Reblochon or Reblochon de Savoie

Joseph Paccard Affineur

C H E E S E   A N T H O L O G Y

Reblochon, or Reblochon de Savoie

By Edward Behr

appellation: Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP)

place: French Alps (most of the department of Haute Savoie and a little of Savoie), eastern France

milk: cow (Abondance, Montbéliarde, and Tarentaise breeds), raw

type: rennet-curd, lightly pressed, soft

size: a flat disk with bulging sides, about 14 cm (5.5 in) in diameter and about 3.5 cm (1.4 in) thick, weighing 450 to 550 grams (1 to almost 1.25 pounds), or about 9 cm (about 3.5 in) in diameter and about 3 cm (a little more than 1 in) thick, weighing 230 to 280 grams (about .5 to .6 pounds)

production: 129 farms (out of 479 farms producing milk) and 18 dairy plants; 11 specialist affineurs; a total of around 16,000 metric tonnes annually, of which 2,000 tonnes are farm-made

related cheeses: none

look for: a farm-made (fermier) cheese, which is more likely to be found at a specialist shop (in addition to other labeling, it has a small green plaque on one face, while a dairy plant cheese has a red one); the larger size of Reblochon (not the “petit,” if there is a choice, on the theory that the larger cheese develops more flavor): a softer cheese (more typical of fermier, and softness suggests ripeness); in a cut-open cheese, a thin, tender rind and an interior that shines and slightly flows. Demand for Reblochon is greatest in winter, but the best season for the milk is summer and fall. Sadly, Reblochon, being raw-milk and quickly ripened, is not available in the US.

taste: A Reblochon is creamy in both texture and flavor, mild, but with a nuttiness and somewhat subtle milky depth; the fermier cheeses are softer and have more character.

drinks: First choice is a light, lively white wine, which describes typical Savoie whites, such as Roussette or Chignin-Bergeron. A fermier Reblochon goes with a more substantial white, such as, looking to parts of France beyond Savoie, a dry Loire Chenin Blanc, a white Macon, or a Meursault. More than most cheeses, Reblochon goes with red wines, still light and fresh, whether from Savoie, Beaujolais, the Jura, the Loire, or somewhere else.

 

The Savoie is rich in cheeses — Reblochon, Abondance, Beaufort, Chevrotin, and Tome des Bauges (each with an Appellation d’Origine Protégée); Emmental de Savoie, Raclette de Savoie, and Tomme de Savoie (each with an Indication Géographique Protégée); Bleu des Tignes, Persillé des Tignes, Persillé des Aravis, Bleu de Termignon (all blues); and Vacherin des Bauges, Colombier, Abbaye de Tamié (a mixed group), and more. Reblochon is the most famous. In quantity, it vies with Roquefort for second place among all AOP French cheeses (although there’s four times as much Comté, the number one).

The zone for Reblochon lies almost entirely within the department of Haute Savoie, crossing just a little into the department of Savoie, the pair making up the region of Savoie. In May or June, most of the cattle move up from the valley farms, which are already above 500 meters (1,640 feet), into the alpages, the high mountain pastures, which can reach 2,500 meters (more than 8,000 feet). In winter, the cows’ primary diet is hay.

The earliest reference to “Reblechon” occurs in an official record of 1699, but according to oral history the cheese had already been made for several centuries. It became more widely known during the 19th century, when it was sold in markets in valley towns and in the city of Annecy. During the 20th century, many Savoie cheeses declined and even disappeared, but in the 1980s and 90s, production of Reblochon increased rapidly and has held fairly steady ever since. That’s partly because Reblochon is not only eaten on its own but also used in cooking (to make the popular tartiflette), and it could be that French consumers have turned toward milder, creamier cheeses.

To give a little more context to Reblochon, the methods for making the different Savoie cheeses weren’t necessarily fixed in the past (nor were some of the names). The former Colombière, for instance, which had one surviving maker in the 1980s, was apparently a taller, larger Reblochon. Colombier, so close in name, was and is a mixed-milk cheese with no tight definition. Until the 1950s, families commonly kept one or two goats, and then the region’s diminishing number of farms began to specialize in dairy cows. A few, generally smaller farms, however, continued to raise goats and make cheese from the milk. In 2002, an AOP was awarded to Chevrotin — all-goat, raw-milk, washed-rind, and farm-made. It was and generally is seen as the goat counterpart to Reblochon, although it’s a more definitely washed-rind cheese. (Even with an AOP, Chevrotin production is just half of 1 percent that of Reblochon.) Once, sheep too gave milk for cheese; by the 1970s, unfortunately, the Thônes et Marthod breed was nearly extinct, although a small population has rebounded.

Most Reblochon is made in laiteries (dairy plants), and most of the farmers who produce the milk for Reblochon keep higher-yielding Montbéliarde cows, originally from the Jura. The farmers who make Reblochon themselves mainly keep the Haute Savoie’s native breed, the Abondance (which shares its name with another mountain cheese), though some have the smaller Tarine, officially called the Tarentaise, which is native to the Savoie department. Both native breeds are especially adapted to conditions in the alpages.

For laiterie Reblochon, the milk is collected from farms and used within 24 hours of milking. At the plants, there’s some mechanization and typically a shorter ripening. The cheeses are generally made firmer, which helps them stand up in larger-scale distribution.

The quantity of Reblochon fermier has been slowly declining for a long time, but 120 farms still make it, more farms than make any other French cheese. They’re concentrated around the town of Thônes, the historical center for the cheese.

Reblochon fermier is made, as always, twice a day, immediately after each milking, while the milk is warm from the cow (if it cools, it may be warmed slightly). Indigenous Reblochon cultures are added along with enough rennet to set the curd quickly. The curd is then cut with the wires of a harp to sizes between those of “a grain of wheat and a kernel of corn.” The assembled molds are covered with a large cloth, which is pushed into each, and the molds are filled with curd. The whey drains, and the cheeses are turned in their molds, and then they’re lightly pressed under individual metal weights. For the makers, it’s a long though not rushed day. At about 7 or 7:30 in the evening, to give an idea, the weights are placed on the evening cheeses. Then around 5 in the morning, they’re removed and the cheeses are put into brine for two hours (or on some farms they’re dry-salted), and as soon as the morning milking is over, cheesemaking begins again. During their first week, the cheeses dry slowly, with frequent turning, in the range of 14 to 21 degrees C (57 to 70 degrees F); on the fifth day, they’re “washed” — rubbed with plain water using a very soft brush. All the work is by hand, except that the washing is now done by feeding the cheeses into a specially designed machine. When the week is up, most of the fermier cheeses are sent to specialist affineurs to complete the ripening.

The respected affineur firm Joseph Paccard handles only fermier cheeses, above all Reblochons, currently from 17 farms. “They are 17 different cheeses,” Bertrand Paccard says. “Each farm has its own typical character, shape, color, texture.” The differences reflect the technique, the way the curd is worked, the culture, and, he thinks, the way the cattle are raised, including what they eat.

At Paccard, the Reblochons fermiers rest on spruce boards at 11 to 13 degrees C (52 to 55 degrees F) in very high humidity. (Dairy plant Reblochons generally sit on stainless-steel or plastic.) The cheeses are turned for even drying, and the shelves themselves are also turned, so the cheeses can be set back on a dry surface. After a week, the cheeses are again “moistened,” just once, with salted water, one face at a time, two days apart, so a damp cheese won’t adhere to the wood. That keeps the crust soft and thin and even the development of the crust. Surface organisms appear. The flora that ripen the cheese, both the added and the wild, from the farms and the cellars, are strains of lactic bacteria, yeast, geotrichum, and Brevibacterium linens and other coryneform bacteria. It’s the coryneform that produce the rind’s golden to pinkish color, which is covered over with what looks like white dust, from geotrichum. Although the minimum required ripening is just 15 days, the fermier cheeses are generally ripened for at least three to four weeks; at Paccard, the time is four to five.

Inside its final wrapping, each cheese, whether fermier or laitier, is protected on either side by a very thin slice of wood, which, like the shelves of the cave, both absorbs excess moisture and helps to keep the cheese moist. Even in its package and well-chilled, the cheese continues to evolve, so it’s best eaten before long. In a cut-open cheese, you can see tiny openings; a good sign is a shining interior soft enough to begin to flow.

The opening section of this entry says that no other cheese is related to Reblochon, but there may have been a few, or it may depend on where you draw the line, or Reblochon itself may have changed a little. If it were washed more often, it would come out more like one of the stinky washed-rind cheeses, such as Munster, and in the past some or all Reblochon may have been more like that, but the current practice sets Reblochon more apart. The mildness and richness show off the quality of the milk.●

 

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