Our tips for choosing a good Mont d'Or

Louise-Adélaïde Boisnard 6:47 p.m., December 04, 2021, modified at 6:51 p.m., December 04, 2021

In a hot box or with a spoon, the Mont d'Or is a delight in winter.

This Franc-Comtois cheese sold in its spruce box has a beautiful cream-colored rind, even a little yellow for some.

You can find dozens of them in cheese shops or in supermarkets.

How to choose the tastiest?

The chroniclers of La Table des Bons Vivants share their tips with you and tell you all about Mont d'Or.

The difference between a Mont d'Or and a Vacherin Mont d'Or

To begin with, there are two types of Mont d'Or.

The vacherin Mont d'Or which comes from Switzerland and the French Mont d'Or.

The Swiss version has a slightly orange rind, its milk has been heated beforehand, unlike the French which is made from raw milk.

Its rind is flowery, like Camembert.

The vacherin is also bigger, it is generally bought by slice while the Mont d'Or is sold directly in its small box.

The main thing the two cheeses have in common is that they are encircled by a spruce strap.

Le Mont d'Or, cousin of the county

The French Mont d'Or is made in fruit farms, like the Comté.

Originally, it was also a kind of by-product of hard cheese.

At the time, when we did not have enough milk to make counties (a millstone requires 400 liters of milk), we made Monts d'Or with the leftovers.

Today, Mont d'Or is still made in fruit farms but also by certain cheese makers.

ALSO READ >> Discovering the Jura and its Mont d'Or

Choose the right producers

Ten manufacturers produce Mont d'Or and the quality is not the same everywhere.

You really have to look at the names, as some are more handcrafted than others.

For example, the Michelin cheese dairy is excellent, as is the Fromagerie du Mont d'Or Sancey-Richard in Métabief.

For the past fifteen years, there has also been a single farm producer. This is the Mamet farm, in the Doubs. Marion Sauveur met Henry Mamet, in the middle of making cheese. "We transform the milk from our farm just after milking, it is still very fresh. It was not transported by a truck, the raw material remains very noble. We work in a very traditional way, which means that in the end, we have a very different product, which evolves a little more than that of our colleagues. Overnight, we have a very noticeable difference in milk. And then, that forces us to adapt the products. variations in cheese quality. They are not less good or better, they are different. And that is what makes all the charm of a farm production. "

The Mamet cheese dairy produces only 10 tonnes per season, compared to 100,000,000 tonnes for the entire French sector.

The spruce box, the flagship of the cheese

The spruce box is the trademark of Mont d'Or, it perfumes the cheese.

There are quality differences between the different wooden straps used and it is during the refining that this will be felt.

Some Mont d'Or are strapped with wood from the Jura massif, but this remains a minority.

Yet they are the best.

In Switzerland, producers use local spruces as stipulated in their specifications.

Now that you know how to recognize a good Mont d'Or, here are some tips for tasting it.

It can be heated in an oven with a sheet of aluminum foil on the box.

You can add a little yellow wine and a clove of garlic.

Or, you can leave it to age in your fridge for a month and eat it cold with a teaspoon when it runs smoothly.