Brie de Meaux

Appearance & taste

The cheese has the shape of a flat cylinder. Its fine, white bloomy rind is covered with red streaks or spots, and the paste is even. A cheese weighs 2.6 to 3.3 kg and, when sold, contains at least 44 g of dry matter per 100 g of cheese.

How the cheese tastes depends on its ripening. After four weeks it is ripened through to at least a quarter of its height; it tastes of milk and can be slightly salty with a bitter undertone. Between the fourth and sixth week it slowly ripens from the rind towards the core, and its texture changes from crumbly to supple. After six to eight weeks it is ripened through to the core and supple; the specification then describes its aroma as delicately creamy, buttery and reminiscent of hazelnuts.

The cheese may only be cut after four weeks of ripening, and only into half wheels or into wedges cut from the centre to the edge. On the label the name must be at least two thirds the size of the largest letters.

Production

Milk production, cheesemaking and ripening take place in the defined area. At least 85 % of the dry matter of the feed comes from the area, at least 60 % of it from the farm itself. The basic ration of the dairy cows consists of at least three components: at least 2 kg of beet pulp or fodder beet and at least 4 kg of grass, at least 2 kg of it from forage legumes (dry matter in each case). This three-component rule does not apply to cows that are on pasture for at least 150 days a year with at least 20 ares of pasture per cow; outside the grazing season their basic ration then contains at least 3 kg of grass (dry matter). Concentrate is limited to an average of 2,000 kg of dry matter per cow per year.

Only raw milk is processed. A high dose of rennet makes the milk coagulate quickly. The firm curd is roughly divided and ladled by hand in thin layers into the large moulds with the Brie ladle; the whey drains off by itself. The cheese is salted with dry salt and tended throughout ripening.

It may only be packed ready for dispatch after the four-week minimum ripening; after packing it must leave the cheese dairy within ten days. It is wrapped in paper or plastic film, with or without a straw mat.

Origin & history

The Brie lies between the valleys of the Marne and the Seine and extends partly across the Île-de-France and Champagne into the Greater Paris area. The loess-covered plateaus have always been used for growing cereals; livestock was kept on the clay slopes and in the valleys, where the town of Meaux also lies.

In the 18th century agronomists recommended replacing fallow with legumes on temporary grassland; some cereal farms then took up livestock as well. Straw served as bedding, by-products from cereals and later from sugar beet as feed. According to the specification, this feed produces a relatively low-fat, protein-rich milk that is well suited to cheesemaking; keeping the animals on straw maintains a microbial ecosystem that shapes the natural flora of the raw milk.

The cheese was first made on farms, and the nearness of Paris provided a market. At the end of the 19th century rennet became easier to control, and production split into the large-format Brie de Meaux made with rennet and smaller kinds made by lactic coagulation. With better roads and the railway, from the middle of the 19th century ripening houses bought freshly salted, unripened cheese from the east of the Paris basin to make up for the fall in production in Seine-et-Marne, ripened it like Brie de Meaux and sold it as such. In 1897 Georges Roger first isolated Penicillium candidum from a Brie. Cheesemaking developed in the departments of Marne, Haute-Marne and Meuse.