Producing a cheese of course requires a milk supply, as well as technically appropriate premises. The milk source depends on the dairy herd producing this white nectar, but the full importance of its transformation rests on the relationship brought into play by the three actors concerned : milk, cheesemaker, and premises.

As soon as one of these parameters changes, so will, in the same measure, the development of the final product. It is difficult not to lose oneself in all these specifics !

Farm cheeses

These cheeses will obviously be manufactured in the following way :

 from milk produced on one and the same farm
 transformed into cheese on the same farm

Other technical or quality parameters may intervene :

 a pasterurised, sterilised cheese, or a cheese made from raw milk. But as you must have gathered, we only approve of raw-milk cheeses !
 from milk worked on morning or evening, or even morning and evening.

In all cases the resulting product arrives in limited quantities, with important unknown quality-influencing factors, as much linked to the seasons as to reasons due to fodder, work in the fields, etc. The stock-breeder-cum-cheesemaker has to be everywhere : with the flocks, in the fields, in the cheese workshop, marketing the products, etc. He/she has to keep their production under constant surveillance, readjusting all the parameters in accordance with daily demands, sometimes several times a day.

Craft Cheeses

The artisans work with milk which is produced elsewhere. It is called “craft” because of the makers’ membership of the Chambre des Métiers (Chamber of Crafts and Occupations). In most cases they work in small structures (1 to 10 employees), the milk coming from nearby farms, often delivered by the stock-breeders themselves.

Generally, the work with the milk is done within human parameters, associated of course with a certain dose of technical competence. The notion of quality is always appreciated in a human way, and each production is adapted to the artisan’s way of working.

The obtained product quality, by contrast, will be more regulated than in the case of a farm cheese, but the cheeses’ strictly traditional aspect will itself be slightly modified.

Dairy milk cheese

The dairy uses a larger supply dimension : the milk catchment area is broadened and sometimes appeals are made for an “emergency” supply, potentially from a distance further away, and from sources over which the dairy has no control. The manufacturing process is more automated and standardisation is underpinned by concerns for greater yields, allying security and productivity.

Sapidity, that is to say the taste of these products and their corresponding diversity are reduced in comparison with craft manufacture.

Industrial cheese

The owners are on the look out for automated manufacturing processes. That is why they are interested in a standard raw material, with an indispensable recourse to pasteurization, thermal or micro-filtration processes. Milk supplies will come from everywhere, optimum yield ratios being a determining factor and taking precedence over everything else, with security concerns adapted above all to norms, not to health issues.

It’s a race for productivity and product standardisation. To put it in a nutshell : this is everything that we dislike and are against, even if it does describe the manufacturing methods of the majority of French cheeses !

Xavier Bourgon, march 2007