Last in Quality: Bleu de Termignon
Bleu de Termignon is a natural blue cheese made by Catherine Richard in the Vanoise National Park in Savoie, on a highly protected mountain pasture with breathtaking views. (quite literally!), at an altitude of two kilometers. The roads here are closed to those without a special permit from the national park, so to visit Catherine's chalet in the Haute Maurienne valley, you have to start your day at 4 a.m. with a walk through the dark mountains towards the lights of the farm.
The snow melts late in the valley, and it is usually not until mid-June that Catherine drives her small herd of 18 Abondance and Tarine cows up into the mountains to get their first taste of the lush mountain pastures. Catherine and her girls do not descend the mountain again until mid-October. Bleu de Termignon is made only from the abundant raw milk that results from those few short months of grazing high in the Alps. The sweet, floral notes that often accompany the first sheaves of the season are reminiscent of the wildflowers that blanket the pastures after the snow melts.
Bleu de Termignon is a natural blue cheese. This means that the blue molds that take over the cheese are not added to the milk like in most modern blue cheeses. Instead, they occur naturally in the cheesemaking environment – they are the blue molds of the cottage, the valley, the mountain. Almost all of Catherine’s equipment is made of wood – the cheese molds, the drying boards and the maturing shelves, and all of these wooden surfaces are naturally inoculated with the flora that thrives in the humid climate of the valley. The rinds of the cheeses in Catherine’s maturing cave are adorned with the same rusty-red molds that grace the slate roof and stone walls of the cottage. It’s a simple testament to the nature of this recipe, the symbiosis between the environment and the final product.
When Catherine descends into the valley each winter, this flora is dormant in the cold climate, ready to reawaken after the thaw. She brings with her a year’s supply of Bleu de Termignon, which must continue to ripen. The first wheel usually arrives with ceremonial ceremony in November, and its opening is always equally exciting: sometimes a speckled rind hides a pure white paste that lacks the “bleu,” or blue, altogether. Sometimes you can see just a hint of blue clustered near the rind. At this point, the cheeses taste milky, yeasty, often with a floral sweetness that speaks of the greenery of the mountain pastures. Over the weeks, the open wheels undergo a steady transformation. Oxygen feeds the blue molds, and they spread through the paste, bringing with them spicier, herbaceous flavors.
Watch the video below, created by Mons Fromager, of their visit to Catherine and her cheesemaking in the Alps.