Did you know that comté cheese is the French’s favourite PDO cheese (PDO = protected designation of origin)? And that it was the first French cheese to be protected by origin in 1958?
This classic cheese was of course also on our agenda when I visited the French Alps and the Jura Mountains with Cheese Journeys. We visited both a dairy and an affineur who ripens the cheese. In this blog post I will take you with me back to the Jura.
A historical structure
Around 1.7 million wheels of comté cheese are produced every year, each weighing around 40 kg / 88 lbs. Each cheese requires 450 litres / 119 US gallons of milk. Since one cow gives about 20 litres / 5.3 gallons of milk a day, 23 cows are needed to make one cheese. In addition, the PDO requires each cow to have one hectare of pasture. This requires large areas of land, which was also the case 1,000 years ago up in the mountains. But with relatively few cows per farmer, it was more practical to join forces when it came to cheese making, hence the birth of cheese cooperatives (‘les frutières’). Today, cooperatives are still responsible for making the cheese, while the maturing process is taken care of by the specialists, ‘les affineurs’.
Go to Cheese Talks with Camilla Bojsen-Moller, a Cheese Journeys co-host, for the full story.