Comte

Comte is one of the world’s best cheeses.  In demand throughout the world, the “fromage” is the most popular cheese in its native country of France and was the first to earn the important designate from the Appellation d'origine contrôlée, or A.O.C.  The A.O.C. is an arm of the French government that protects farmers, cheesemakers, and consumers of fromage as to the authenticity of the product.  As you drive the through the Franche-Comte region, there are cheese milking sites everywhere you turn.  Specifically, as you travel through the villages, you will see many signs for Gruyere d'Alpage, Vacherin, and as the signs say, Les Routes du Comte - The Comte Route.

I hated these comparison equations in High School, but here goes..... Comte is to the French as Cheddar is to Americans.  No, not Brie or Roquefort, although a case could be made that in some regions it is the most used of the bunch.  But, in the country as a whole, Comte is king.  They consume many different ages and flavor profiles while using it on everything!  Fondue, sandwiches, grating for cooking, and even desserts use the mighty Comte.

Comte Bread & Jambon

In fact, one of my favorite eats while visiting was a soft bread made with Comte and Jambon(ham).  A meal in itself - absolument délicieux!!!

It is rare when a product and a region are so synonymous with one another. Working together and depending on each other are one thing, but having so many people devoted to continuing the traditions and quality of the product are another.  In a perfect illustration of this devotion, Ari Weinzwig wrote about an encounter back in 1985:

"7 Generations of Cheese"

The highlight of that trip was a day with Jean-Charles Arnaud, affineur (cheese ager) and a man on a mission.   He is one of half a dozen affineurs who mature top-notch Comté cheese.

Jean-Charles is so connected to the Franche-Comté you could film a French version of Roots with him as the lead.  He's the seventh generation of his family to work with cheese.  One of his grandfathers was a cheesemaker, the other a winemaker.  Jean-Charles is only in his early thirties, but don't be misled by his youth.  He now runs the family firm, guiding the buying, aging and selling of nearly 20% of the entire production of Comté cheese.  

Co-worker Claire with her favorite cheese!

Tall, thin, and energetic, he is a font of knowledge about the cheese he cares for so much.  He comes on pretty casually, gentle, happy, a man who likes his life and likes what he's doing.  For a while he had me fooled—worried I guess if I'm honest about it—into thinking that I was in for a rather superficial day of the usual legends and lore of Comté.  But beneath the soft surface, Jean-Charles is a man of deep devotion, with a core of emotional connection to the land and the cheese on which he was raised.  Just as I was starting to wonder if I was in for a day of Comté cliches, he caught me with a sudden seriousness, a sense of gravity that literally made my eyes tear up (remember to imagine the French accent):

        "Really my goal in my lifetime is to help preserve the integrity and quality of Comté cheese.  Sometimes we add some equipment here and there, to help make it a little easier for the people, to make sure they stay in business.  But the important things - the freshness of the milk, the raw milk, the Montbelliard cows, copper kettles, no silage, real rennet—these things we must preserve."

The man meant what he was saying.  To preserve the tradition for another generation, to pass the torch of craft and Comté to the eight generation of Arnaud's is akin to an American fighting to save a piece of Redwood forest.  Traditions take centuries to build up, but they can unravel at an alarming speed.  Jean-Charles has undertaken a trust of great magnitude. 

The notion of 'deep devotion' is exactly what I encountered from many, many people in the area I travelled.  From dairy men to cheesemakers to affineurs, they all made a point of making me understand just how important the cheese, the farms, and the region are to each other.

Of the many people involved over the generations of Comte tradition, one man made a particular impact based on recognizing his own talents.  Marcel Petite.  Mr. Petite was a 5th generation cheesemaker, working in the family business, who found a knack for developing and caring for cheeses post production.  Now known as affinage, or the craft of maturing and aging cheeses, Mr. Petite found that by paying special attention to each cheese, the individual cheeses could achieve their highest possible potential.  Call him a sort of cheese "life coach".  Spending time in the basement of their cheese facility, he experimented and discovered that variations in temperature and humidity greatly affected the quality of life and therefore, the taste of Comte cheeses.  As he took over the family business, he knew what he wanted - to work exclusively with the aging and care of cheese.  Thus, the Marcel Petite 'brand' was born.  As we now know it, the company that Marcel Petite built is split into two main locations, the famous Fort Saint-Antoine located above the aforementioned village another aging facility in the town of Granges-Narboz. 

Built around 1990, the man made facility in Granges-Narboz is built of wood & bricks and is located above ground.  It is used to ship all of the Marcel-Petite Comte, as well as, house the administrative offices and maturation of wheels in the 4-12 month range.  In contrast, the caves of Fort Saint-Antoine are made of mortar and are built into the side of the hill.  Originally built as a military fort to control the borders from Prussia, it was finished in 1882 and shortly abandoned 2 or 3 years later due to becoming obsolete.  After that, it had sat abandoned until the right use was found.

The Fort itself is an incredibly impressive structure.  It is not hard to see why it has become the standard in cheese maturation while welcoming 10,000 visitors a year.  It houses 100,000 wheels of cheese and along with the Granges-Narboz site, helps the company deal with approximately 7,000 tons of cheese per year.  Although there is some swapping of Comte between the two facilities, the Fort houses nearly all of the cheeses aged at 12-24 months.  Originally starting in the nearby town of Pontarlier, Marcel Petite started looking for a site to build a more substantial facility to do what he felt was absolutely necessary - slow aging.  Considered to be slightly radical at the time, he is now considered a pioneer and has been and is being copied all over the world.  Not bad for a radical, huh?

World Famous Entry to the Fort Saint Antoine

Once Mr. Petite saw the abandoned fort, he knew he had the perfect location for maturing the needs of the famous Comte cheeses.  Because of the regions very cold winters and summers that feature drastic changes from morning until night, the fort features the exact environment you need:  high humidity and the ability to control the temperatures.  Set at 1089 meters above sea level, the cave is under soil of between 1 & 3 meters.  It is quite massive as a structure and yet can only be appreciated by being inside or by standing at the bottom of the hill and looking up.  Upon seeing it, it is not hard to imagine that the fort used to house over 400 hundred people, along with 600 masoners, 3000 soldiers, and another 600 brick layers. 

Originally, most Comte was brought to market without using slow aging maturation.  The result:  a cheese that looked eerily similar to the famous Swiss Emmenthaler, without the beautiful taste of a swiss.  Full of holes, and oddly acidic, it was a product of being matured too warm. 

Vintage sign showing results of 'fast aging'.

At a temperature of between 16-18° C, it was almost like a “quick” burn.  What Mr. Petite proved to be correct, is that proper maturation must be maintained at 8° C and with a humidity of 98° humidity.  There is great care taken to insure that every part of the caves stays within a 2-3 degree range, no matter what is happening outside.  As explained by Benoit, this leads to the great tenant of the goal of Marcel Petite and his company:  To steer cheeses to their best quality of life.  Of course, this means that each cheese must be cared for based on its needs and potential.  Plainly, every cheese will have its own lifespan and peek age.

Comte can be traced backed over 1,000 years to 1000 AD and is and always been an important part of the survival of the people in this region.  Included in the public tour, is an impressive display featuring actual medieval cheesemaking tools along with a map of only the cheese producers that Marcel Petite uses.

Both pictures here are featured on the public tour.

With around 35 producers in France, the map serves as a reminder of the importance of terroir in the region and brought up an interesting conversation about community involvement and organics. The Marcel Petite company has always been and continues to be involved in the PEDAGOGY of all areas of agriculture:  vegetables, soils, and animals.  The map indicates producers who are recognized as having organic farms.  However, Benoit made a point to emphasize that the term organic included many, many details that almost all of the producers were already doing.  When asked about governmental incentives, Benoit acknowledged that there were no financial incentives currently and that the only reason the producers have felt the need to become recognized as organic is via the public interest in all things organic.  The point being, the producers are already making a financial profit, and without governmental incentives there are no financial incentives to continue seeking out recognition as being organic. 

The first sign of being in an underground cave came when I looked at the ceiling and saw the icicle like shapes hanging from above.  These are literally water drips that have formed from water seeping through the soil and coming through the mortar.  Once they hit the underground temperature they are frozen in place. 

The caves are just as Mr. Petite found them, except for a little painting, and some modern addition of dry wall & wooden beams.  MORE HERE ABOUT THE LAYOUT AND MAPS, ETC.

Pictures left to right:  Overhead schematic of the original fort, Cross section picture of fort showing depth, Map of France showing the numerous military forts built to protect the border.

And as you walk to the first visual opening of the caves, you are greeted with a sign indicating that this part of the cave is called the “Cathedral Room”.   The “Cathedral Room" got it's name from a visit by a famous gastronomic critic, whom upon seeing this room with the highest ceilings of anywhere in the fort, exclaimed, "it's like a cathedral of cheese".

And it's not hard, to see why.....

Comte Mecca - one of the many aisles of the vast underground.

For me, as a lifelong turophile, this was a defining moment.  The sight, the feel(temp/humidity), and the smell all contributed to me being stopped dead in my tracks.  Like a kid in a candy store, I felt my mouth agape with an almost out of body experience.  I literally said to Benoit, my guide, "hold on......I need a minute," with a wry smile plastered to my face.

The first and biggest impact when walking into the working part of the caves is the smell.  Ammonia wafting around with gasses in the beautiful feel of cool, damp humidity.  Beautiful, cool, damp, humidity?  Yes.  This is what I first fell in love with as a kid - the feel of opening up coolers filled with cheese at my Uncle's cheese shop.  You see, I have been blessed(?) with being warm blooded all my life.  So, I found respite in standing with the door open, even wishing I could climb in with the cheese and stay there for the night.  Ammonia?  That's right.  The appreciation for the smell of ammonia is what separates us cheese lovers.  It serves as almost a wake-up call that our cheese fix is about to be quenched.

Of course, none of this would happen without the help of some animals called Montbeliard cows.  These beautiful animals dot every corner of the country side.  Of course, part of nature's way of providing, is through the luscious green grass that is EVERYWHERE.

Grass in abundance

With over 400,00 cows in this region alone, they easily outnumber humans.  Mainly a dairy cattle, the Montbeliard actually has better beef characteristics than that of a Holstein.  Because of a milk protein called Kappa Casein, the Montbeliard milk has a higher yield for cheesemaking than other breeds, while weighing in with around a 3.6% fat composition.

The Montbeliard Cow:  Listen closely for the sound of future Comte making, aka, grass eating.

They are definitely my favorite looking cows of the breeds, but maybe the landscape gives me some sort of bias.

Close-Up of the Montbeliard Cow

Anyway, back to the caves.  The caves are filled with aisles of cheese.  The cave contains around 100,000 wheels of Comte with each cheese weighing 35-38 kg/80 lbs.  That's 8 million pounds of cheese at a time!  Of course, this requires a lot of staffing and work.  Marcel Petite employs a total of 80 people in both caves and 15 cheese dairies of their own.  Five of these employees are the all-important, "cellar masters".  The job of the "cellar master" revolves around giving great care and tasting the cheeses starting at 7 a.m. every morning from Monday-Friday for around nine hours a day.  In order to become a cellar master, there is an extensive training period followed by a long apprenticeship.

Now the employee numbers would be much bigger if it wasn't for the all-important SIX-PO.  What is SIX-PO?!?  Look Below.  (Notice the red laser scanning across the cheese and shelves on the left.)

These machines cut the amount of man hours down drastically and are able to flip, wash, and rub the wheels to specific paramaters according to batch, dairy, and date.  Why SIX-PO?  Well, apparently the French translation for the ORIGINAL Star Wars (and I do mean Episode IV) was so bad, that for years the French thought that the British accented protocol droid was actually named, Six-PO.

Of course, nothing beats human interaction and analysis.  A ton of thought, consideration, and constant observation go into each wheel.  Nothing illustrates that as well as the following video.  Here, we join in the conversation during which Benoit Prince is explaining the receiving process of each wheel of cheese.  Coming in around 10-14 days, they are stamped with the dairy code and organized by batch date.

Note the ability of the Six-PO to handle each wheel accurately and carefully.  Obviously, it is an important machine to the caves, however, most impressive is the human thought and analysis that is going on 'behind the scenes'.

After spending an enormous amount of time and care showing me around, Benoit introduced me to one of the cellar masters, Jose.  Jose has been at the caves for 15 years and is pleasant, patient, and extremely knowledgable.  Tasting, caring for, and watching the cheese is his most important job along with 4 other cellar masters.  Along with his co-workers, he carries an amount of professionalism that shows just how important everyone knows the cheese is for the region.

Left to Right:  Celler master Jose & European Sales Manager, Benoit

Tasting cheese is THE most important part of the job.  Each member of the company is involved in numerous tastings that revolve around different batches, ages, profiles, and even other competitors cheeses.  Often done blind, the staff spends a lot of time working with one another developing vocabulary and exchanging notes to better understand each cheese and each other.

As most cheesemongers will tell you, great care is taken to verify the quality of a wheel while tasting.  Of course, this is the moment that makes the effort worth the trip.  The process is always done the same way.  First, the wheel is visually checked for imperfections.  Then, it is checked via sound by way of a hammer for internal discrepancies.

There are ALWAYS at least two staff members tasting at the same time to verify any defects in either appearance, makeup, and/or taste profile.  This is done to protect the cheese and staff from any inaccuracies.  Like I said, every step is made to "lead cheeses to their best quality of life".

Once the cheese is confirmed to be of good 'technical' standing, both of the colleagues taste the cheese.  A trier is used to core out a piece of cheese that cuts deep into the wheel.  Whenever there is a "guest taster", the staff ALWAYS tastes first to ensure the cheese is of proper quality.  If the cheese is not, it is plugged back up and set aside for decisions on how to proceed WITHOUT allowing the guest a taste.

Jose & Benoit discussing if the cheese 'passes' the taste test.

If it does pass the two staff tasters qualifications, the cheese is finally handed over to the eager guest taster:  in this case, ME!  When tasting this wonderful cheese, the same process is always done.  Using your fingers, you 'pinch' the cheese out of the trier and squeeze it before putting it into your mouth.  (The squeezing allow you to check the texture, giving you clues about it's quality and taste profile).  Next, you take the 'mashed up' piece and put it in your mouth, 'squeezing' it between your tongue and various parts of your mouth, allowing the paste to engulf all parts of your palate.  The result:  a pliable, sweet, nutty and long lasting mouth flavor.  It is important to note here that the staff will NOT tell anyone the age of the cheese until after they have tasted it.  Why?

The natural disposition for grading cheeses over the years has been unfairly influenced by the idea that things are only of 'minimum' standard if they are "X amount" of months old.  Therefore, consumers and tasters alike become unduly influenced by packaging or signage that says, 'extra aged' or "3 YEARS"!  (Note: the culprits are most often, us retailers!).  So, after discussing the taste profile and characteristics of the cheese, only than does the discussion center on the age, season, and dairy that the wheel comes from.

One of my favorite spots in Fort St. Antoine, this passageway was built on a curve to allow people to flee without being hit from straight-on gunfire.  Trying to be funny, I mentioned to my guide, Benoit, that it reminded me of that 'shoot out' scene in 'Star Wars' where Han Solo came running back.  He laughed and the stupidity and how it related to 6-PO.

Interestingly, the flavor profile that is preferred and most used in France is not one in which 'foreigners' covet.  The "French" profile tends to be one of less salt, more pliability and sweetness.  Not surprisingly, demand in the US and other countries is that of a cheese with a VERY long, buttery, and intense flavor.  Generally speaking (see above paragraph), US importers are looking for a cheese that is aged 24 months or longer.  The problem is this:  only 1.5% of the total stock of cheese ever reaches the ability to become 24 months old.  Combine that with the fact that not all of that 1.5% reaches the preferred taste profile of some buyers, and you're faced with the "age-old" (ugh, pun) problem of balancing the current flavor versus the future flavor.  From a business perspective it is important to note that Marcel Petite has over 40 different profiles to sell.  This allows them to fit into many different spots in the market and allows for flexibility in use and occasion.  Also don't forget:  with a 3 weeks transport time to the United States, and each wheel from each dairy giving you different flavors, picking cheese is a type of art form.

A traditional tool used for cutting Comte & other mountain-style cheeses

"The right Comte, at the right time, is right," said Benoit.  So true.  Certain parameters are used:  when a cheese shows a few small cracks, it's time to send (no matter the age).  When a cheese shows too many cracks, it's too late (no matter the age).  This is what makes things so tricky - YES........ sometimes a wheel of Comte is 'overaged' even at 4-6 months.  Of course, every company has to have some way of dealing with these variances.  In Marcel Petite's case, they label the cheeses in two different ways:  Green Wrap = Top Quality; Brown Wrap = 2nd Class.  WARNING:  Second class does not mean inferior, it just means that it is not quite 'special' enough to make the final cut for supremacy.  In fact, I would gladly be 'spoiled' with many of the Brown Wrap cheeses over dinner and wine.

The end of our time together:  A nice white wine from the Jura with dessert - Comte!

After tasting 5-10 batches with the guys, I gained a real perspective on all of the different possibilities of good, quality Comte.  With insightful conversation, extreme professionalism and a real sense of serving both the producers and their customers, it is easy to see why Marcel Petite has arrived as one of the best affineurs in the world.  At Zingerman's Deli, we are always trying to bring in a "full-flavored" product made in a traditional way.  Luckily, we have been able to work with Marcel Petite to do just that.  Amazingly, during the Holidays, we've been blessed to be given a chance to host 3-yr old Comte wheels.  I am now incredulous and extremely appreciative as to what percentage of their stock these represent and just what an act of nature they are.

Visiting the caves of Saint-Antoine ranks as one of the "Mount Rushmore" events for those of us interested in all things cheese.  It truly lives up to the hype and is true example of agriculture meeting the needs of community, while serving to bring something of very special to our tables.  Special thanks to Jose and Benoit for the tour of one my favorite places on earth.