Copyright © 2013 by Kathe Lison All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lison, Kathe. The whole fromage: adventures in the delectable world of French cheese / Kathe Lison. 1. Cheese—France—History. 2. Cheese—Varieties—France. 3. Lison, Kathe—Travel—France. I. Title. SF274.F7L57 2013 637′.350944—dc23 2012045290 eISBN: 978-0-30745207-8 Map by Meredith Hamilton Cover design by Elena Giavaldi Cover photography: Julian Winslow/Gallerystock v3.1_r1 For Chris, who once said to me, “You could write a book about French cheese!” “Like a Brie ripened to its heart, the lover of cheeses is also the product of a long and delicate aging.” —JAMES DE COQUET CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Map A Cheesehead Confronts Paradise 1 Dream a Little Dream of Cheese 2 The Dilemma of Milk 3 A Little Goat Cheese 4 Cheese Is a Battlefield 5 High on a Hill 6 Big Fruit 7 Bastard Caves and Rotten Bread 8 The Old Sheepherder Coda: Joyeuses Cheese Fêtes Acknowledgments Selected Parisian Fromageries Fromagespeak Selected Favorite Cheese Books Notes About the Author A CHEESEHEAD CONFRONTS PARADISE “The French are sawed-off sissies who eat snails and slugs and cheese that smells like people’s feet.” —P. J. O’ROURKE The blade of Napoleon’s sword scythed air redolent of roasted meat as the man who would one day be emperor severed the top of the cheese before him. Its point landed with a soft plop. Moments earlier, Charles- Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, renowned French diplomat and the owner of the Château de Valençay, had noted the scowl creeping across the general’s face. The stain of red on his cheeks had nothing to do with their recent scorching by an Egyptian sun, nor the warm breezes wafting through from doors flung open to a gravel courtyard. Inside the room, a hush fell over the guests gathered around the mahogany table, the silver- plate carving stand, the china banded in moss green and gilt. Outside, below the courtyard, the Nahon River, one of the numerous tributaries whose waters eventually join the Loire, flowed in a quiet, dark streak. Not long before, France had triumphed at the Battle of the Pyramids, and the success of Napoleon’s North African campaign seemed assured. Back then, Talleyrand had relished the pyramid-shaped fromage produced on nearby farms. Why had he, Talleyrand, so skilled in the art of subtle manipulation, not considered how Napoleon might feel about the cheese now that the general had returned in defeat? The sound of the courtyard fountain, its spout ringed by cherubic stone children, trickled into the silence; a wine bottle, nestled in one of two marble basins attached to the walls, shifted with a dull clunk. The guests, many of whom had jumped from their seats when the general called for his sword, stood without moving. Encumbered by the brace he wore for a chronic limp, Talleyrand remained near his chair, the froth of lace at his throat quivering. Napoleon spared none of them a glance as he set the sword next to the serving plate, nabbed a morsel of the now-decapitated cheese, and chewed. This is one account—shamelessly embellished—of how the goat cheese known as Valençay came to be shaped like a flattened pyramid. Other stories have Talleyrand beheading the cheese; in still others, the peasants around Valençay do the deed. According to yet another variation, Talleyrand, wanting to enjoy the fine goat cheese from his country estate while in Paris, ordered his steward to alter the cheese molds before sending the tasty chèvres to the city, where the emperor might see them. But the most popular version is the one in which Napoleon himself lops the tip off—a story with a heady mix of celebrity, defiant Frenchness, a hint of danger, and of course, a dash of cheese. MY OWN STORY with French cheese began less dramatically, with a trip to Paris. Charles de Gaulle is supposed to have said, “How can anyone govern a country that has 246 different kinds of cheese?” But de Gaulle’s number was only one estimate, as the book I bought one Christmas Eve at Charles de Gaulle Airport made clear: a Dorling Kindersley “visual guide to more than 350 cheeses from every region of France.” Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the actual number of French cheeses is one of those great unknowables, like the place the other sock disappeared to or whether or not God exists. Even the ubiquitous de Gaulle quote doesn’t stay constant—sometimes he laments the existence of 258 cheeses, sometimes 227, sometimes 324. Other sources say it wasn’t even de Gaulle but rather Winston Churchill who wanted to know “How can you govern a country with over 300 cheeses?”—to which the French president supposedly snapped back, “There are at least 350.” This number at least squares with that of my guidebook, but falls far short of estimates that put the number of French cheeses as high as 650. Six hundred and fifty. Cheeses. All produced in a country smaller than Texas. I’d bought the book to learn more about the cheeses that my partner, Chris, and I were smuggling out of the country in our suitcases. One of them, a pungent, gooey cow’s-milk cheese from the French Jura called