Brie

 

Union Interprofessionnelle du Brie de Meaux et du Brie de Melun (left). La Ferme de Juchy (right).

C H E E S E   A N T H O L O G Y

Brie de Meaux, Brie de Melun, and Other Bries

By Edward Behr

appellation: Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP) for Brie de Meaux and for Brie de Melun, none for other Bries

place: for AOP Brie de Meaux, an area running east from Paris, including all of the department of Seine-et-Marne with parts of Aube, Loiret, Marne, Haute-Marne, Meuse, and Yonne; for AOP Brie de Melun, all of Seine-et-Marne with small parts of Aube and Yonne; for other traditional Bries, parts of the same area; for generic Brie, anywhere in France or the world

milk: cow (no particular breed); raw (required for the two AOP cheeses), heat-treated, pasteurized, or microfiltered

type: small, predominantly rennet-curd for Brie de Melun and predominantly acid-curd for Brie de Meaux and other Bries, soft (soft to semi-firm for Brie de Melun), bloomy-rind

size: a wide, thin disk; for AOP Brie de Meaux, from a mold 36 to 37 cm (about 14 inches) in diameter with the cheese weighing from 2.6 to 3.3 kilos (5.75 to 7.25 pounds); for AOP Brie de Melun, from a mold 27 to 28 cm (10.6 to 11 inches) in diameter with the cheese weighing from 1.5 to 2.2 kilos (3.3 to 4.9 pounds); variable sizes and weights for other Bries

production: for Brie de Meaux, 1 farm producer and 7 others (6 of which also ripen their cheeses) plus 4 separate affineurs, a total of around 6,500 metric tonnes annually of which about 75 tonnes are fermier; for Brie de Melun, 4 producers (3 of which also ripen their cheeses) plus 3 separate affineurs, a total of around 225 metric tonnes annually; total production of Brie in France about 150,000 tonnes (about half of which is exported)

related cheeses: Camembert, Coulommiers, and the proprietary Fougerus

look for: a shop that cares, a hand-ladled raw-milk cheese (such as the two AOP Bries), the slight irregularity that suggests hand production, a somewhat variably colored crust, the degree of ripeness you prefer (for Brie de Meaux, from the required minimum of four weeks up to seven or eight weeks, when it’s creamy all the way through; for Brie de Melun, from the required minimum of five weeks up to 12 to 14 weeks, when it’s creamy all the way through); and a good producer (among the more easily found in France: Ferme des Trente Arpents makes fermier Brie de Meaux and other Bries, Fromagerie de Rouzaire also makes a range of Bries, and Ferme de Juchy makes Brie de Melun).

taste: Brie de Meaux offers mild flavors of butter, cream, and nuts, with the theoretical possibility of a hint of garlic (barnyard). Brie de Melun is distinctly stronger, saltier, and firmer, especially as the cheese grows older, with fruity and animal aspects.

drinks: As with Camembert, Champagne is repeatedly suggested — red wine’s tannin risks a metallic effect — and there’s a geographic link because the area for Brie de Meaux extends into Champagne. And as with Camembert, dry cider is good.

 

I bought my first slice of Brie in 1982 at the tiny Barthélemy shop in Paris, waited on by an efficient woman in a white shop dress. The space was so small and so full of smells! On the short section of counter sat three-quarters of a wide, flat disk of what must have been Brie de Meaux; two carefully shaped sticks of marble held back the creamy paste. What did it taste like? I only remember that I wasn’t disappointed.

The land of Brie, called la Brie — the cheese is masculine — starts not far from Paris and runs east and southeast. Paris was the market for the region’s ripe cheese as well as its fresh cheeses and butter. Today’s Brie de Meaux appellation extends east into Champagne, where the land is less fertile but there are more cows. La Brie is in fact divided in two and the eastern part is la Brie Champenoise. (For another perspective on the land and the cheeses, see Guélia Pevzner on Bries.)

Plain “Brie” isn’t a legally protected name, so it appears on endless cheeses. Taste a slice on an everyday cheese platter and it has no sort of identity; all that may stand out is a gluey texture — it’s a practical item that doesn’t flow. The two official appellations bear town names, Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun, and there are or were Bries de Provins, de Nangis, de Montereau, de Valois. Fully alive is the closely related, much smaller Coulommiers, sometimes called Brie de Coulommiers. Until the second half of the 19th century, no one differentiated much among Bries by name. Now they’re particularly distinct in the case of the two AOPs.

This photo of 70 years ago shows several Bries de Meaux and de Melun, with their typical orangey color of the time, and one ash-coated Brie de Melun bleu, a cheese that’s now extinct. Archives du S.P.E.L et du Ministère de l’Agriculture (appearing in Fromages de France: Société Civile d’Information et d’Édition des Services Agricoles, Paris, 1953).

 

 

 

 

To back up just a little, Brie was once commonly described as a great orange pancake. A photo in the 1953 book Fromages de France (with a preface by Curnonsky) shows half a dozen Bries striated with orange; among them, unexpectedly, is cheese that’s blue. The orange color of most of the cheeses is evidence of Brevibacterium linens, which creates the characteristic strong odor of cheeses such as Époisses and Munster; it has all but disappeared from modern Brie. The unexpected cheese is a Brie de Melun bleu, a more or less fresh ash-coated cheese that predates the AOP and no longer exists. (You can still find, exceptionally, Brie noir, which has a strong, particular taste.)

The big division is between Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun, with other place-name Bries being more like Meaux. (Montereau may be closest to Melun.) Both appellations require unmanipulated raw milk, although the milk is partly skimmed, so the cheeses drain well and have the desired texture and also, for centuries, to provide cream and butter for Paris cooks.

The curd for Brie de Meaux is set primarily with rennet rather than acidity; it forms in less than two hours. It’s sliced vertically in a coarse grid to begin to release whey. Then the molds are filled by hand using the required pelle à Brie, a tool with a handle that curves backward over a wide blade. Compared with an acid curd, the rennet curd contracts more quickly, losing more whey. The cheeses can be unmolded sooner; they’re drier from the start. Brie de Meaux can be sold after four weeks, when it’s creamy about a quarter of the way through, and it becomes fully creamy at six to eight weeks.

Brie de Melun is a little more complicated. Jean-Claude Pette considers it the “ancestor” of all the Bries. He and his wife, Patricia, launched their Brie de Melun fermier in 1993 at La Ferme de Juchy, little more than an hour from the center of Paris. The last previous farm producer had stopped so long ago that Pette doesn’t know when that was, although he has a Brie de Melun fermier label from the 1940s. (By the time he began to make Brie, B. linens had retreated so far that, when I asked, it seemed almost unknown to him.) Not long ago, the Pettes sold their farm cheese plant to Fromagerie Delin, a family-owned firm from Burgundy. The Pettes’ herd of 100 cows continues to supply the milk. (The fromagerie is still on the farm, but Ferme de Juchy Brie no longer qualifies as “fermier” because the ownership is separate.) Pette has ceased to make cheese, but he’s remains the great expert on Brie de Melun.

The best Brie of the year, he says, is made from autumn milk, which is the richest. The curd for Brie de Melun is set with acidity and just a little rennet. From the time the rennet is added to the time the curd is molded, at least 16 hours must pass to allow the acidity to rise. Just before molding, the curd is stirred, which breaks it into coarse, uneven pieces. The molds, 17 centimeters (almost 7 inches) high, are filled with a conventional large ladle. Hand work is required; anything else would break the curd too much.

The full molds under the rules must drain for at least 18 hours, with no form of pressure; Pette says the actual time needed is at least 24 hours. Brie de Melun, with its fragile lactic curd, is considerably smaller than Brie de Meaux. It has to be, so it can be turned safely. (It may go without saying that cheeses have to be turned regularly for even drying and ripening.) A new Brie de Melun has so little substance that, taken from the mold, it always used to be immediately surrounded by an éclisse, a metal band that, with a metal sheet held top and bottom, allowed the cheese to be turned safely. Now the molds come in two parts, and the upper one can be lifted off, saving a step.

The unmolded cheese is dry-salted on one side and the next day on the other. The amount of salt is a little more than for other Bries, because Brie de Melun is wetter, and in the moist environment the white penicillium needs more salt to grow; the salt also holds back the competing geotrichum, a yeastlike fungus common to soft cheeses. Melun ripens — turns creamy — only slowly, held back by the cheese’s slowly diminishing acidity.

Brie de Melun from traditional molds has straight sides that become slightly concave as the cheese dries. The saltiness naturally increases, too. Full aging lasts 12 to 14 weeks, Pette says; that’s when the cheese is fully creamy and at its best. “Some people like it older than that,” he adds. “It’s a very special taste.” Inevitably, Melun is stronger and saltier than Meaux.

Compared with Brie de Meaux, the total amount of Brie de Melun produced is much, much less — not even 4 percent. The method for Melun gives a lower yield, but that’s compensated for by a higher price, so it’s not the explanation. “Melun is much more complicated to make and to make successfully,” Pette explains. “There’s much more loss from defects; it’s too dry, too flowing, too —.” That’s why fewer people make it and there’s so much less of it.●

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