The internet is an amazing thing.  You can find all kinds of useful and useless information, anytime, anywhere.  Following a link from a podcast about the International Cheese Competition, I read a very interesting article, albeit a bit old the other day regarding terroir and cheese.  It was in the Feb 2002 issue of Wine Business Monthly and is called The Terroir of Cheese by Maria Lorraine Binchet.

It is one of the best and most focused discussion of the subject of terroir and cheese I have read.  It describes the main differences between terroir in wine and in cheese and then goes indepth on the subject relative to cheese from the land, to the animals, to the process and the producers, all who add their special piece to the terroir of a fromage. Well worth the read!

Vive le Terroir

A very interesting article called Vive le Terroir in the NYTimes recently by Steven Erlanger discusses the idea of French terroir as it exists today here in this wonderful country.  Having just spent eight days in this very region on a Domaines & Terroirs Journey with a wonderful family eager to discover this very concept for the southern Causses, it was extremely timely.

Home of the Cathars, Templiers and some of the most beautiful villages in France, terroir in this region of ancient wine varieties and wonderful cheeses like Roquefort, Bleu de Causses, Pérail, Cabécou, Pélardon, Rocamadour, le Rouelle du Tarn from la Fromagerie du Pic and la Cardabelle from la Fromagerie de Hyelzas and safran, lamb from Quercy, chesnuts and walnuts, foie gras and all things duck, make it a region full of things to discover and terroir is everywhere.  (More on the Journey in later posts!)

 

Domaines & Terroirs Updates

Back at the ranch, we have been very busy updating our site and our tours with a new home page, a sublime tour to Alsace and some short breaks in and around Paris.
 

- Alsace is home of Munster, fabulous wines, artisanal beers, fois gras  and la Cérémonie des Fromages by Bernard Antony at his käs-kaller in Vieux Ferette.

- Paris features several half day seminar/tours like visiting our favourite cheesemongers, creating a cheese board, and a trip to Rungis as well as two new trips - a day trip to Philippe Olivier's Fromagerie in Boulogne-sur-Mer and an overnight trip to la Cérémonie des Fromages by Bernard Antony in Vieux Ferette as well.
 
Have a look at Domaines & Terroirs and let us know what you think!  

"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  - T. S. Eliot, 1942

Terroirs and Nationalities

If cheese, wine and other food stuffs have terroir which defines their nature relative to the place they arise from, could one say that people's nationality is similar to terroir? I have pondered this question ever since I moved to France - Paris to be exact, then the United Kingdom - London and then back again to Paris. Were the French like a big intense Époisses, the English like a West Country Cheddar and us Americans like…Velveeta?  

Living and working in France and the UK, across Europe and in the Emirates, I came across many different cultural styles and just like terroir, began to attribute certain characteristic behaviour to each of them. I never saw the French as rude and arrogant, probably because to me, their comportment was specific to their surroundings. They were direct and straight-forward; extremely dynamic. Okay they could be contentious but they were always intensely committed to what they believed. For me, they and their motivations were totally understandable (even though speaking French) and accessible.  

When I moved to the UK, I thought, wow, now I will be able to understand everything that's going on because of course, they speak English…well this proved to be typical expat thinking and a big trap because although the language is English, it is spoken or rather delivered in an extremely different manner. A great deal of communication in the UK and specifically England is subtext and non-verbal. This attribute proved to render understanding anything that was going on there (even in a language in which I was fluent) more difficult and sometimes downright incomprehensible.  

The Emirates were even more fascinating. The working echelons, like any wine or cheese were certainly the product of their own culture but having been shipped off at 18 or 19 to the UK or the US, they acquired another terroir as it were. They were capable of displaying their own cultural terroir, Arabic culture, as well as the veneer of the acquired occidental culture, separately, intermingled or intermittently at will. To deal with this was intriguing and a very slippery slope and strained my theory of terroir and nationality a bit.  

To explain what I had learned to my colleagues in America, the terroir analogy was a bit of a stretch, so another one worked better. What does NO mean to each of these cultures? In my dealings with Germans, it quite simply meant no, not possible. To the English, no meant 'oh sorry, not certain but could be nice'. To the French, no means no - but, i.e., if you can convince me you and your argument are worthy, it could change to yes. To the Italians, no always meant 'anything is possible bella, so let's have lunch and we'll work it out'. In the Emirates, no meant absolutely nothing, no is the beginning of a negotiation. Although simplistic, this always helped bewildered and flustered American colleagues.  

I was recently asked to write an article on the subject of cultural differences between the French and Americans for The American Magazine, published in the United Kingdom. Instead of cheese references, I found another one more relevant and rather amusing. If you are interested, here is the link to the article Smile - We're all Cats and Dogs  

Bees, Honey and Terroir

In the middle of August Paris is deserted. The last of the stressed out Parisians have left for les vacances and lots of the city is closed leaving us diehard residents to flâner in a ghost town. And so a little bored this weekend, we were roaming around and happened upon this most interesting shop in a fascinatingly time warped area of the 13éme arrondissement, La Butte aux Caille. Almost like Montmartre or rue Mouffetard in the 5th but original, uncrowded and thankfully a bit too plebeian for the menace of the colonizing bobos.

Not something I would have gone in search of but here under a threatening sky, albeit plant based we discovered another form of produits de terroirs. In this tiny shop called Les Abeilles  (the Bees) fresh from les ruches (beehives) were honeys of all sorts, from mel à la tireuse (honey by the pull), named mille fleurs (mixed flower) to miel de cru (single flower vintage honey), beeswax, beeswax candles; soaps and every thing related to the practice of apiculture. The owner Monsieur Jean-Jacques Schakmundès says honey is one of the last pure products on earth, one that comes 'direct from the producer - the bee to - us, the consumer; one that undergoes no treatment, no form of transformation and no additives'. And this being France, honey is subject to strict controls, so it is as pure as if you went out in the fields and collected it yourself.

Terroirs! Well, of course, cheese has it so why not honey too! And just like wine and cheese, honey has its own vocabulary and some even have an AOP designation (Appellation d'origine protégée) as well. Honeys are described by colour, texture, taste and provenance. Each honey, just light wines, has a provenance, while the colours depend exclusively on the origin of the flowers the bees are pollinating. The rule of thumb says that the clearer and lighter the colour, the milder the honey will be; the darker more amber the colour, the more full bodied or spicy the honey will be.

We learned that the textures are different as well, some are light and creamy others are dense and stiff. And when it comes to the texture, all honeys are liquid when they come out of the hive, the textures varying from liquid to creamy and thick to firm. All of them will cystallize at their own rate according the varietal, but a crystallized honey has the same taste and therapeutic values as those that are still liquid.  And wow is it healthy!

Suffice it to say besides falling prey to an enormous slice of Pain d'épices to take home with us, after we sampled five or six of the most exotic single cru honeys, we walked out with four amazing specimens : two light, golden ones - Néflier (from the Medlar tree) and Bois de Cuir (from the Leatherwood tree) and two dark copper ones - Chêne (oak) and Sarrazin (buckwheat flower).

Here is some of the descriptors for French honey:  
Colour : blanc (white), crème clair (clear cream), ambré trés pâle (pale amber), ambré clair (clear amber), ambré (amber), roux (red), ocre pâle (pale ocre), brun soutenu (deep brown) 

Texture : fluid, creamy, thick, firm 

Taste : trés doux (very mild), doux et parfumé (mild and fragrant), trés parfumé (very fragrant), délicat (delicate), soutenu (pungent), fort (strong), corsé (spicy), légère amertune en fin bouche (lightly bitter long note)

Les Abeilles French honey : 

Acacia mild flavour is liquid, clear and does not crystallize Provenance : all regions of France  

Amandier (almond tree) is deep brown, creamy in texture and spicy with a light bitter after taste Provenance: Vaucluse
Châtaignier (Chestnut tree) is dark brown in colour and extremely liquid, it is strong and spicy with a light bitter after taste. Provenance : Cévennes 

Eucalyptus (eucalyptus) is pale ocre colour, creamy in texture and pungent in taste. Provenance : Corse, Andalousie  

Fleur d'oranger et d'autres agrumes (orange blossoms and other citrus fruits) is clear amber, very creamy and very fragrant. Provenance : Spain and Corsica (mandarin)  

Garrigue et de montagne (honey scrub and mountain flowers) depends on the provenance of the flowers. It is generally liquid in texture, very fragrant and deep red. Provenance : Languedoc  

Lavande de Provence (lavender) is cream coloured and very fragrant with a slightly granular Provenance : Drôme, Vaucluse  

Sarrasin ou blé noir (buckwheat) is deep brown in colour, spicy and thick. Provenance: Brittany  

Trèfle (clover) is a white honey with a creamy texture and very mild flavour. Provenance: all regions  

Les Abeilles
21, rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles
75013 Paris
Téléphone : +33 (0)1 45 81 43 48
Métro "Place d'Italie" ou "Corvisart

Terroir - The Very Soul of the Earth

The other day while doing some research, I came across an old interview with someone I much admire - Marie Quatrehomme, the first woman to be awarded the coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France (2000). She is one of the best maître or in this case Maîtresse fromagère-affineuse in Paris, a star, an expert in her field. What was interesting about this was that the interviewer asked what spurred her curiosity for cheese and her response was la gourmandise! 

Really? Gluttony? One of the seven deadly sin? Was this really what she meant I wondered, for this woman is purported to be one of the most modest and genteel people in the business and gluttony seemed a bit strong (watch this BBC interview to see her in action and judge for yourself). To be sure, translation is a landmine, and while today the sinful word is more often translated as la gloutonnerie, in earlier times gluttony translated as la gourmandise. So in this case I have to believe she was referring to a more subtle, refined meaning of the word gourmandise, like delight or indulgence or delicacy.  Using my version, her response to the question about what inspired her passion for cheese was :  

"Indulgence (delight). There is not one cheese I have not tasted, and I would be hard pressed to say which I prefer. What is interesting with cheese is their infinite variety. To a certain extent, each cheese is an individual: with sample that bear the same name, you can have different tastes depending on the season, the degree of ripening, even the time of day. That's indulgence, ephemeral pleasure, fleeting, but that one can repeat at will."  

She goes on to say that "People here want des fromages de terroir (local cheeses) of which the progress from cow to shop does not eluded us! It is part of a history, the geography, in short, the way of life of our country. There is not a region in France that does not produce cheese, including Brittany." All very interesting and very true. The interviewer summed up the passion Madame Quatrehomme has for the subject of her metier in this phrase - "Cheese: a delicate substance, eminently appreciable, elusive, it is somehow the soul of the earth." 

Indulgence, delight or just a pure pleasure, when it comes to cheese, it is indeed any one of these, for to share the very soul of the earth it offers us is truly worth the sin. 

Bleu de Causses

A cheese for all seasons, Bleu de Causses was once known as the poor man’s Roquefort.  It is made in the cantons of the Aveyron Campagnac, Cornus, Millau, Peyreleau and Saint Affrique and two other communes: Tréves in the Gard and Pégairolles in Hérault,. The village of Peyrelade in the Gorges du Tarn is famous for the brand which bears it’s name. 

Originally, this cheese was made from a mixture of ewe’s, goat’s and cow’s milk, but in 1947, the governing body of the AOC required the cheese to be made strictly with cow’s milk and in a more limited area, receiving its first AOC in 1953 with further clarifications in 1979 when the collection zone for the milk and fabrication standards were decreed. It is uncooked and unpressed and generally is set out to age for 3 to 6 weeks in the natural caves of the gorges du Tarn, which are very similar to those in Roquefort, with natural "fleurines" that allow the “penicillium glaucum” to blossom and develop both the veining and the aroma. 

Summer cheeses are ivory in colour and very moist and the milk is heated to 68c to reduce development of listeria, they have a pronounced taste of summer pastures and are soft and savoury. It is truly sumptous yet subtle in texture and taste.  Those made in winter are drier and are whiter in colour, they have a stronger taste which is caused from longer aging and winter feed. Less strident than Bleu d’Auvergne which comes from further north of this region, Bleu de Causses is creamy, crumbly and milder in taste than Roquefort.  

Try it with a little salted butter on a crusty French bread.  Wines from the general region of Cahors and Madiran work well with it.  For a treat, try it with a sweet white wine from the region such as Montbazillac. 

The official website of le Bleu des Causses, AOC (in French)