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Alleosse Cheese Shop
PARIS -- Until I began visiting Parisian cheese aging
cellars some 22 years ago, I thought that owners of
cheese shops just bought cheese, tended to it for a
few days, then sold it. How wrong can one be!
If you are a cheese shop owner and affineur –
cheese ager – like Philippe Alleosse, you follow
a cheese every step of the way, and learn quickly that
yours is a métier of patience and of passion.
You put out word around France that you are eager for
someone to come up with a new cheese and voila, a few
young and upcoming cheesemakers make an appearance.
You fight for and reserve some cheeses – namely
a Comte green label extra reserve – several years
in advance and get to choose exactly which high-mountain
chalet will tend to its upbringing, handling it as carefully
as a prized wine.
You convince the Burgundian monks who make one of France’s
oldest cheeses -- the subtle Reblochon-like cow’s
milk Abbaye de Citeaux – to send you thousands
of their cheeses to be aged just by you in a special
way. You search out and finally find one of France’s
rarest cheeses – the huge round of cow’s milk
Bleu de Termignon from the Savoy – and handle it
like the rare jewel it is. This blue (the greenish-blue
comes from puncturing the cheese to create the colored
veins naturally, not from injecting it with penicillium)
is currently made by only three farmers in all of France.
You hold a special secret (whispered to you upon the
retirement of famous Savoy cheesemaker whose family
had been making cheese since 1789) on how to age the
prized cow’s milk disc known as Reblochon. You
even suggest subtle but important changes to cheesemakers
and dare to send cheeses back in you feel there has
been less than normal attention in the fabrication of
the cheese, or note that there may be something wrong
with the current quality of milk from a specific herd.
And you have refined cheese aging to such an art that
you create four distinct underground cheese-aging cellars,
each with a specific temperature and humidity level,
each suited to the type of cheese that will be come
of age there.
All this is about a passion for an art, and a very
specific goal in mind. The slight, lean, blue-eyed Philippe
Alleosse says it over and over “Our goal is extract
from a cheese its true character, its greatest potential,
its most developed and characteristic flavor.”
All you have to do is taste a bland, unaged, version
of a single cheese side-by-side with one with an Alleosse
upbringing, and you instantly see the difference. Compare
it to tasting a refrigerated tomato next one ripe from
the vine, or a flavorless peach or apricot next to one
that is literally dropping from its branches.
In the washed rind cellar --- cheeses such has the
famed cow’s milk Epoisses from Burgundy, Reblochon
from the Savoy, Maroilles from the north of France and
Livarot from Normandy --- each cheese is washed and
turned several times a week with a specific, and sometimes
secret, brine. The brine may be a simple salt brine
(Livarot), it might be a blend of water and eau-de-vie
(Epoisses), or even one laced with beer (Maroilles).
Here you will also find the tiny, rare disc of cow’s
milk cheese known as Olivet Cendre, the only cheese
in France still aged with a coating of the cinders from
vine clippings, or sarments de vigne. All other ash-coated
cheeses are aged with pharmaceutically made charcoal
cinders.
The goat’s milk cellar is a chilly, fragrant sea
of white blooms, awash with the highly perfumed lactic
aromas of clean, fresh goat’s milk. Some 150 to
160 varieties of cheeses reach their potential here
(up to 12,000 pieces of cheese at a time) some of them
curing for several months. Some prizes here include
the small cylinder known as Clacbitou, a Burgundian
treat with an interior that is as smooth as silk; and
the Chaibchou aux Noix, an Alleosse creation that will
be sold only during the Christmas holidays. Philippe
coats the young cheese with finely ground fresh walnuts,
then ages it for up to 6 weeks. During that time, the
tannic, intense flavors of the nut penetrate the cheese,
turning it into a powerhouse of flavor.
In the cooked cheese cellar we take a trip to the
high mountains – of Switzerland, Italy, Spain,
and of course France – where the huge cheeses such
as the 45 kg (99 lb) French Comte and 130 kg (286 lb)
Swiss Emmenthal are coaxed to perfection. For each cheese
Philippe has a special story, a note about aging, an
anecdote. For instance, the rare and ancient breed of
silky-brown, bison-like Salers cow (for his Cantal Salers
fermier affine AOC ) gives a golden milk tinged with
the color and flavor of their favored mountain treat,
the yellow gentian flower. The breed is so finicky that
they will now allow manual milking and begin to release
their golden liquid only when the process is begun by
a young calf looking for milk. Right now, one of France’s
remaining truly seasonal cheeses, which can only be
made from August to March – the Jura’s Mont
d’Or – is aging, ready for us to slice off
the top rind and eat the nutty, runny, lingering cow’s
milk cheese with a spoon.
The bloomy rind cellar harbors some of our favorites
and best known, including the famed Brie from the Champagne
region (it takes weeks and lots of broken Brie to become
agile enough to turn them on their rye straw mats) and
all the high-fat cheeses preferred by Alleosse’s
female clientele, including the cream-enriched Brillat
Savarin (75% fat), Gratte Paille (70% fat), Petit Robert
(75%) fat. As Philippe likes to point out, butter is
82% fat. (Whole milk is naturally 4.5 to 5% fat, so
most cheeses are 45% to 50% fat.)
If God is in the details then he is there in the Alleosse
cellars, where only raw milk cheese have a right to
enter. Most comes from single farms or very specifically-selected
dairies with a well-earned pedigree. And all of the
AOC cheeses are their, those that are made according
to strict historical and geographic standards that often
specify breed, seasons, altitude, diet and aging conditions.
But like all fine things in life, cheese is there to
give pleasure not to talked about. So here are a few
pleasure tips:
To eat the rind or not eat the rind? On hard-rind cheeses
such as Comte or Cantal, the rind is generally not eaten.
For the pleasure of the cheese itself, discard the rind
and enjoy the flavor, texture and perfume of interior.
On soft cheese, such as Brie or Camembert the rind is
usually consumed, although certain connoisseurs will
still cut away the rind to get to the heart and soul
of the cheese.
What is the best temperature at which to enjoy a cheese?
Philippe Alleosse disagrees with those that feel we
should eat cheese at room temperature. Better to enjoy
it at the same temperature as a good wine, at “cellar”
temperature, between 50 and 55 degrees F (10 to 13 degrees
C.)
What wine, what cheese? There are classic combinations,
such as Roquefort and Sauternes, but some other enjoyable
marriages are Comte and a Vin Jaune from the Jura; a
Crottin de Chavignol goat’s milk cheese with a
chilled white Sancerre; and Philippe Alleosse promotes
a brilliant combination, the bloomy-rind Burgundian
cow’s milk cheese Chaource with a vintage Champagne.
Fromagerie Alleosse
13 rue Poncelet
Paris 75017.
Telephone 01 46 22 50 45.
Fax: 01 40 53 90 10.
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