Our tips for choosing a good Mont d'Or.
Mont d'Or, the famous Franche-Comté cheese, can be eaten with a spoon, straight from the box or hot with potatoes and charcuterie. So how do you recognize a good 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 crust, 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 larger, it is generally bought in slices, while the Mont d'Or is sold directly in its small box. The main common point of the two cheeses is that they are encircled by a spruce strap.
The French Mont d'Or is made in fruitières, like the Comté. Originally, it was a sort of by-product of hard cheese. At the time, when we didn't have enough milk to make Comté cheese (a wheel requires 400 liters of milk), we made Monts d'Or with the leftovers. Today, Mont d'Or is still made in cheese dairies, but also by certain cheese makers.
The spruce box is the hallmark of Mont d'Or, it flavors the cheese. There are quality differences between the different wooden straps used and it is during the refining that this will be felt. Some Monts 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 over the can. You can add a little bit of yellow wine and a clove of garlic. Or, you can let it age in your fridge for a month and enjoy it cold with a teaspoon when it is runny.
