It's cheese o'clock!

Fresh out of the oven, golden and gooey.

Can you tell the time by cheese? Yes! While some cheeses are made all year round, others are only available at certain seasons of the year. So it is with Vacherin Mont d’Or…if the Vacherins are arriving it must mean gusty, golden-leaf autumn is here!

Vacherin is made from the milk of Simmental and Montbeliarde cattle, which in the summer months munch away in high mountain pastures on the French/Swiss border, producing milk that is better suited to hard cheeses like Comté and Gruyère. In the autumn and winter, milk yields are lower, and so are altitudes, as the cattle are brought down to less mountainous grazing.

The good news is that, just because we can finally get Vacherin again, doesn’t man we are without Comté and Gruyère. Because those hard cheese mature and ripen for many months, cheesemakers and cheesemongers can gradually release them, meaning they are available all year round. And we have some lovely artisan examples in stock right now.

Comté, Gruyère and L’Etivaz waiting patiently for Vacherin season to pass.

The name Vacherin is used by cheesemakers in both France and Switzerland, straddling the mountainous border in the Jura area. Both versions are delicious, and to be honest they taste very similar and are mostly differentiated by their names: Vacherin du Haut-Doubs in France and Vacherin Mont d’Or in Switzerland. It’s the Swiss one that we usually have, which is unpasteurised and uses traditional (i.e. animal) rennet. Check at time of purchase if these things are important to you, as cheesemakers differ in their approach.

Wherever it comes from, it is made with cow’s milk, and is aged and sold in a special round box made of spruce. This not only looks good, but is the ideal container for baking. Warm the often to 160c or thereabouts, place the cheese (lid off and underneath for extra leak-proofing) on a baking tray, and heat it for about 15 minutes. You can take it out early for a firmer result, or leave it in a bit longer for a really runny effort. Just keep an eye on it to make sure it isn’t running away entirely!

You can then spoon it onto crusty bread or toast, or dribble it generously over roasted vegetables. Or dollop it into a baked tattie!

Cookbooks have suggestions for complicated variations like cutting the top rind in a cross, or inserting slivers of garlic, or dribbling with white wine before baking, or (as I often do) for sticking in a few sprigs of herbs such as rosemary. What they don’t say is that any leftover scraps of baked cheese and rind you can scrape out of the box the next morning are particularly delicious…

A good glass of wine to accompany the Vacherin will turn a simple meal into a feast. Our current top red recommendations are Brunel de Gardine’s Côtes du Rhône for a week night, or their Châteauneuf-du-Pape if you want something really special. Bold, full-bodied whites work well too, Hexamer’s Grauburgunder Trocken is an unorthodox choice as it’s neither French nor Swiss, but German! But it’s balance of fresh acidity and full, fruity body seems to match the hot, bubbling, gooey Vacherin to perfection.

We love autumn!