Camembert).

From the mountains of the Auvergne in central France comes Cantal, made with milk from hay-fed cows during the winter. This hard cheese is made by heating the milk before fermenting, and it has a tangy, buttery taste and pleasantly granular consistency. It’s a good cheese to cook with, in gratins or fondues.

Also from the Auvergne is Saint-Nectaire. This cheese is made from uncooked milk, and is pressed, to create a silky texture, then washed in brine and aged on rye straw. The whitish cheese tastes nutty and even has hints of mushroom – there’s a lot of good flavour there.

Morbier comes from Franche-Comté in the east of the country. A springy, semi-soft cheese, it’s distinguished by a thin line of grey ash dividing it into two layers. Traditionally, the morning milk was used to make the first half, covered with ash to protect it, and then the evening milk used to fill the mould. It’s a creamy cheese, but has a little sharpness in the aroma and a lemony bite that stops it from being cloying.

In the same area you’ll find Comté, made in huge flat disks – but you’ll probably buy it in a flat rectangular slice. Pale creamy yellow, and quite hard, it has a fine nutty flavour, slightly sweet; aged, it can be almost as sweet and granular as a slice of fudge. Traditionally, it was made in the high pastures while the cows were summering there, and brought down to be sold at the markets in town as autumn arrived.

Head south, and you find very different flavours. Roquefort for instance comes from the limestone plateaux of the south of France. It’s white and crumbly, with prominent greeny-blue veins of mould that give it an interesting texture and tangy flavour. It’s one of the saltiest of French cheeses, too. Roquefort received the first ever AOC, and it’s a cheese of which the French are justly proud – a real classic. You can’t get more authentic than Roquefort as a flavour of the ‘terroir’ – the mould actually grows in the soil of the caves where the cheese is matured, so you really are experiencing the taste of the land.

You’ll also find goats’ cheeses, and cheeses made with sheep’s milk. There’s Chabichou from Poitou, on the west coast – tiny tall cylinders of cheese, very white, very smooth, and gently goaty. Eat it fresh, or keepit longer for a harder texture and more pronounced taste. Crottin de Chavignol from the Loire valley comes in a squatter cylinder like a hockey puck, and has a more nutty flavour; it’s sometimes baked in the oven till it begins to melt, and served on top of a green salad.  Also in the Loire valley you’ll find Selles-sur-Cher, a flatter disk, coated in charcoal to encourage a rich grey mould to grow on the surface. It’s quite firm in texture and almost chalky at first taste, but melts in the mouth – a delightful cheese for summer  eating with a crisp baguette and a salad.

You like it stinky? Try Munster, from the Vosges mountains in the north-east; a good, strong-tasting soft cheese, with a monastic heritage. Or Chaumes, a non-AOC cheese that has a pleasantly full smell.

Stinkiest of all though is Epoisses, from the wine growing district of Burgundy in the centre of France. It’s washed in marc de Bourgogne, a local style of brandy, and comes in a circular wooden box – and it really pongs.

My personal favourite, though, is one of the more delicate cheeses – Mont d’Or, from the borders of Switzerland and France. It’s a seasonal cheese, which you’ll only see in the shops in the autumn and winter. It comes in a little wooden box, with pine bark wrapped round the cheese; it’s beautifully soft, so you can scoop it out with a teaspoon, and has a soft, creamy taste, with a slight hint of resin from the pine.  You can even put the box in the oven for a few minutes to bake the cheese slightly, and eat it like fondue.

The key to enjoying French cheese is to serve it at room temperature – not straight out of the fridge. It needs to breathe; some cheese also needs to be kept for a while, and served ripe, rather than young. (For other cheeses, it’s a matter of taste – at many French shops and markets you’ll be offered a choice of goat’s cheese nice and young, soft and delicate, or aged, in which case it will have formed a crust and become harder, as well as stronger.)

The best way of all to discover French cheeses is to travel through France, tasting each cheese in its right ‘terroir’, its local area – and preferably with the local wine. Some craft cheesemakers even encourage you to visit; I’ve visited the goats of one farm, where tiny black kittens scrambled through the hay, and bought fresh cheese from the little dairy at the back. I’ve visited mysterious caves scooped into the porous limestone of the Combalou, where Roquefort is slowly maturing in the cool air. I’ve bought cheese from farmers’ markets in sunlit cobbled squares, and eaten fondue on a grey day with the rain lashing down outside. For every place, and every season, France has a cheese – two hundred and forty six of them to be precise!