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Exploring Cheese-Making In Comte, France

Locations in this article:  Paris, France

Exploring Cheese-Making In Comte, France

Fountain in Lyon, FranceIt seems that if a region is lucky enough to have a signature
product, it comes with a built-in tourist base.  

As proof, regular pilgrimages are made to Scotland’s Scotch whisky distilleries
and Kentucky’s bourbon distilleries, and don’t even get me started on the
Champagne region of France.

Travelers come, of course, to savor and pay homage, but also to learn something
about why that region and no other has received such largesse.

With apologies to Wisconsin, “real” Cheddar cheese comes from the Cheddar Gorge
in the county of Somerset in England? Champagne has to come from Champagne,
while similar bubbly from other places is referred to as sparkling wine. Wild
Turkey is considered bourbon, but Jack Daniels is Tennessee sipping whiskey?

I’ll just allow myself to indulge in the splendors of these regional
cornucopias. On a recent visit to the Comte Region of France, I learned just why
this cheese is a favorite of the French people themselves.

In Bouverans, in the heart of the Franche-Comte Region, sandwiched between
Burgundy and Alsace, Jean-Francois Marmier is typical of farmers who raise a
breed of cattle known as Montbeliarde for the express purpose of making the
cheese that has come to define the region.

French cheeseHis favorite cow, Celestine, of the long fluttering eyelashes
and decorative bell draped around her neck, has not yet begun to produce milk,
but when she does, he assures me, “Ooh-la la; you are in for a treat.”

Celestine’s output will go into the making of Comte, so creamy, nutty and rich
that it just begs for a fondue pot to bubble in, and is most often compared to
its Swiss counterpart, Gruyere. Make no mistake, however, Comte can stand on its
own merit.

Franche-Comte, a rural area in the 3,700-foot Jura Mountains near the Swiss
border has some 3,000 dairy farms like Marmier’s, along with 1,700 fruitieres,
where the milk is turned into cheese, and 16 to 20 aging cellars where the
cheese wheels languish on shelves for anywhere from six months to two years. The
good news for visitors is that the cheese is so important to the region that it
has led to the Routes du Comte which can be followed with as much mouth-watering
enthusiasm as the wine trails of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

If you are on a quest for Comte and not sure where to begin, your best option
would be a visit to La Maison
du Comte
in the town of
Poligny. The headquarters of the Comte Cheese Association, the Maison also has a
small museum, where you can learn the history of the cheese (it has been
produced the same way since the 13th century) and see 576 species of plants
which factor into the taste of the cheese. For €5, or about $6.20, you can tour
the museum and they’ll throw in a tasting of two of the cheeses. More important,
they can help you plan your trip through the region.

Cheese & Basil on breadYou can find out which fruitieres allow visitors (a surprising number of
them do), and where to see the aging process. For the latter, one of the most
atmospheric aging cellars is at Fort St. Antoine, near the town of Malbuisson.
The fort, built in the 19th century, after France’s war with Prussia, was one of
a series intended to protect the country’s eastern border. With pesky Prussia no
longer a problem, the fort has found a new life as a “cathedral for affinage,”
the art of aging cheese, with 100,000 wheels aged here annually.

Of course, you can see only so many contented cows and slumbering cheeses before
you want to taste the final product. There is no dearth of options, but this
being France, the best place is to seek out a Michelin-starred restaurant and
sample Comte in a variety of tasty dishes, from tarte au fromage to raclette.

Three excellent places to do so are Le Bon Accueil in
Malbuisson, Domaine du Revermont in
Passenans and La Chaumiere in
Dole, all spots where you can enjoy a four-course tasting menu (heavy on the
Comte) for about the same price as an entrée in Paris.

For more information about the region and the cheese, go to www.comte.com.

By Patti Nickell for PeterGreenberg.com. Patti Nickell is a contributing
travel writer for the
Lexington
Herald-Leader.

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