Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage

Appearance & taste

Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage has the shape of a flat cylinder with a rounded edge, 27 to 30 cm in diameter and 7 to 9 cm high, and weighs 3.8 to 5 kg. The rind is covered with fine white to blue-grey mould, often marbled with orange to ivory yeasts and ripening bacteria. The paste is ivory to pale yellow, melting and even, regularly veined with blue mould, and has irregular holes of at most 1 cm². The cheese contains at least 48 % fat in dry matter.

The specification describes the flavour as mildly blue, neither too bitter nor too salty or too sour, with a slight hint of hazelnut and an undergrowth aroma.

The cheese may be sold in portions. On the label, the name must be at least two thirds the size of the largest lettering.

Production

The milk comes from cows of the Montbéliarde, Abondance and Villard de Lans breeds. The basic ration consists of grass from the area, as pasture grass, hay or grass bales; other fermented feed is prohibited. At least 75 % of the ration comes from the area, and supplementary feed is limited to 1,800 kg of dry matter per cow per year. The cows graze for as long as grass and weather allow, at least 150 days a year, with at least 30 ares of permanent grassland per cow. Feed from products labelled as containing GMOs, and urea, are prohibited.

Raw or thermised milk, partly skimmed where applicable, is used; on the farm only raw milk. It is pre-ripened warm, inoculated with predominantly thermophilic cultures and Penicillium roqueforti, and coagulated. The curd is cut into grains the size of hazelnuts to walnuts and stirred with pauses, so that a fine film forms around the grains. It is moulded without pressing; this creates holes in the paste in which the mould can develop. The cheese is salted on both sides, turned and pierced during ripening and stored cool and moist. After at least 21 days the fine surface mould and the aromas have formed. Milk production, cheesemaking and ripening take place in the area.

Origin & history

The Vercors is the largest subalpine karst massif of the northern French Alps, an undulating high plateau at about 1,000 m west of Grenoble, bordered by limestone cliffs. Glaciers have shaped damp U-shaped valleys, basins and gorges. The meadows and pastures lie mainly on sand, gravel and clay on the valley floors and lower slopes; the damp valley floors provide the fodder reserves, the steep slopes serve as pasture, and the high pastures as summer alpine pastures. The mountain climate brings short summers, cool nights, long, snowy winters and 1,000 to 1,700 mm of precipitation a year.

According to the specification, the making of blue cheese in the Vercors can be traced back to the 14th century. At that time the lord of Sassenage, who owned Lans, Villard de Lans, Méaudre and Autrans, collected the cheese as a levy and sold it in Sassenage; the Isère part of the area used to be called the “mountains of Sassenage”. The difficult access forced the farmers early on to turn their milk into a medium-sized cheese that kept well. Farm production continued into the early 20th century and then declined in favour of the dairies. In 1933 the head of the dairy cooperative of Villard took up production again according to the traditional recipe; since then farmers have also been making the cheese again. The Villard-de-Lans breed was almost extinct in the 1970s and is preserved today by a conservation programme; Montbéliarde and Abondance were added in the 1950s.