Bleu de Termignon
The Bleu de Termignon (also Bleu du Mont-Cenis or Bleu de Bessans) is a French blue cheese from the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region , which is produced exclusively on alpine pastures in the Parc National de la Vanoise .
history
By the middle of the eighteenth century at the latest, blue cheese production began in Savoy , first in Haute-Maurienne , later on the alpine meadows of the Mont Cenis Valloire and finally in Termignon .
Manufacturing
Bleu de Termignon is a Fermier cheese that is made between June and September on the alpine pastures above Termignon at an altitude of over 2000 m from the raw milk of Abondance and Taranto cattle . There are only a few herdsmen left who produce just a few hundred cheeses a year using traditional methods. The size of the herd, which only feeds on grass and flowers, is around sixty animals.
The production of cheese is an old tradition: two cheese curds of different ages are crushed and mixed together. One curd is one day old, the other three days ("caillé aigre"). This mixture is poured into a round pinewood mold lined with a linen gauze cloth and pressed by hand. In the following days the cheese is pressed several times. The linen cloth is changed every time. After the whey has separated, the cheese is first stored for 8 to 10 days in a 15 ° C room called "chambre des bleus" before it is stored in the maturing cellar at 11 ° C for further maturation ("affinage"). Unlike most blue cheeses, the blue mold in Termignon is created naturally and is not artificially created by adding penicillin . As a result, the blue mold within the loaf develops much more slowly and much more irregularly. The characteristic aroma develops during a ripening period of four to five months, during which the cheese wheels are regularly turned, brushed and salted. Not all cheese develops the blue color one would expect from a blue cheese. Each cheese numbered by the manufacturer has a weight of about 7 kg, a diameter of 30 cm and a fat content of 50%.
Appearance and taste
The bark is orange-brown and resembles a stone in appearance and hardness. The dough has a slightly crumbly consistency. The cheese is of excellent quality, natural and unseasoned. Its taste is nutty, sweet and sour, fruity with an aroma of alpine flowers.
An Alsatian Trockenbeerenauslese or a Rivesaltes Grand Cru are ideal for a Bleu de Termignon.
literature
- Kazuko Masui, Tomoko Yamada: French cheese , Wilhelm-Heyne-Verlag Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-12886-9 , p. 35.
Web links
- The Bleu de Termignon
- Le bleu de Termignon (French), accessed January 4, 2016
- Marcel Bantin: the soul of Termignon blue (English)