Don't mess with the camembert, say French cheese experts

I've been having fun lately with France's penchant for regulating everything, but here's a rule worthy of support. It concerns camembert, the pungent Normandy fromage that springs to mind in much of the world when people say "French cheese".

A decision has just been made that will bar producers from using the coveted "appellation côntrolée" (AOC) label that designates genuine camembert if they make it with heat-treated or micro-filtered milk.

If you are outside France, this is theoretical since exported camembert is mostly the chalk-like industrial product that is made from fully pasteurised milk. Real, ancestral camembert, which goes gooey and yellow and carries a whiff of the Norman farmyard, is made only from raw milk. It accounts for a minority of the market even in France, which has only lately rediscovered a taste for authentic cheese. Lait cru (raw milk) is used to make only about 10 percent of the 650 cheeses sold in French supermarkets. 

The "camembert war" was started a year ago by the Lactalis dairy giant and a cheese cooperative at Isigny, in the Calvados département of Normandy, the cheese's home region.

Two premium brands owned by Lactalis -- Lepetit and Lanquetot -- dominate the real camembert market in France. The company decided to start heating its milk to about 60 degrees celsius to kill unwanted bacteria. Isigny decided to micro-filter its milk. Both said that the treatment did not change the flavour -- unlike pasteurisation -- but just made the cheese safer. Five smaller producers cried foul, saying that such tampering ruined it. Heat-treating the milk was a sin equivalent to shovelling cheap grapes into grand cru wine vats, they said. The big firms agreed to drop their "AOC" label of authenticity while a committee of experts investigated.

Their verdict in favour of strict lait cru only was announced yesterday and it will certainly be endorsed in time by the state AOC agency. It has been depicted abroad as a David-against-Goliath victory for the French culinary heritage (soon to be protected by Unesco). In reality, it was entirely expected because the committee was composed of  Normandy producers and farmers and the mood in France is strongly behind tradition in the face of a homogenising food world.

For France these days, flavour is political. It's one of the last things that France knows it does better than just about everyone else. The purity of camembert, said to have been devised just after the French revolution, is closely tied to the defence of le terroir. Difficult to define in English, this is the notion that wine and all other traditional food products and dishes owe their quality to the nature of the soil and the society in which they originate. Terroir is taken very seriously and taught to school children. My son's primary school class were taken to Normandy to tour a camembert plant a few years ago.

Here, in English, is the official definition of all the rules that must be complied with in order to call your cheese real AOC camembert.   

I agree with the real camembert people. We detected a change in our Lepetit and Lanquetot when they started using the new method. We also noted that it did not go mouldy so fast -- definitely a bad sign. Smelly French cheese caused me once to be ordered off a Russian train by border guards during the Cold War. They suspected that I was travelling with something lethal. I was bringing back to Moscow a supply of Reblochon, a great Alpine cheese made from raw milk. But that's another story.

And a footnote to any US readers who might be considering the homeland security aspects of camembert -- here's the federal law.   

      

Comments

[Joan Arles]

Wonderful, wonderful French cheese. A bottle of red and a good camembert, munster, reblochon or any other of the 600 or whatever varieties... that's reason alone for living in France.

[Dominique]

Remember "Asterix en Corse"?

A corsican cheese was the reason for the explosion of a ship cruising on the mediterranée. The ship was transporting the dangerous terrorist Ocatarinetabellatchitchix who wanted to free Corsica from the infamous empire of that time : the roman empire of course.

Does Good old Osama knows about the power of french cheese? Is that the real reason for anglosaxon distrust for fromage au lait cru? Is french cheese the very reason of french bashing toward "french surrender monkies being allies of terrorists"?

NB : for our friends educated in the american school system, corsica is the very opposite side of france as compared to normandy ;)

[Andy]

I've always found that fromage au lait cru to be an excellent indicator of pregnancy. You wait until the young lady, whom you suspect to be pregnant, is slicing into the cheese and then you let slip casually that it is made from lait cru and therefore better to leave alone if she is pregnant. Not pregnant, no pause and continued appreciation of lovely cheese. Pregnant, a worried look to seek confirmation and then move to another option. Fail safe with anglo-saxons and Parisiennes; less successful with those who've lived in the countryside.

[Robert Marchenoir]

I was afraid a major gaffe of international proportions had been committed on this blog, until I reached the end of the post and the Moscow anecdote: the photograph on top is obviously not of a camembert, but of a reblochon.

Still, a warning against messing with the camembert illustrated with a reblochon is grounds enough to re-invade England, IMHO.

And trying to mend fences by pretending to have detected a difference between Lanquetot made with raw milk and Lanquetot made with heated milk will not fool any Frenchman worth his salt, I'm telling you.

[Well done Robert. You guessed the trick picture. It was of course a Reblochon. But I've corrected it for those who didn't get the joke. CB]

[David]

Thank you for this balanced summary Charles. I would, however, like to make one or two points if i may.

firstly, just because a cheese is made with unpasteurised milk is no guarantee of its quality, taste and most significantly, heritage. The significance lies in the differentiation which one must make between industrially produced cheeses (lait cru ou pas) and farmhouse/artisanal cheeses. An industrially produced cheese is clearly self explanatory and is typified by the example given of lactalis. the milk is taken from a multitude of sources, where quality of life and thus alimentation of the animal is of limited importance, and is consequently produced on one or other side of the lait cru guidelines as required by the AOC. As a generel guideline, fromage fermier (there is a difference with fromage artisanal but semantics are unnecessary for the sake of my point) is produced by taking the milk of one herd i.e. one farmer and producing it with (modified by ec regulations) traditional techniques. these cheeses are primarily lait cru given the importance of tradition, quality and taste to the farmers themselves. This is just something to bear in mind when you are feeling happy with yourself for picking up a cheese marked "lait cru" in the supermarket!

Furthermore, i would suggest that the emphasis given to "lait cru" in debating the future of french cheese and its link to french heritage is to somewhat miss the point: No one wants to be a farmer any more. Wide generalisation unfortunately supported by the fact that multitudes of fermier producers have been unable/are on the point of being unable to find people willing to continue their production. Kids of Cheese-makers, as a rule, just aren't interested. of course, there are exceptions and these families will undoubtedly continue to represent a certain memory of france for a period to come. however, in the mean time, the number of the them goes down and the retail price goes up. outside the reach of the average french consumer. i would finish by drawing your attention to what Charles pointed out regarding the mathematics of the lactalis case: "Five smaller producers cried foul, saying that such tampering ruined it". Soon that five will be one or two and what the AOC thinks or does will be of little import.

[Yes, I am guilty of simplifying the cheese story. I know that it is much more complicated than my sketch. I agree that it's a rearguard action, but hope is not lost. I think that there is a real revival of interest in quality and taste in France at the moment. Mais peut-être je me trompe. CB]

[PJB]

CB for Président! Camembert Président!

[HdF]

As Clotaire Rapaille, a French who lives in the US and conducts product marketing studies for big corporations, once commented about, food in America is dead, so dead that it is sealed in plastic bags like ... corpses. Following his advice, a french cheese producer stopped trying to promote the lively character of its "produit du terroir" in America and started to seal them.

And since you are entering the AOC territory, it is worth mentionning that, non only public authorities regulate which variety of vine should be used for an AOC wine, they also classifie wine qualities by giving the labels "Grand cru", "Cru bourgeois" ... in the Bordelais. Obviously, they are little bit less reactive than Parker, since the "Château Mouton-Rothschild" is the only castle which has been promoted "Premier grand cru" since 1855.

[AlexAus]

We don't get real camembert in Australia, unfortunately. Our government says that it is too dangerous for us...

[Jorg Andersen]

There are good cheeses in Italy and even Germany and Austria, where I come from, but nobody beats the French for variety. I agree, they are right to use all means of defence against the homogenisation...

[Francois D]

Thank you for raw milk camenbert's promotion but restrictions which happens in some contries are the consequence of the caution's culture in which we have entered. There are probably methods to reconcile the two. First, there is bacteriological monitoring because microbes that make good cheese are not toxic. It would suffice to guarantee consumer such surveillance (actually this survey i s guaranted by legislation (!)). And eating good bacterias may be good for health. There is a current medical theory saying that increasing prevalence of allergies (that is, I concede, multifactorial) is also partly due to the consumption of a too sterilised alimentation, notably in early age. Since some years, infant milk industry adds microbes resembling those of mother milk in infant milk powder for this reason (probiotics).

Bacteriologists are familiar with germs of cheese (remember how Pasteur discovered bacterias and Flemings antibiotics).. It is best to consume a good fromage which has kept its good microbes rather than another pasteurized that may have been contaminated after sterilization during industrial production.

There would be 365 different cheeses in France (de Gaulle sayed that il was impossible to manage a country with 365 cheeses). It's certainly a heritage to be preserved. As also excellent Italian, Swiss, Spanishthe cheeses ...

Don't forget Maroilles, enough difficult to tranport (from North to Paris, particularly during summer, the best season for eating it remaining september because, it is then producted with spring milk (and best flavour for grass)

My advice to our friend Charles is to snack in the North, "la petite boulette d'Avesnes" (small dumpling Avesnes) among the most "terrible" of the cheeses, I know. Not to be transported without its original packaging under penalty of not being able to sell his car before long time.

[Marguerite.]

Les camemberts des marques Lepetit et Lanquetot n'ont jamais ete de bons camemberts. Si vous voulez un vrai camembert au lait cru et bien fait, il faut aller chez un bon fromager qui l'affine lui-meme.
Le meilleur camembert de Paris se trouve chez Cantin 12 rue du Champ de Mars 75007 Paris. Avec de la baguette croustillante et un verre de vin rouge, c'est un delice.

[Oliver, Switzerland]

I usually don't care too much about blogs. Charles Bremner's are an exception: they're informative, original and scintillatingly witty!
Vive Bremner! Vive le camembert AOC au lait cru et moulé à la louche!

[Romain]

Alexaus
You've got good cheese products in Tasmania, it's made by a French company (can't remember the name).
FDA is so stringent that Danny Boone and his Maroual cheese would be sent directly to Guantanamo for bioterrorism. Don't go Danny !

[French Blue]

Just one small point. Never, ever buy cheese in a supermarket. Not even in France. And don't put it in the fridge when you get home. (Sorry, that's two points.)

[qwerty]

Re Charles being stopped on trains for transporting cheese as WMD: travelling back to Paris from Amsterdam my Vicks inhaler was once closely examined ...

About no-one wanting to be farmers anymore, this should be re-assessed. With the prices of food going up the way they are, there are FORTUNES to be made in farming. All subsidies can now be cancelled, and public finances consequently reboosted. Send the money to Africa, or repay the national debt. I just love my economics.

[john o'doe]

Regarding the French penchant for regulating everything, valiant local resistance and what is allowed or forbidden, consider the case of the Ortolan bunting.
This tiny migratory bird is officially a protected species but local tradition and an eye for an interesting market ensures that many thousands are downed every year as they fly over SW France. Officials turn a blind eye to this charming local practice which involves an estimated 1500 part-time poachers
Captured and fattened ortolans are served in restaurants in Paris and further afield to customers who presumably get a kick out of eating forbidden fruit.
Mitterand famously ate an ortolan in his last supper.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_Bunting

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

The editor of The New Yorker magazine who wrote "Who he?" and "What that?" in the columns of writers' articles commissioned a story from Geoffrey Bocca about a Frenchman who ate sparrows. Bocca read the item from the Paris Trib. and said: "They are ortolans." "Not sparrows?" "No, ortolans -- a garden bunting." "A gar....ferget it!"
But I digress: we are on the cheese course, and I expect my 20th lait cru 'Bert (as we call 'em 'ere) from my good neighbour who visits thrice a year, and knows how to choose cheese.
I was taught that Camembert is a summer cheese. It should be runny, and my routine is to take the paper off, take one V slice out and stand it upright in the box so that it cannot run out of the crust.
Each time I taste it, with the crusty demi-baguette she brings with it, I "pleurer comme une Madeleine" as the memories float back: of picnics in Barbizon and at Moret-sur-Loing, aged 18, little Paris bistrots (Russian, meaning "quick" from the soldiers' calls in Paris, and adopted by the commercants) and the all night resto opposite Nice Matin (French law allows normal prices for meals in restos near newspaper offices, police stations, railway stations and post offices, for the toilers of the night) and by rivers and lakes in La Belle France. A viticulteur in the Herault did not believe that there is a cheese in the Pyrenees which is matured in cows' urine, but he believed a Corsican farmer whose cheese was eaten by snails in the cave where it was kept. "So we ate the snails," he added triumphantly. "And how did they taste?" I asked. "They had the flavour of my cheese," he smiled.
Must go, I hear a knock on my door.
P.S. I recommend St Mere.

[azloon]

to paraphrase the orson welles tv advert, 'never buy a cheese before it's time.'

my only cheese experience (of dubious interest) was when we young troublemakers, during the cold winter, hid fermented (that is to say standard) limburger cheese on the hot steam radiators in my primary school causing such an obnoxious stench that the classroom had to be evacuated temporarily. to our delight.

sort of made you wonder how people could actually eat the stuff.

tho i suspect Daniel loves it. and it certainly does mask any personal hygiene problems (to harken back to an earlier blog subject). quit smoking, eat limburger.

camembert obviously wouldn't work for that. a few more months of aging might do it, though.

:)

[Terry]

To be honeset, I have gotten a little tired of the camembert. More recently, I've been on the Beaufort. Some people prefer pills or the pistol. I choose to do it slow with fromage.

My wife says its her or the Beaufort. I'm gonna miss her.

[Anti-Fromage News League]

It's cheese people! Get a life!

[Daniel Strohl]

Azloon,

"camembert obviously wouldn't work for that".

Yes, but Munster (Munster Géromé) would definitely do the job. It is a cow milk cheese - both variants "pasteurisé" or "au lait cru" are available - rather smelly indeed as soon as it gets close to maturation, which doesn't take years ...

However, it is transportable across frontiers if one takes the precaution to have it duly vacuum-sealed by the vendor in a sturdy transparent plastic bag - an intelligent fall-out of modern technology.

Munster is the name of a small town in a valley on the Alsatian side of the Vosges mountains, close to Colmar where we live. Colmar is also close to well known vineyards and beautiful ancient villages with "maisons à colombages" (timbered houses?).

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

First, Daniel they are Dove houses (never rent one - noisy neighbours!)
Second, the clown above did not understand that a cheese acts like a madeleine in Proust's tisane, as the trigger to a host of memories of a life that could scarcely be bettered, that of a gourmet in France.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) on his travels with a donkey in the Cevennes, knew that cheese was a poor man's opium.
"Many the long night I've dreamed of cheese - toasted mostly." - Ben Gunn in Treasure Island.
Try equating the great paintings, sculpture and literature with the number of cheeses a country produces:
France; Italy; Holland; England; Wales; Ireland; Scotland; Spain; Greece; America; Canada etc etc.
NB: The Japanese do not eat cheese.

[Daniel Strohl]

Peter,

Thanks for the translation.

"Try equating the great paintings, sculpture and literature with the number of cheeses a country produces"

This didn't strike me up to now - LOL! May be one could do the same with liquors, wines etc. .)

[peter Mason]

Charles,

Your reference to the concept of 'terroir' sent me off to the bookshelves to find 'The Taste of Britain' by L. Mason [no relation so far as I'm aware} & C. Brown. The book is the product of an EU initiative named Euroterroir which sought to identify traditional and regional dishes and foodstuffs. In their preface they defined 'terroir' as carrying "implications of regionality, cultural grouping and the influence of trade and climate...".

I have to admit however that the project's definition of the British Isles was a tad individual as it excludes Ireland entirely, presumably as that was the concern of another research team, but includes the Channel Islands.

[Pierre]

The Japanese I know love cheese. Of course, it's so good (the cheese, not the Japanese).
Anyway, I find the American decision to ban raw milk is one of the greatest mysteries of my life, along with the existence of Christian rock.
Just like marijuana, taste it before you ban it.

[Steven Wilson]

The real discovery of a recent stay in Normandy was Chaource...ambrosia!Like eating clouds...why do only Harrods seem to stock it?!

and I come from the land of Dunsyre Blue, Isle of Mull vintage cheddar, Wester Laurenceton sweet-milk, and the mighty Craigmyle Wummle:

"By Wummle and Lochwannoch and Lochwaber I will go..."

[john o'doe]

Daniel
You were half right with "maisons à colombages" (timbered houses?). In fact they're known as half-timbered.

Peter K gave you a bum steer with his Dove houses as he seems to have confused 'à colombages' with 'colombier' which is another kettle of fish or a bird of another feather.

[Ros]

Wonderful article - much more interesting than "Paris Book Fair" where I dared to criticise (most unjustly) Charles' remarks about Left Bank intellos - we have cheese too & the latest branch of Androuet is in the rue Mouffetard (the manager has been with Androuet since 1955 & I think the original Henri Androuet's shop in the rue d'Amsterdam was founded in 1890 or thereabouts - which doesn't mean that I'm not going to hasten to try MARGUERITE'S "chez Cantin" (also Left Bank)

[gt4569a]

Mystery solved: raw milk is not banned in the US. (I'm assuming that "American" is intended to refer to the USA in the above comment; in Canada, raw milk is banned).
In the US, the federal recommendation- not regulation- has not been universally adopted. There is no federal law governing the distribution of raw milk. In most states raw milk may be legally purchased from a dairy farm. In a few states, it is also legal to sell raw milk in grocery stores.
All states permit the sale of unpasteurized cheeses (as does Canada).

[Daniel Strohl]

John, Peter

It was a misunderstanding with Peter. He understood "colombiers", which are indeed quite common and sometimes are rather big constructions in some regions of southern France (but not in Alsace), while I was meaning "maisons à colombages", which are quite common here. Now, I have got why Peter was speaking of noisy neighbours!

John, I like your expressions bum steer, kettle of fish and bird of another feather, which I didn't know up to now. English teaching in French schools 50 or 60 years ago was much too academic - LOL! But I am afraid that things have not changed much since that time.

But there are exceptions - I remember of a lady explaining on the blog a few weeks ago that she used Charles' articles to teach English to her students (bankers, lawyers) - this is an excellent idea. Being able to quote Shakespeare or Rabelais (hey, Azloon!) is quite fine, but does not help much in real life, if one is not able to understand reasonably well an article of these august papers called The Times or Le Monde .)

[Dewey]

gt4569a, American raw milk cheeses are listed on the slow food website http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/raw_milk_cheese.html
See also the Raw Milk Cheese Association website http://www.rawmilkcheese.org/

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

As a learner, rather than a teacher, thanks for colombage which dove-tails nicely ito a story of c h e e s e. An impecunious American author in Ibiza claimed the only thing which stopped him commmitting suicide was the thought of Roquefort cheese. An English girl said: "When I return through France, Steve, I'll bring you some."
He looked forward to it all winter then a card from her said she was arriving with the World's Greatest Cheese. Unfortunately, she began to nibble at it on the harbour and on the long hot walk up to his apartment on top of the Old Town. When she rang his bell she was filled with guilt, wiping her lips and begged his forgiveness.
Complaining about her treachery, an American said: "I'll bring you a whole Stilton from England."
Connecting English Stilton to Port wine, he asked various Brits how this worked. "You taste the cheese then sip the port." "No, you sip the port first, then eat the cheese." "Both wrong," said an aged gourmet. "One slices the top crust off the Stilton, scoops out a hole the size of an egg-cup, then pour the port in so that it seeps slowly into the cheese, then you take a scooped slice....."
The endless discussion enlivened Steve's winter and when the boat arrived he was drooling and met the boat on the harbour, just in case...
"Did you get the Stilton?" "Yeah, I got it but I have to explain..."
On the harbour he opened the box slowly: "You ain't going to like this, Steve, but the gaaadamn customs suspected I was smuggling, and to check they cut it in half..."
There lay the famous Stilton, cut through from top to bottom.
Taking the newly purchaed bottle of port wine from his coat pocket he looked at it and said:
"If there was an almond tree on this island big enough, I'd hang myself..."

[Jeff Taylor]

If you are lucky enough to get hold of a real farm-made Camembert, remember to eat the rind as well. Just scrape of any extra hard bits first. Acarians live in the rind but they just add to the flavour.

At the risk of provoking an enormous groan from the purist classes, I should add that popping in your mouth a wedge of Cam upon which you have carefully spread a light coating of Marmite is one of life's lesser-known delights.

[The Marmite goes well with the acarians... but you have to have grown up with it. (note to Australians, it's Vegemite; to Americans and French, it's better that you don't know. CB]

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Marmite, Vegemite...the Irish have Guinness Spread, known to shopkeepers as GYE (Guinness Yeast Extract) It can be spread on the lightly-buttered aspirin in a rose petal, known to cure headaches, or taken on a sliver of toast with the light, dry Liebfraumilch with which one accompanies the Irish breakfast: cereal with milk, bacon, egg, sausage, lamb chop, kidneys, toast and marmelade.
Bon appetit.

[Jack]

Dominique,

We, the products of the American educational system know our monkey business even if our knowledge of where Normandy/Corsica are located this week is shaky: the plural is spelled 'monkeys' ;)

[Ros]

Jeff Taylor: Have just tried your marmite -camembert idea - no, I can't agree , the salt in the Marmite (the only reason I've reduced my consumption lately) quite overwhelms the taste of the cheese! No entente cordiale here, I'm afraid!