Strasbourg, France — Less than 24 hours after crossing the border I had already orchestrated my first French cheese tasting: seven balls, slices and globs of artisanal animal fat arrayed on a cutting board in my Airbnb.
This is a foodie country, so it is possible someone will disagree with this statement, but French cheese is the greatest culinary pleasure that France has to offer. Better than baguette, or truffles, wine or chocolates. Better than Boeuf Bourguignon, Coq au Vin, or Tarte Tatin.
It’s been eighteen years since I traveled to France, and it was the memory of tasting French cheese that lingered the longest, bringing me back.
Deciding which cheeses to buy was the first question, as there are a mind-boggling 1,000-plus to choose from. Cheeses can be both regional and seasonal, which I wanted reflected in my French cheese tasting. It’s spring and I am in Alsace, just across the border from Germany in northeast France, not that far from Switzerland.
The regional specialties here include Munster, one of the three oldest cheeses in France, whose name comes from the word monastery, where it was first made. I let my cheesemonger, Christine, select my Munster from the several choices in her compact but comprehensive fromagerie in nearby Colmar, France, a foodie little town I plan to write more about later.
She was already sold out for the season of Mont d’Or, an autumn and winter specialty cheese that is so soft and runny that it’s sold in a small round spruce-wood box to keep it together. It is high in fat, because the milk comes from penned cows on winter feed, and can only legally be sold between Sept. 10 and May 10.
The summer milk from those same cows, released to graze the valleys of the Jura Mountains, is used to make a large, firm, wheeled cheese called Gruyere de Comté, usually shortened to Comté. Christine tells me this is her favorite cheese, and she cuts me a slice from her preferred maker, and also a wedge of Reblochon, a very soft, creamy cheese she says is similar to Mont d’Or.
Cheese plates are normally odd numbers of cheeses, so with three in the bag I was aiming for seven. I chose one, honestly, for its looks: Figuette, a small white fig-shaped cheese that ended up being a favorite. I wanted one blue, and went with Blue D’Auvergne, a cow’s milk version of the more strongly flavored sheep’s-milk Roquefort.
I selected Chaource, a snow-white, salty, cow’s milk cheese because I had read about it earlier in the week in a discussion of France’s 50 or cheeses with an AOC, or Appelation d’Origine Contrôlée designation, a label that confers both prestige and restrictions on agricultural products like wine and cheese. Made in the same place and the same way since the Middle Ages, cheese labeled Chaource must be made in the départements of Aube and Yonne in northeast France, must be a minimum of 50-percent fat, and is a young cheese, with an “affinage,” or aging of just two to four weeks.
The final cheese I chose was Tartu, a semi-soft black-truffle-infused cheese that I honestly didn’t realize was from Italy. I picked it because while cheese may rank more highly for me than truffles, eating cheese infused with truffles allows me to have them both.
Christine wrapped all seven up in a special “French cheese paper” that retains moisture but allows the cheese, which is full of living organisms, to breathe. I also picked up a tiny glass jar of jam made from raspberries and violets that I found impossible to resist. I had already grabbed a crusty loaf of bread, so I jumped on my train, went back to the apartment and started unwrapping.
France has a lot of rules about eating cheese, which you might expect in a food-serious country that invented the word etiquette. I only know some of them, like the one about plating them in odd numbers and that you’re supposed to eat them in the order of mildest to most strongly flavored. Since I hadn’t tried most of these cheeses, I had to guess by internet stalking them and then further refining my order with some crumb-sized nibbles.
Here are the hasty notes I wrote between bites, whose brevity suggests how eager I was to get on with the next one.
Figuette
Incredibly soft and rich cheese ball. Mushroomy aroma but not really taste. My salivary glands kicked in so hard I made a note of it.
Chaource
Goaty/gamey (this is not a complaint, which I already knew because I was talking to myself but now I’m telling you) Still soft but not as creamy, a little crumbly
Reblochon
Though it resembles Brie, has a stronger flavor, soft but not super spreadable. Rind has texture but it’s thin and pleasurable to eat.
Comté
Very nutty and firmer, with some crystals, though not a lot. A complex flavor that makes me want to try it again immediately. This one I cut the rind off because you’re clearly supposed to and it still had the paper attached. I immediately re-wrap it, because it seems like it would dry out relatively quickly.
Tartu au Tartufo
In the US a truffle cheese would, performatively, have tiny black flecks all throughout, but here the cheese is unflecked and strongly and naturally flavored with black truffle (from the Lombardy region of Italy!) Its mouthfeel is so similar to one of my favorite cheeses, Tallegio, that this causes me to look it up, which is when I find that there is an Italian imposter in my French cheese tasting.
Bleu D’Auvergne
The minerality of this cheese makes it so different than the other cheeses, and the crumbly mouthfeel of the blue mold veins in this otherwise creamy cheese that I’m not sure what to write. “An entirely different direction” I write. One of these things is not like the other.
Munster
The pungency and sticky soft orange rind of this cheese told me it had to be last. “Reminds me of Époisses ,” an even softer and more strongly flavored cheese I learned to love on my first visit to France, a mainstay of Dijon-area cheese trolleys. “The blue stands no chance,” I write, apparently a reference to its relative assertiveness. Some Wisconsin dairies make Munster, but its flavor is much more meek than the original.
Today I unwrapped all the cheeses and cut the remainders in half to share with my Airbnb hostess. I tasted them all again and my three top favorites were: Figuette, Comté, and Reblochon. But I would eat all of them again if given the chance.
Traveling Between Meals 