French cheesemongers are ‘feeling pressures of modernity’

Think France and you think cheese. Plump Camemberts, heroic wheels of golden-hued Comté, lush slices of Brie, piquant rounds of Roquefort, and a myriad of more obscure treasures, from the pretty little goat’s cheeses of Provence to the mighty Salers from volcanic Auvergne.

All the different terroirs contained in France, from the wide fields of the Brie plateau to the sunburnt rocky slopes of Provence; from the snow-covered Alps to the lush pastures of the Val de Loire, produce a bewildering variety of cheeses each with their own traditions.

France is a bastion of cheesemaking craft and those traditions have been handed down from generation to generation over centuries, their produce then bought in family-run fromageries by cheese fanatics who prize their pungent patrimony.

But is this image a little rosy-hued?

Perhaps, with the heft of their reputation the French have got a little complacent and forgot to future-proof their cheese industry. The most consumed cheese in France is now Emmental, from Switzerland. Across the nation Charles de Gaulle once joked was ungovernable due to its “246 varieties of cheese” (a vast under-estimate), the biggest sellers are made in factories from pasteurised milk and bought in supermarkets. Indeed, some of France’s best loved cheese, jewels of its gastronomic cultural heritage, are under threat of extinction.

Quelle horreur! That might seem like a familiar scenario to historians of British cheese culture.

Our national cheese industry was decimated by the industrial revolution, the world wars and the rise of supermarkets, so by the 1970s there were few traditional styles left.

Most cheeses were made in factories, and were pallid uninteresting versions of their true selves. Happily though in the UK, this set the scene for the Great British Cheese Renaissance. Beginning in the early 1980s there was a flowering of small-scale cheesemaking in Britain.

Cheesemongers like Neal’s Yard Dairy, and the Fine Cheese Company began scouring the country for the remaining farmhouse cheeses, bringing them to avid consumers in the cities, while some city dwellers quit their jobs, and, occasionally inspired by TV sitcom The Good Life, bought small-holdings and began making creamery or “artisan-style” cheeses with locally bought milk.

Most of these new producers looked to the Continent, particularly France, for their inspiration. As a result we can now enjoy Loire style goat’s cheeses like Brightwell Ash, Roquefort inspired Beenleigh Blue and Tunworth, which was described by Raymond Blanc as the best Camembert in the world.

Inspired by tradition, but not bound by it, British cheesemakers then went on to develop entirely new styles like Lincolnshire Poacher, a sort of hybrid of Cheddar and Gruyere, and Renegade Monk, a wild-tasting mix of washed-rind and blue.

Though I would like to see traditional cheesemaking on a firmer footing than it is in Britain, in the last ten years or so the British Cheese Renaissance has taken a new turn, one I like to call The Rise of the Territorials, as British cheesemakers celebrate traditional styles. Stilton is being made to a standard which justifies its reputation as the queen of cheeses, and there is even a raw milk version, Stichelton; cloth-bound west-country cheddar graces the shelves of many delis and a huge range of traditional varieties are flourishing.

In 2005, the Clarke family began making Sparkenhoe Red Leicester on their farm in Leicestershire. There are now several producers of pre-war farmhouse-style Wensleydale, a creamier, more complex cheese than the firm sandwich cheese beloved of Wallace and Gromit.

Somerset Cheddar has also stepped further from the brink. Recently Welsh cheesemakers, the Trethowans, quit sleepy Llanddewi Brefi for the bright lights of Weston Super Mare where they make their traditional Caerphilly and Pitchfork, the first new Somerset farmhouse Cheddar for 150 years.

France is still home to many wonderful traditional cheeses and cheesemakers, as I found out when I went to visit them recently while working on my new book, A Cheesemonger’s Tour de France, but they are clearly feeling the pressures of modernity which threatened British traditions some years ago.

In Aveyron in southern France, Delphine Carles makes Roquefort like her grandfather did. This spicy blue sheep’s milk cheese has the most specific terroir of all; to take that hallowed name it must be matured in a warren of caves under the little village of Roquefort sur Soulzon which straggles the edge of limestone plateau, Mont Combalou. Visiting the caves is a magical experience. You step further back into the past the deeper you go into them. At the very bottom, surrounded by cobwebbed rocky walls, the young cheeses sit on massive oak shelves blackened with age and made shiny with the rich fat of the sheep’s milk.

Here you notice great black domed loaves of bread sitting alongside them.

The blue mould for Delphine’s cheeses grows in these loaves – a unique strain which has evolved in her family’s caves. When it’s ready the loaves are crumbled up and that powdery blue mould is added to the milk. It is an ancient practice. In modern dairies the mould is bought in and comes in sachets of freeze-dried powder.

Delphine is one of the few makers who use the traditional method. Most of the other individual makers have been subsumed into larger concerns owned by international dairy giants Lactalis and Savencia, victims of the modern trend towards consolidation. Every spring, way down south in the Pyrenees, Stephane Chetrit takes his sheep up to the high pastures near the border with Spain, where he will spend the whole belle saison making Ossau-Iraty with their milk, coming back down to the valley in October.

Stephane grew up in these high pastures while his mother and father tended their animals and made cheese, as the people of that region – both Basque and Bearnaise – have for thousands of years. Stephane says the milk from the high pastures gives a delicate floral note; cheeses made in the valley in the autumn are more sheepy.

The AOC for Ossau-Iraty, set up in 1980, allows for large scale production as much as traditional, and hitherto made little distinction between the two – industrial cheeses are as valorised as those of the valley and the high pasture. This makes it hard for consumers to distinguish between the traditional and the modern, a source of constant frustration for Stephane who is passionate about keeping traditional farming practices alive.

On the banks of the river Loire near the town of Sancerre, Emmanuelle and Marguerite Melet make the tiny goat’s milk Crottin de Chavignol. Young cheeses are white and fluffy with a moussy texture, fully aged they are dark and firm with a spicy animal flavour.

Emmanuelle and Marguerite are from local farming stock, and have been making cheese since the 1970s. Recently though, after decades of back-breaking if rewarding work, they have decided to retire, and their children, with jobs of their own and only too aware just how hard cheese making is, are not taking up the torch. If the Melets can’t find a buyer for their business, their distinctive Crottins will disappear.

Can France’s reputation of cheese making survive the pressures of consolidation, legislation and modern life, and the rise of the supermarkets?

Though France still appears to love its cheese, I met many French people who had no interest in the cheeses of their region and greeted news of their decline with a gallic shrug.

When our industry was in decline, British cheesemakers went to the Continent for help. Perhaps now British makers and mongers can return the favour by providing a model of how marrying a love of tradition with renewed enthusiasm and innovation can create new traditions, while encouraging customers to venture out of the supermarket and back to the fromagerie.

In Brittany, which never had a cheesemaking tradition, a sort of “naissance” is in full flood possibly inspired by Britain’s, with new cheesemakers popping up all over the region – usually people with no tradition of farming or dairying.

Untrammelled by tradition, the new-wave Breton cheesemakers look to the rest of France for their inspiration and a collection of tommes, ossau styles, little goats and even a couple of Cheddars are produced on the lush salty pastures of that Arthurian land.

They are sold by young and enthusiastic cheesemongers, often city dwellers who, like the leaders of the British Cheese Renaissance, see something both exciting and valuable in a life led closer to the land and the craft of making and selling cheese.

I hope the cheesemakers and mongers of France and Britain continue to learn from each other. I hope the French embrace innovation with more vigour, and the British continue to treasure the jewels of an ancient cheese culture; and that we cheese-lovers get to enjoy the fruits of this cheesy entente cordiale.

A Cheesemonger’s Tour de France by Ned Palmer (Profile Books Ltd, £18.99) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25