"french cheese" news and stories

In Paris, the end of summer means that some of the best cheese shops, including Fromagerie Barthélémy and Fromagerie Trotté, will re-open their doors for business after being on holiday for several weeks. American tourists and gastronomes alike should take up this opportunity to taste France's most celebrated cheeses -- varieties that are either unavailable stateside or poorly represented in American food stores. Here are five must-buy French cheeses travelers should try next time they're in France.

In France, cheese is typically eaten at the end of the meal, and many restaurants even serve it as a dessert. So it's not shocking that when developing a cheese and vegetable (shallots and chives) dish, Fromagerie Foucher's Hugues Foucher would look to the ever-popular macaron for inspiration.

Warning: Cheese washed in beer may sound like a perfect combination – and for flavorists, it definitely is – but it sure makes a stink. Garbage that's been sitting out for days, dirty undergarments, and rotting food are just a few odors that come to mind when taking a whiff of Sablé de Wissant, a raw cow's milk cheese washed in wheat beer and sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Sable de Wissant isn't alone. When researchers at Cranfield University in the U.K. used an electric nose to find the world's smelliest cheese, they identified another soft cow's milk cheese washed in beer – Vieux Boulogne. So why does beer cheese smell so bad?

Slashfood hit the biannual Salon de Fromage in Paris, a French trade show that's attended by le tout Paris' French cheese world. Though much of it is all business, the Salon featured a few events that piqued our interest:

Bored with Brie? Not so fast, if you haven't tried Brie de Provins, a just-resuscitated, 13th-century version of the popular, gooey French cheese. The supple unctuous texture and light mushroom aroma of Brie de Provins, which is also the second farmstead Brie in France (the first one being Rothschild Brie), has us reevaluating the entire Brie category and falling in love with it all over again.

Earlier this month at France's biannual Salon de Fromage, cheesemakers announced the "rebirth" of this farmstead Brie made according to cheesemaking traditions that go back as far as the 13th century, including the use of raw milk, draining over wooden racks, molding by hand, and much more. Indeed, to wrap our taste buds around its distinctly floral bouquet, reminiscent of the region's shrubs, birch, and oak trees, we have to understand the long-established process that's involved in producing the cheese.