Neufchâtel

Appearance & taste

Neufchâtel comes in six shapes: as a small and a large cylinder, square, brick-shaped and as a small and a large heart. After the minimum ripening period, the small cylinder, the square and the brick weigh at least 100 g, the small heart and the large cylinder 200 g and the large heart 600 g. The cheese contains at least 45 % fat in dry matter.

The rind is covered with white mould and has no cavities. The soft paste is lightly salted, without holes, elastic and without sagging, firm but not hard, creamy and smooth, while being neither sticky nor runny nor grainy. The ripening period is short; according to the specification, however, the cheese is also eaten locally after more than three months of ripening.

Each cheese carries its own label, on which the name appears in letters at least two thirds the size of the largest letters on the label, together with the words “Appellation d’Origine Protégée” and the EU logo.

Production

The milk comes from herds consisting mainly of cows of the Normande breed, at 60 % since 1 June 2017. The cows are on pasture for at least six months a year; during this time grazed grass makes up more than half of the ration. The farm has at least 0.25 ha of pasture per lactating cow. At least 80 % of the feed comes from the farm itself, and supplementary feed is limited to 1,800 kg per cow per year.

The milk is inoculated with lactic acid bacteria and curdled slowly with rennet. What is special is that whey is removed from the curd by draining and pressing even before moulding. The paste obtained in this way is moulded, dry-salted and inoculated with the surface flora. Between the short steps there are 6 to 24 hours each time. The cheese then ripens for at least 10 days at constant temperature and humidity. According to the specification, traditional methods have survived on the farms, such as very quick renneting of the milk without warming it, or slow draining and pressing in sacks or cloths. Milk production, cheesemaking and ripening take place in the area.

Origin & history

The Pays de Bray lies on an eroded chalk dome of the Paris Basin, a depression between two escarpments. With its hills, hedged landscape (bocage), many watercourses and large meadows, it differs from the surrounding loam plateaus with their cereal growing. The heavy, damp clay soils are hardly suitable for arable farming, but all the more so for grassland; according to the specification, the name “Bray” derives from them, Celtic for “mud”. The climate is cool and damp, with an average annual temperature of 9.8 °C, 67 days of frost and just under 800 mm of precipitation a year. Because of the long winters, the farms lay in large stocks of hay and grass.

According to the specification, the cheese’s origins go back to the 10th century. Cheeses from the Pays de Bray are mentioned in a charter of 1037; it appears by name as a “magnificent cheese” from Neufchâtel in 1543/1544 in the records of the Abbey of Saint-Amand in Rouen. Since the 18th century the area has produced cheese, butter and meat. The farmers relied on the Normande breed, whose milk, rich in fat and protein, is well suited to soft cheese, and developed a simple method similar to that for fresh cheese, which leaves time for the other work on a livestock farm. To this day just under half of production comes from farms, the rest from industrial plants and dairies.