Kathe Lison - The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese

Copyright 2013 by Kathe Lison

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lison, Kathe.
The whole fromage: adventures in the delectable world of French cheese / Kathe Lison.
1. CheeseFranceHistory. 2. CheeseVarietiesFrance. 3. Lison, KatheTravelFrance. I. Title.
SF274.F7L57 2013

637.350944dc23 2012045290

eISBN: 978-0-307-45207-8

Map by Meredith Hamilton
Cover design by Elena Giavaldi
Cover photography: Julian Winslow/Gallerystock

v3.1_r1

For Chris, who once said to me,
You could write a book about French cheese!

Like a Brie ripened to its heart, the lover of cheeses is also the product of a long and delicate aging.

JAMES DE COQUET

The French are sawed-off sissies who eat snails and slugs and cheese that smells like peoples feet.

P. J. OROURKE

The blade of Napoleons sword scythed air redolent of roasted meat as the man who would one day be emperor severed the top of the cheese before him. Its point landed with a soft plop. Moments earlier, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Prigord, renowned French diplomat and the owner of the Chteau de Valenay, had noted the scowl creeping across the generals face. The stain of red on his cheeks had nothing to do with their recent scorching by an Egyptian sun, nor the warm breezes wafting through from doors flung open to a gravel courtyard. Inside the room, a hush fell over the guests gathered around the mahogany table, the silver-plate carving stand, the china banded in moss green and gilt. Outside, below the courtyard, the Nahon River, one of the numerous tributaries whose waters eventually join the Loire, flowed in a quiet, dark streak.

Not long before, France had triumphed at the Battle of the Pyramids, and the success of Napoleons North African campaign seemed assured. Back then, Talleyrand had relished the pyramid-shaped fromage produced on nearby farms. Why had he, Talleyrand, so skilled in the art of subtle manipulation, not considered how Napoleon might feel about the cheese now that the general had returned in defeat? The sound of the courtyard fountain, its spout ringed by cherubic stone children, trickled into the silence; a wine bottle, nestled in one of two marble basins attached to the walls, shifted with a dull clunk. The guests, many of whom had jumped from their seats when the general called for his sword, stood without moving. Encumbered by the brace he wore for a chronic limp, Talleyrand remained near his chair, the froth of lace at his throat quivering. Napoleon spared none of them a glance as he set the sword next to the serving plate, nabbed a morsel of the now-decapitated cheese, and chewed.

This is one accountshamelessly embellishedof how the goat cheese known as Valenay came to be shaped like a flattened pyramid. Other stories have Talleyrand beheading the cheese; in still others, the peasants around Valenay do the deed. According to yet another variation, Talleyrand, wanting to enjoy the fine goat cheese from his country estate while in Paris, ordered his steward to alter the cheese molds before sending the tasty chvres to the city, where the emperor might see them. But the most popular version is the one in which Napoleon himself lops the tip offa story with a heady mix of celebrity, defiant Frenchness, a hint of danger, and of course, a dash of cheese.

MY OWN STORY with French cheese began less dramatically, with a trip to Paris. Charles de Gaulle is supposed to have said, How can anyone govern a country that has 246 different kinds of cheese? But de Gaulles number was only one estimate, as the book I bought one Christmas Eve at Charles de Gaulle Airport made clear: a Dorling Kindersley visual guide to more than 350 cheeses from every region of France. Though I didnt realize it at the time, the actual number of French cheeses is one of those great unknowables, like the place the other sock disappeared to or whether or not God exists. Even the ubiquitous de Gaulle quote doesnt stay constantsometimes he laments the existence of 258 cheeses, sometimes 227, sometimes 324. Other sources say it wasnt even de Gaulle but rather Winston Churchill who wanted to know How can you govern a country with over 300 cheeses?to which the French president supposedly snapped back, There are at least 350. This number at least squares with that of my guidebook, but falls far short of estimates that put the number of French cheeses as high as 650. Six hundred and fifty. Cheeses. All produced in a country smaller than Texas.

Id bought the book to learn more about the cheeses that my partner, Chris, and I were smuggling out of the country in our suitcases. One of them, a pungent, gooey cows-milk cheese from the French Jura called Vacherin Mont dOr, qualified as contraband: a raw-milk cheesei.e., an unpasteurized oneaged fewer than sixty days. Completely illegal in the United States, though at the time it didnt occur that something as innocuous-seeming as cheese could turn us into petty criminals. The cheese was cushioned in a suit newly bought for Chris; he was making elaborate plans for fumigation even before we left French soil. When I showed him the book, Chris took one look at the cover and said, Three hundred and fifty cheeses! Thats practically a different cheese for every day of the year.

I know, I responded, nearly whispering in awe, before plunking into a chair near our gate.

I opened the bookand encountered pictures so vivid I had to resist an urge to press my nose to the pages to see if I could smell them. There were cheeses with wild mulberry leaves pressed into their tops; cheeses bound with rushes; cheeses covered in ash, in cumin, in raisins, in bits of grape skin; cheeses furred with long hairs of mold; cheeses in the shape of bricks, logs, bells, sheep turds; gigantic round cheeses that could crush a poodle; and tiny goat cheeses so tender-looking you wanted to pick them up and soothe them. As I turned each glossy page, revealing another and yet another fabulous, even fantastical, cheese, I began to have questions. Why produce this crazy number of cheeses? I mean, why not just one nice sharp cheddar? The French, I would eventually discover, have so many cheeses and so much lore to go with them that theres even a