Worshipping the true Brie
In a pilgrimage guided by childhood memories, a writer journeys to France to the shrine of Seine-et-Marne, which crafts the delicious cheeses
Two summers ago, in a village outside Coulommiers, an old market town an hour east of Paris, an old love affair of mine came back to life. On my way to a borrowed house for a few weeks, my partner, Bruno, and I stopped at a farm for eggs, cream and produce. Included was a Coulommiers cheese in a round wooden box. I lifted the lid and poked it; it yielded easily to the touch. When we ended a barbecue under the walnut tree in the garden that night, this locally made raw-milk beauty, runny and pleasantly tangy with a suave, complex taste of mossy wells and toasted hazelnuts, shot me back to a snowy Saturday in Connecticut when I was 11. Those were the days when the cheese we American suburbanites ate was pretty much limited to the dull trio of industrial “Swiss,” cheddar and Monterey Jack.
The cheese shop that opened that day in our small town caused a stir.
My father took us for a visit, and though the ripe olfactory punch that greeted us when we opened the door made us laugh, it turned out I had already acquired a fledgling taste for strong, funky cheese from my paternal grandmother: She served Liederkranz, a runny and pungent cheese made in Ohio, inspired by German Limburger cheese, as an hors d’oeuvre before Sunday lunch, and I loved it.
The friendly shop owner offered us tiny tastes of various cheeses, and my father ended up buying three of them: a whole Coulommiers, a wedge of Brie and a L’Explorateur, a stunningly rich “triple-crème” cheese with a gold-foil label depicting a rocket ship taking off.
The all-cheese lunch we had when we got home began an obsession with French dairy that was a major reason I moved to Paris years later.
The next day, I went to La Ferme Jehan de Brie, an excellent fromagerie in the town of Coulommiers, for more. I told the shop owner I was interested only in locally produced varieties, and she suggested a wedge of Brie de Meaux and a superb triplecrème Gratte-Paille.
Before the rolling chalky plains east of Paris were converted to more profitable cereal crops and suburban building lots during the past 20 years, they provided pastures for herds of dairy cows. The milk produced was made into those cheeses, such as Brie, Coulommiers, Tomme, which are most commonly consumed in Paris before the expansion of the French railroad network during the19th century spread their reputation elsewhere.
Last year, Bruno and I returned to the Seine-et-Marne to undertake a two-day-long crawl to taste of some of France’s greatest cheeses at their source. After leaving Paris on a cold, sunny morning, we shed the city’s suburbs after 45 minutes, and crossed the vast, misty green fields that dominate the Seine-et-Marne before arriving in the town of Jouarre.
We began our quest at La Fromagerie Ganot, a cheese shop and affineur (cheese-ager). The family-run business also houses a small museum devoted to the history and production of Brie and other Seine-etMarne cheeses, part of a guided visit that also includes a video show with live commentary, a visit to the aging cellars and a tasting.
Isabelle Hédin, whose grandfather founded the fromagerie in 1895, told us that there are six varieties of Brie, and that the final taste of the cheese depends on the size of the mould used to contain the coagulated raw cows’ milk curd and the length of time it ages.
“Brie-style cheeses are produced all over the world,” Hédin said. “But real Brie only comes from the Seine-etMarne.”
She said that only two types of Brie have an A.O.C., or Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, a government label indicating that they have been produced according to a strict set of rules: Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun, both of which are named after towns in the Seine-et-Marne.
“Brie de Meaux has a velvety white rind, and tastes of butter and hazelnuts after six to eight weeks of aging,” Hédin said. Brie de Melun “is best between 10 and 12 weeks, and it has a stronger, saltier, more robust flavour that’s a little yogurt-y.”
And what of Coulommiers, the cheese that inspired this trip? It is part of the Brie family, she explained, “and is distinguished from Brie by being smaller and thicker, with a rounder, sweeter taste.”
Hédin said cheese production in the region had declined, as farmers convert from livestock to more profitable crops.
“Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun can only be made with milk that’s produced in the Seine-et-Marne.”
The friends whose country house we had borrowed recommended their favourite inn as an overnight spot. So after a 15-minute drive in a squall, we arrived at the Auberge de la Source in the hamlet of St.-Ouensur-Morin. It was postcard-pretty and just the type of place you dream of finding in the French countryside, an old-fashioned inn with modern comforts, charming hospitality and simple, delicious food. We shared an enormous grilled veal chop with mushroom cream sauce and an as- sortment of three excellent Bries, from Meaux, Melun and Provins. As we chatted with Laurent Tizio, the amiable owner, after breakfast the following morning, he said, “Brie is one of those products that really tastes best where it’s made.” Just up the road, we paid an interesting visit to the Musée de la Seine-et-Marne to see its collection of antique cheese-making tools. Heading out on back roads across the undulating plains of the Seine-et-Marne, we came to the village of Choisy-en-Brie for a good, homey lunch of marinated leeks, lamb chops with flageolet beans, and more Brie, bien sûr, at Au Bec Fin, a simple, cosy restaurant with excellent food. After a visit to the handsome medieval town of Provins, with its imposing UNESCO-listed fortifications, our last stop before returning to Paris was Le Domaine des Trente Ar- pents, the beautiful farm in Favières, owned by the Baron Benjamin de Rothschild, which produces some of the Seine-et-Marne’s finest cheeses, to pick up the Brie de Meaux, Coulommiers and tomme fermière, a semi-soft, washed-rind cow’s milk cheese, that I had ordered the morning before by phone.
For me, the best souvenirs are always edible. The New York Times