Scandale! Paris lockert Camembert- Gesetze
PARIS — French cheese connoisseurs want everyone who loves the country’s culinary heritage to hear their anguished cry: Boycott French Camembert.
Because soon enough, they warn, that creamy, pungent icon of France will give way to a tasteless paste masquerading as the real thing. Beginning in 2021, Camembert made from pasteurized milk, in factories, will be labeled in a way that has only been allowed for artisanal cheese made in the time-honored, more expensive way — by hand, using raw milk.
More than 40 leading French chefs, winemakers, and cheese ripeners signed an open letter, published on May 15 in the daily Libération, denouncing this apostasy and calling on President Emmanuel Macron to put a stop to it. Without separate designations, they predicted, raw milk Camembert will become increasingly rare. “We demand raw milk Camembert for all!” the letter said, ending with the declaration, “Liberté, égalité, Camembert!”
It denounced the new rules as “shame, scandal, i mposture,” even “treason,” while dismissing pasteurized milk Camembert as “lifeless matter” and “pasteurized plaster” and “an ocean of mediocrity.” Pasteurization kills germs, but Camembert lovers insist that it also kills flavor, robbing the cheese of “terroir,” the character imparted by a place.
Some of the signatories, like the letter’s author, Véronique Richez- Lerouge, president of a group devoted to traditional cheeses, and François Bourgon, a noted cheesemonger, even called for a boycott of Camembert if the change takes effect. “Camembert is the emblem of French cheeses,” he said. “If it dies, others will follow.”
In fact, the old way has been waning for a long time. Most of the 60,000 metric tons of Camembert sold each year in France is mass produced from pasteurized milk, and only 8.5 percent earns the designation “Camembert de Normandie,” meaning that it is made in that region, to exacting standards, from raw milk. Industrial makers have been allowed to label their product as “Fabriqué en Normandie,” or “Made in Normandy,” as long as the cheese factory was there.
Normandy’s small producers long complained that the slim difference in wording was misleading. “The flora we find in the grass goes through the cow’s body, its udder, right down to the milk, the cheese, and finally, our own taste buds,” said Patrick Mercier, one of the few remaining producers of raw milk Camembert. “Unlike the unpasteurized one, raw milk Camembert is the perfect way to savor Normandy’s terroir.”
This year, the two sides agreed that by 2021, the big producers will be able to call their cheese “Camembert of Normandy,” and those who adhere to the old-fashioned methods can label theirs “True Camembert from Normandy.”
To some connoisseurs, it further blurs the difference, but Mr. Mercier, who represented small producers in the negotiations over the new designation, said not to worry.
“The real cheese lovers will still be able to buy real Camembert,” he said. “And at least the war is over, for now.”