Tag: fromage

How a World War Forever Changed the Way France Pairs Wine and Cheese

White wines pair beautifully with cheese. Liz Thorpe, author of “The Book of Cheese,” says serving oaky Chardonnay with creamy havarti is “crowd-friendly cheese and wine 101.” The Kitchn swears by floral Gewürztraminer with gooey, pungent morbier. And Loire Valley chèvre is “perfect” with local Pouilly Fumé and other Sauvignon Blancs.Yet the French, masters of all things cheese-related, tend to serve their cheese boards with red wines only. Comment dit-on, what gives?

The practice is more cultural than culinary, explains Anne Moreau, a public relations official for Maison Louis Moreau in Bourgogne. “During the First World War, the daily ration given to soldiers included one Camembert cheese and 25 centiliters of red wine,” she says.

These rations may strike contemporary servicemen and women as luxurious, but the impetus was practical. Polluted water supplies made bottled wine safer for soldiers to drink.

French winemakers were primarily producing red wine at the time, too, Moreau says. “They had replanted new varieties after the phylloxera disaster,” she says, and vintners were seeing “much higher yield.” Donating surplus juice to soldiers in the field boosted morale.

Toward the end of the war, wine rations in the field were up to 75 centiliters. “The alcohol was much lower, so the soldiers could drink it on a daily basis,” Moreau explains.

Today, French armed forces reportedly no longer receive alcoholic rations, though they have been known to paratroop into battle with MREs of canned cassoulet.

Regardless, Moreau says, the red wine and cheese pairing persists in civilian life. Traditions are harder to break than old Comté.

Source: How a World War Forever Changed the Way France Pairs Wine and Cheese | VinePair

The Hunt for the Stinkiest Cheese 

I unleashed six extremely stinky cheeses in my apartment until my nostrils couldn’t take it anymore.

There was no missing the smell, even in the hallway outside. “Whoa,” said more than one person as they stepped into my apartment, most clutching wine for the sake of courage as much as for pairing. I’d assembled these friends (maybe former friends, now) as human guinea pigs with one purpose: To find the very stinkiest cheese. Submitted for our approval were seven assertive, pungent, and occasionally quite freaky creations—provided by Murray’s Cheese and curated by Elizabeth Chubbuck, the Greenwich Village–based cheese purveyor’s senior vice president of sales and marketing and, as far as my nose is concerned, a diabolical dairy-wielding sadist. (A very nice sadist, but still.)

Continue reading “The Hunt for the Stinkiest Cheese “ →

Morbier and Mont d’Or cheese behind 10 deaths in France 

Ten people died and another 80 fell ill in France after eating contaminated Morbier and Mont d’Or cheese in a salmonella outbreak that health authorities knew about, a new report has revealed.

An investigation by France Inter radio said the two cheeses made in the Franche-Comté region in the east of the country from unpasteurised milk were at the root of the outbreak in late 2015 and early 2016.

The investigation produced a document which showed that in January 2016 national health authorities had discovered an unusually high number of salmonella contaminations in France that was centred on Franche-Comté.

Five cheese making companies in the region, between them making 60 different brands, were later identified as being at the source of the contaminations that began in November 2015 and continued until April the following year.

Those who died in the outbreak were old people who were physically weak or who suffered from another illness.

Jean-Yves Mano, the president of the CLCV consumer association, said he was surprised that a product recall had not been ordered of products that might have been infected with salmonella, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain in those affected.

“We do not understand why a general alert was not issued by state officials, or at least information given on what precautions to take,” he told France Inter.

The state food agency, the Direction générale de l’alimentation (DGAL), said there were two reasons why a recall was not ordered.

The first was that it would have allegedly been very difficult to identify which exact brand of the cheeses were contaminated because there were a total of 60 that were produced in the cheese-making firms where the outbreak originated.

The second was that by the time the authorities found out where the outbreak had come from, the contaminated cheeses had already been consumed and the new batches in the cheesemakers’ premises were not infected.

“It is perhaps due to these two factors that this contamination was not in the media, even though all the data was public nothing was hidden,” said Fany Molin of the DGAL food agency.

 

Source: Morbier and Mont d’Or cheese behind 10 deaths in France – The Local

Shame The best Camembert in the world is … Quebecois!

It’s a scandal, a fraud. The jury was bought, necessarily. Or it’s a defeat, shameful and stinging.

[google translation] The World Championship Cheese contest was held March 6-8, in the United States, in the state of Wisconsin. A competition that is appreciated by cheese lovers as much as by dairy professionals, this competition has dedicated the best products in the world. Obviously, the French producers did not miss to be at the rendezvous. They even won a few rewarding medals. But it must be admitted: they have also failed … Yes, yes, almost. By letting another nation of eaters stinking dripping tricks win a category that normally should not escape us, that of camembert  [ . . . ]

Read more of this SHAMEFUL story at: Shame The best Camembert in the world is … Quebecois! – Vsd

The sad end of the Camembert wars: why the beloved French cheese has had an identity crisis

As the world‘s cheese industry arrives in Paris for the Salon du Fromage, the dairy industry’s premier trade show, decisions made by the French government last week mean that the best Camembert should now be considered an endangered species.The compromises made at the 21 February meeting of the Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO), the French government agency that administers appellations for food and drink, have brought nearly 20 years of conflict over Camembert cheese to an end [ . . . ]

iNews Source: The sad end of the Camembert wars: why the beloved French cheese has had an identity crisis – The i newspaper online iNews