The Provenance is People
Good cheese – really good cheese – is more than just a tasty food made from milk. It is a confluence of history, provenance, and, perhaps most importantly, people. When I am helping to source and select cheeses for us to import, it is just as vital that I get to know the stories of the people behind them. To truly do this, it is vital to travel to the source to see, to speak, and to taste.
We are rarely satisfied at The Fine Cheese Co., a quality that is at the company’s core. Our founder Ann-Marie Dyas stated it plainly: “Seek out the best and when you find it, keep looking.” This mentality keeps us from resting on our laurels, and we are constantly on the hunt and keeping our ears to the ground. Sometimes, a delicious cheese we have carried experiences change in some way, and we consider how this affects us.
In this case, we learned quite unexpectedly that the affineur in Aurillac we had worked with for years for both Fourme d’Ambert and Saint-Nectaire Fermier was no longer a part of the company that bears his name. We had already noticed a bit of a change in the cheese itself, particularly the St. Nectaire that Ann-Marie had exactingly selected while she was still alive. There was a difference in texture, in flavour, and in the cheese’s general pace of maturation once we received it, and not to the profile we had specified. Even after attempting to iron these details out with the new ownership, the cheese left us wanting more.
Thus it was that a trip to Auvergne became necessary, to seek out something new. First there was the matter of St. Nectaire. I had gone down my usual rabbit hole and discovered a small-scale affineur in Puy-de-Dôme ripening only this cheese in an underground cave – and better yet, nobody in the United Kingdom seemed to know anything about it! Next came the matter of blue cheese, and instead of looking to an affineur we went straight to the dairy – an important producer whom we had met and fully enjoyed several times at trade shows.
Société Laitière de Laqueuille
Our first visit was to the small mountain town of Laqueuille-Gare, 950m above sea level, to tour the facilities of the Société Laitière de Laqueuille. Owned in majority by the dairy farmers who contribute their milk to production, they are famed the world over for one thing above all others: blue cheese. If you have ever tried Fourme d’Ambert or Bleu d’Auvergne, there’s a decent chance that, no matter the affineur, the production happened here – and for good reason! Though the company was founded in 1949, the history of Auvergne blues as we know them today hails to the early 19th Century in this very town.
After an exhaustive tour of the very modern and efficient dairy, it becomes very apparent: the cheese I absolutely need to try is the blue that started it all: Bleu de Laqueuille. The predecessor to Bleu d’Auvergne, it is the pride and joy of the dairy. Made only from mountain milk and still dry salted by hand, it is ripened further than their typical cheeses and is nothing less than utterly delicious. Yielding in texture, it is milky and earthy, with a floral, perfumed aroma and surprisingly balanced salt. It is slightly glistening and handsome, and a truly excellent example of Auvergne at its finest.
And then, a surprise is laid before me – a brand-new goat’s milk blue! Now THIS is something exciting. There are plenty of French blues made from cows’ and sheep’s milk, but precious few crafted from goats’ milk. The cheese is delightful, as easy a decision to add to our selection as I have ever encountered. Nearly as moist as Roquefort, it is brightly salty, with slightly coconutty, cashewy notes in the goat’s milk and a bracingly mineral finish. It is exactly the kind of thing we were hoping to find.
Fromagerie Guillaume
From there, the drive is about one hour through the mountains to a stretch of land between the tiny villages of St. Julien and Montaigut-le-Blanc. Here there is a special secret: caves over 150 years old, carved into the ancient volcanic rock of Puy-de-Dôme. Though originally built as wine cellars, this became unnecessary when phylloxera destroyed the region’s grapes, and so they fell into local use for storage.
In 1924, however, one Marcel Guillaume decided to dig and connect several tunnels together in order to mature cheese – and later on store ammunition for the French resistance, for which he was sent to a concentration camp and never heard from again. Luckily, his widow and later his son continued his work, and now the third generation, Sébastien Guillaume, leads the way.
Fromagerie Guillaume is one of the most specialised affineurs that exists, in that they do one thing and do it incredibly well: select ripen Saint-Nectaire Fermier by hand. Sébastien and his daughter Léa (who is now the fourth generation of Guillaumes to ripen cheese) collect the fresh cheeses from a small group of local farmers several times a week, and bring them back to the underground caves, where the initial rind-washing and following mould growth benefit from the natural environment and microflora of the cave.
I benefit slightly less, as the steep stone and concrete path down to the cellars is incredibly slippery, but I manage to make way down to be greeted by an incredible sight: racks upon racks of exquisite St. Nectaire Fermier, in various stages of growing rinds of fluffy grey-green mould. The sight alone is worth the trip, but then Sébastien and I begin to speak about flavour, texture, and aroma. One taste is enough to convince me I have found the right affineur, but then we get down to the exacting work of profile selection. At last, we settle upon the right cheese: a thin, somewhat undulating rind, with a slightly taller height and plump texture to the paste. The rind has entrancing aromas of pea shoots, moss, and wet leaves. The flavour sports classic hints of oyster mushrooms, matched with notes of green almonds, cultured butter, and hay. It is summer milk, but I can taste that even the winter milk will have potential and complexity. In short, it is the kind of St. Nectaire that cheesemonger’s dreams are made of.
We leave the cave to visit Fromagerie Guillaume’s tiny shop in the village, run and recently repainted by Sébastien’s older daughter, Mathilde. I note a bottle of young Pinot Noir from a local producer, and Sébastien insists beyond my protests that I take it with me, as a gesture of friendship. I may be here to select the kind of cheese wish to carry, with the right provenance, the right qualities, and the right story. But I am also here to select the kind of people we wish to tell the world about, with their own histories, their own personalities, and their own hospitality just as crucial to the flavour of the curd. It is simply my privilege to meet them.
Word by Nick Bayne, Head Cheesemonger
