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Cheeses of the Haute Savoie
By Andy Shay
I am in the Mountain village of La Clusaz in the French Savoie Mountains - a
stones throw from Switzerland and Italy and just east of Annecy and Lyon. The
town of about 1,500 people is a ski resort by winter and outdoor adventure
playground in the summer. It is nestled in valley at about 3,000 feet above sea
level and entirely surrounded by peaks. Clouds regularly drift through the
valley and it rains torrentially every other day. As you can imagine, it is
incredibly green and lush and lined with quick moving, crystal clear streams.
After Annecy, the road rises gently and you travel up and down to get to Thones.
From there the road winds up and only up to St Jean de Sixt and up and around
and finally into La Clusaz. For a few years now I have been reading about
European mountain cheeses, how the cows eat the summer grasses high in the
mountains, where they grow sweeter - it is a great story and I wanted to see if
it really was true. Was it was just some sort of marketing ploy, I wondered.
Well, I can tell you that at least in La Clusaz, it is absolutely true.
On the first day driving up that long winding slope, one of the first things
that hits you is the unmistakable aroma of cows - their earthiness hangs in the
air, and this was well remarked by my eight and six year olds in the back seat.
I don't think it's a bad smell though, it's actually tremendously wholesome and
loamy.
At first La Clusaz seems to by full of juxtapositions. The town has two main
businesses - Tourism/Ski Resort and cheese and charcuterie production. While
they may seem like a random pairing of commercial activities the rhythms of the
valley are well tied together. Here is the first example: After unpacking the
car I was sitting on the balcony (this is chalet country and everyone has a
balcony) taking in the sights of the town. The bell tower, the weathered
chalets, the snow capped mountains in every direction - In this town almost all
most of the hills have a ski lift climbing up the side with a trail underneath.
Really they look like giant fields. Hey, look at that - there are cows grazing
on that ski slope! Indeed there are no cows at the bottom of the valley. There
is nothing flat here, but at the bottom of the valleys the hills are less steep
and in the summer time the farmers send the cows up higher into the mountains to
graze on those sweet grasses - up to 6,000 feet in this valley. The cows keep
the ski runs shorn and give the lower lands a rest, the grasses grow and the
farmers are able to harvest hay for the winter. Really it makes a lot of sense.
Yesterday we went for a hike into the Mountains passing through many pastures
with free roaming cows and goats, some were incredibly steep and rocky. As we
ate lunch: Conte and locally made smoked Jambon de Montagne, which is a cured
dried ham in the vein of prosciutto but smoky, like Speck, on baguette. Then we
witnessed a peculiar scene. We heard lost of bells in the distance. The got
closer and closer. Suddenly a herd of goats broke over a crest in the fill -
there must have been 100 and they were headed almost straight for us. They were
migrating quickly as a pack, paid no heed to us, and worked their way across the
slope and disappeared into a cluster of trees. Their utters were ponderously
large and it was clear that they knew where to go to fix the problem. Whew! That
was interesting and a bit hair raising until we found they had no interest in
us. (Meredith and I once had an issue with a very cute looking ram in New
Zealand). Turns out the entire scene unfolded in the middle of a black diamond
run.
I should mention that I am sentimentally attached to the Sound of Music having
played Captain Von Trapp in a 9th grade musical - but you know that song - "…the
hills are alive with the sound of Music" - I am not sure if this what Rogers and
Hammerstein had in mind, but these hills are alive with music. Every cow, goat
and sheep wears a bell that rings each time the animal moves - which seems to be
almost all of the time and the result is a lovely cacophony of clanking -
incessantly.
Now, what about this farmhouse production - how does that work? I will tell you
about one that I visited around the mountain in Grand Bornand. We started out
from town headed up on a main but smallish road - we quickly climbed out of
town. Then we took a 160 degree turn up a steep hill onto a 1 lane road. I am a
bit sketchy with heights and it was all I could do to keep my eyes glued to the
road on this guard rail-less, continuous switch back road (my youngest son kept
asking why we were turning around) never leaving second gear.
Close to heaven we found Claudette and Yann's house, and arrived on the downhill
side. It seemed like a traditional chalet. The doors were all open - two boys
ran out on to the balcony above us and we were greeted by Claudette. It seemed
that the family lived on the second and third floors of the house. The first
floor was the cheese making operation. I looked in the window and could see a
small but modern facility all laid out. On second look, the garage was beside
the house dug back into the hill and it was inside this and beyond that
Claudette disappeared to get a cheese. Clearly they had fashioned their own
underground caves for aging the cheese. We asked for a cheese ready for eating
that day and she reappeared with one that she said was 15 days old. - it was
delicious, see below for tasting notes. In fact this seems to be a common setup
with the farmer producers. I asked where the cows were and she pointed to an
adjacent field that seemed to stretch up to the sky. And that is the plain truth
and the real deal of farmhouse cheeses in the Haut Savoie.
One more point of interest - everyone in this area of France makes the same
cheeses. In Canada, if I have a farm next to yours, you will make cheeses that
interest you and I will make cheeses that interest me. Apparently, no so in
France. In certain regions farmers make certain kinds of cheeses - many from a
home based operation. It is amazing to me that cheeses produced by so many
operations can be similar enough to develop a single identity and international
reputation. And yet they do. I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that it
is due to a relatively closed market. If your family has a farm, you learn the
farming and cheese making techniques which have been handed down from generation
to generation. If a farm is not in your family, I bet it is difficult to get
started in the regional cheese making business. This might be one of the reasons
that in the past 20 years so many Europeans with a desire, but no history, to
work the land and produce cheese have moved to Quebec where entry to the market
is relatively free and based more on desire, ability and business skills to
produce cheese. Two very different systems that produce wonderful cheeses.
The Cheeses: here are some notes from the cheese that we bought at farms and markets...
Reblochon
This cheese is available everywhere here - most roads have a few houses that
sport a sign advertising the cheese for sale - made right on the spot. The
example that I picked up above was about 15 days old and ready for eating. On
unwrapping, the cheese was sandwiched between 2 pine wafers as is typical and
showed the green stamp of farmhouse production. The cheese was a bright orange
colour. The aroma was a powerful punch of very clean barnyard. The flavour -
rich and complex - nutty at first, milky building soapy flavour, notes of salt,
sweetness and grass. Lasting barnyardy/soapy aroma that warms the nasal
passages!
Tomme Blanche
This is a much rarer, fresh cheese and must be gotten from the farmer just after
production in the evening. Almost never available in shops because it is ment to
be consumed within a few day of production. It is essentially a fresh reblochon
that is served up in container swimming in its whey. Locally it is served with
potatoes, salt and pepper. The flavour is very mild and it reminds me of buffalo
mozzarella, it is slightly spongy. It turns out that in Toronto we have a very
similar cheese made by the Portuguese Cheese Company called St. John and it
comes in a cow or goat version. I will try it with potatoes, but I recommend
that you head to your closest Portuguese store and buy a container to east with
this month's ripest tomatoes. Again, salt, pepper and a touch of olive oil are
terrific touches.
Picodon
A small goat cheese slightly larger than a peppermint patty. This cheese was
lightly mouldy on top and drying, the way French like to eat many goat cheeses.
Firm, mild at first building to very pleasant sharpness that is neither too
string or acidic. Mild goaty flavor. Milky finish.
Chevre Persile
A white rinded cheese with distinct dark blue veins and a remarkably yellow
interior for a goat cheese. The texture is creamy, with typical blue cheese
aroma. The cheese is slightly acidic, slightly bitter, and deliciously blue.
Nicely balanced, very interesting cheese.
Beaufort Ete
Beaufort is an AOC cheese that is produced all year long - but only the cheeses
produced in the summer from mountain grass fed herds can be classified with the
designation ete. The cheese is related to Gruyere and Comte and produced in
great concave sided 99 lb wheels. To my taste it has more refined and balanced
flavour than either.
Bleu de Termignon - Quite rare, made only by a few farmers. Dry cow milk cheese
with a myriad of tiny eyes. The blue is not induced with spikes and develops
quite unevenly through the cheese. The texture of the cheese almost looks like
pound cake. Natural rind that is not blue. The cheese is not crumbly to cut, but
in the mouth shatters into a million pieces. The flavour is sharp and fairly
acidic in the finish but with beautiful blue flavour that seems to spread evenly
through the mouth leaving a gently salty finish and mustiness in the nasal
passages.
Tomme de Savoie
This is a fairly large and thick wheel with this very rustic
brushed rind. The cheese is fragrant of hay and on the tongue giving and smooth.
Raclette
This is the land of Raclette. We went to a Raclette restaurant and of course
ordered the eponymous dish. An entire half wheel of Raclette (at least 1.5kg)
was mounted into the heating contraption. As the cheese melts you scrape it onto
new potatoes and a variety of local charcuterie. It was absolutely delicious,
but I left feeling the blood slow in my veins and wondering how the people at
the table next to us finished their entire portion of cheese. Was I a heel
leaving half of mine?
Butter
Some of the cream is siphoned off during the cheese making process many
farmhouses offer their own raw milk butter for sale. I bought some Isigny St.
Mere butter to compare - both were unsalted. Interestingly, in Toronto, I have
seen an north Italian artisan butter imprinted with the same scene of a cow and
pine trees. It is hard to remember that Italy is just a few mountain tops away
and may well share equipment suppliers.
Both examples exhibited deep buttery yellow colour. - the Isigny was a block
wrapped in foil paper, much as we might find in Toronto. The farm butter was
wrapped in a crinkly waxed sort of paper, inside the butter was impressed with a
picture of a cow on the mountains with a pine tree - quite beautiful. In terms
of aroma, the farm butter had a slightly sweeter aroma. The Isigny flavour at
first is milky, but slightly watery and tangy, then building into rich buttery
flavour. The farm butter, was also tangy at the start, but shows its rich
buttery flavour immediately and has a certain extra complexity in the flavour. -
both absolutely delicious and benchmarks to strive for in Canada.
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