We’re on a foodie tour in Paris, France. Life is good! It’s a walking tour in Paris’ Marais district. We’ve made two stops so far. The first was at an award-winning boulangerie, where we sampled baguettes and croissants. Ooh la la. Then we visited a chocolatier of the highest repute. Mon Dieu. Our next stop will be at la fromagerie – the cheese shop. C’mon!
La Fromagerie
We walked a few blocks to our next stop – a highly-regarded fromagerie. The place was doing a brisk business, but there was room enough for us to go inside and take a look around. A dizzying array of cheeses were on display. Dizzying to moi, anyway. To a parisien, the wide selection of cheeses is probably to be expected.
Our guide, Deniz, gave us a quick overview of what we were looking at, but there’s only so much one can do in a few minutes. That being said, some of the basic ideas are that the cheeses we’re looking at are, like wine, regional products. Certain types of cheese come from certain regions.
And for each type of cheese from within a given region, there’s a kind of recipe for how to produce that cheese. Take Comté cheese, for example. You see this cheese everywhere in France, but it comes from only one region in France, next to the Swiss border. And it can only be produced from milk given by either Montbéliarde or French Simmental cows. Not only that, there’s a limit to how many cows per acre of pastureland the farmer can have. And they must be fed only fresh, natural feed.
Comté
If you’re making cheese in this region, you must, by “law,” start production soon after the cows have been milked. When and how much you can heat the milk during production is specified. Once you’ve made your cheese, you have to let it mature for at least four months. But it’s often aged for a year or two.
If you do not adhere to the conditions noted above, (and a bunch more), you can’t call your cheese “Comté.” If you’re able to make it that far, the cheese inspectors will pay you a visit. They’ll rate your cheese and give it a score. If your cheese scores too low, evn if you’ve done everything by the book, you can’t call it “Comté.”
But if you’ve met all requirements and your cheese is really good, you’re in business. Your score determines the color of label you can put on your cheese. Basic Comté, which, as you might guess, is still really good, gets a brown label. The very best Comté gets a green label and can be called “Comté Extra.”
Let’s Buy Some Cheese
Shopping for cheese in France is so much more interesting than buying cheese at home. In the US, if you’re lucky enough to be at a really nice supermarket, you might have a pretty good selection to choose from. But just about everything will have been pre-packaged, probably by a machine. There’s no way to know, and there’s no one to ask who will know anything about it. Make your choice, grab what you want, and go.
Over here, most cheeses are unwrapped and free-standing. If it’s the kind of cheese that comes in a wheel, the whole wheel might be there, with some wedges cut out and put on display.
Do you think you might want a taste of something in particular? Just ask. They’ll give you a taste and maybe a bit of information about where that particular cheese comes from or how it’s made. The person selling you the cheese is most-likely totally into cheese.
Fromagerie Jouannault
The cheese shop we visited is special, even for Paris. It’s a small, family operation called Fromagerie Jouannault. They personally visit many of the producers of the cheeses they carry. They even have their own cellar where they refine some of the cheeses.
Boy, all this cheese talk is making me really hungry for a nibble. I’m going to have to take care of that immediately. If you’re not already hungry for a little taste of cheese yourself, there’s a short video on the Fromagerie Jouannault website that will get you there.
In the video, the manager takes you on a tour through the shop and even into the cheese cellar, to show you a little bit about what goes into refining cheese. The narration is French, but now is as good a time as any to brush up on your listening skills. After the video, you can go into the kitchen, raid the fridge, and brush up on your cheese eating skills.
To be continued…
