Syndicat Interprofessionnel du Mont d’Or
C H E E S E A N T H O L O G Y
Mont d’Or, or Vacherin du Haut-Doubs
By Edward Behr
appellation: Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP)
place: a section of the Doubs department along the Swiss border, Jura Mountains, France
milk: cow (Montbéliarde and, exceptionally, Simmental breeds), raw
type: washed-rind, creamy
size: rounds 10 to 32 cm (about 4 in to about 12½ in) in diameter and from 3 to 5 cm (just over 1 in to almost 2 in) high, weighing 480 grams to 3.2 kilos (about 1 pound to 7 pounds), box included
production: nine dairy plants and one farm, about 5,500 metric tonnes annually; sold only from September 10 to May 10
related cheeses: the nearly extinct Vacherin d’Abondance and Vacherin des Bauges in France, Vacherin Mont-d’Or and Försterkäse in Switzerland, Jasper Hill Farm’s Winnimere and Upland Cheese’s Rush Creek in the United States
look for: delicacy with some depth of flavor, full creaminess but not much ripening beyond that
taste: The appeal centers on the luscious texture; the aroma is dominated by a note of resin entering the cheese from the surrounding spruce bark, while the overall mildness doesn’t preclude a little earthy funk.
drinks: From the same region, the Jura, the natural combination is with a sous-voile white wine (Savagnin or Chardonnay). Alternatively, an inexpensive light white from neighboring Savoie is fine. Or serve a good to very good older Burgundy-style Chardonnay.
The creamy unto flowing, earthy, spruce-bound Mont d’Or, also called Vacherin du Haut-Doubs, from the Jura Mountains of eastern France, is a cold-season cheese, like the Vacherin Mont-d’Or made in adjacent Switzerland. The mountain itself, the Mont d’Or, at 1,463 meters is the highest point in Doubs department, its summit lying nearly on the Swiss border. Long ago during the winter, when travel was difficult and the cows produced less milk, rather than combine their milk to make large wheels of Gruyère de Comté, individual farmers made these relatively small cheeses, known as vacherins. Today, the production and sale of vacherin are still limited to the cold months. Winter is a period of richer milk, although the difference was greater historically, when the cheese was made from the naturally richer milk of the end of the lactation period (back before cows had been bred for longer lactations and much higher yields of milk). The nine French dairies that produce the cheese, five of them cooperatives, also make the region’s Comté and other cheeses. In addition, one farm makes Mont d’Or. The producers aim at gentle aromas, which are led by spruce resin; there are characteristic earthy notes from the “washing” of the cheeses during the initial ripening, and the aftertaste can include a point of bitterness. The creamy cheese, even with the support of its circle of spruce bark, has so little structure that it’s sold in a light, thin spruce box. The lusciousness of Mont d’Or, associated especially with the end-of-the-year holidays, is a certain crowd-pleaser.
Of the other French vacherins, Vacherin d’Abondance, though reduced to a single farm producer with very limited sales, not long ago was produced on a number of farms in the neighboring region of Savoie. That may be where all vacherins originated. References to the cheese date from as early as the 12th century, and by the 15th century the cheese was bark-circled and creamy in more or less the modern way. In 1846, the writer Alfred de Bougy in Le Tour de Léman described “esteemed” Vacherins d’Abondance — “preparations that are almost liquid and very delicate, which are flowed into shaved circles of spruce, sometimes still garnished with forest moss, and made in a very rustic way.”
In its area to the north, AOP Mont d’Or appears to be descended from a somewhat separate cheese called vachelin, mentioned as long ago as the 15th century and made around Mont d’Or and the village of Mouthe. The creaminess of vachelin, according to an account of the 1740s, was an innovation of the 1680s, when the cheese was already being sold in a box.
To make Mont d’Or, similarly to other vacherins, a relatively large amount of calf rennet is added to the warm raw milk, so the curd sets rapidly. It’s cut into large cubes that are left to rest and shrink in their whey, and are then transferred to the molds. About a day later, the cheeses are unmolded and ringed with spruce bark. They’re brined and then ripened on spruce planks in very high humidity at a temperature no warmer than 15 degrees C (59 degrees F). During their first days, they’re repeatedly turned and “washed,” meaning rubbed or brushed (with a very soft brush) with water or brine. Soon after the twelfth day, the cheese goes into its wooden box to complete its aging, which must last through at least the 21st day. A sign of full creaminess is an undulant top crust, whose color is tan to sometimes pinkish. If the supply is greater than the immediate demand, the ripe cheeses are held in the cold so that evolution nearly stops. But a refrigerator chill hides the gorgeous texture, and for eating the cheese is best at cool room temperature.
The key difference between France’s Mont d’Or (or Vacherin du Haut-Doubs) and Switzerland’s Vacherin Mont d’Or, with its confusingly similar name, is that the Swiss cheese is made with heat-treated milk (in a continuing response to 1980s problems with salmonella and then a fatal outbreak of lysteria). Although the temperature is less than that for pasteurization, the effect is to suppress flavor. Perhaps in compensation, the cheese is washed more often, giving the crust a pinker color and a stronger aroma. In the United States, the only European vacherin available is the Swiss one, and it’s well worthwhile. But also available and especially fine are the vacherin-inspired raw-milk cheeses Winnimere, made by Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, and Rush Creek Reserve, made by Upland Cheese in Wisconsin.
Mont d’Or is served with a spoon. To facilitate that, in Paris, before sale, cheese shops commonly remove and discard the top crust, a potentially messy and wasteful process if you try it yourself. But that’s Paris. When I mentioned removing the crust to the director of the Mont d’Or producers’ group, she emailed back in all-caps: “ON N’ENLEVE JAMAIS LA CROUTE!!!” (“YOU NEVER REMOVE THE CRUST!!!”) When I spoke with Frédéric Royer, a cheeseseller in Thonon-les-Bains near the cheese’s home region, he blamed too long aging that gives the Paris crusts a sandy texture. The crust should be tender, and in the Jura it is, and you eat it. Royer said Mont d’Or should be free of sharpness from lactic acidity; it should be “sweet.” ●
