Mont d'Or
AOP📍 Burgundy-Franche-Comté · Doubs
Seasonal cheese wrapped in spruce bark, runny and woody.
The cheese
A treasure of autumn and winter, AOP Mont d'Or (also called Vacherin du Haut-Doubs) is a seasonal cheese made only from 15 August to 31 March from raw Montbéliarde cow's milk. The milk, less rich in summer when cows are in high pasture, gives a firmer paste; in winter, fed on hay, cows produce the creamier milk that makes Mont d'Or distinctive. Each cheese is wrapped in a strip of spruce bark that lends unique resinous notes. The paste, creamy to runny depending on ageing, shows crème fraîche, hazelnut, smoky wood and mushroom aromas. Most famous preparation: the "boîte chaude" — in its box in the oven with white wine and garlic, baked 25 minutes and scooped with a teaspoon with steamed potatoes and Jura charcuterie.