France takes cheese seriously. Ask someone like celebrated food and restaurant critic François-Régis. Mr. Gaudry defines cheese as a ritualistic passage between a meal and dessert. It is the embodiment of the country’s diverse terroirs — a French word denoting particular landscapes, their climates, and the local farming traditions that deftly tease out their specific flavors. “The history of French cheese is a love story between men, animals and the earth,” he said. While former President Charles de Gaulle was said to have grumbled over the difficulty of governing a country with 246 cheeses, Mr. Gaudry’s book — “Let’s Eat France” — puts the number at 1,200.
Among all of those cheeses are 46 deemed as near-perfect expressions of that love story, or terroir, carrying the label AOP for “Appellation d’Origine Protégée” — “Protected Designation of Origin.” To get that label, widely considered a mark of quality — one that allows chosen cheese to be sold at a higher price — cheesemakers must follow elaborate rules developed locally over centuries. Those rules govern everything from the breeds and feed of milking animals, through each stage of the cheese production and aging. The rules for the Picodon, for example, run for 13 pages.
None of them takes into account climate change.
It is late September, and 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius) — unseasonably warm, which is increasingly common. The goats have purposefully been put out to graze on a specially-planted patch of sorghum, the unwitting participants in a study to see how drought-resistant crops will affect their milk. More important is whether that milk still renders a tasty Picodon — a 60-gram, hockey puck-shaped cheese with notes of hazelnut and mushroom that is synonymous with the region.
The experiment is part of a scramble by cheesemakers to see if they can adapt their methods within the strict rules governing how the highest-quality French cheeses are made, or whether climate change necessitates that those rules loosen, a near heresy for many.
“We are studying all the aspects of cheesability,” said Philippe Thorey, trailing the large herd through the field at a government-funded experimental goat farm west of the town of Montélimar. “We’ve assembled a jury of experts that will taste test the cheese to make sure it follows all the rules. They have about 20 criteria of taste.” That’s right: 20. “The whole system was built on the fact that we had certain cereals and hay available — all the rules were written with that in mind,” said Simon Bouchet, who works for the Picodon association. “But with climate change and droughts, all that has been called into question.”
The Picodon rules, set first in 1983, are testament to both France’s reputation for dizzying bureaucracy and its love of tradition and, well, cheese. Among them: Farmers can use only four breeds of goats or crossbreeds of them; all of the goats’ food must come from within the region and must include at least 12 kinds of plants and no silage; the milk cannot be pasteurized; and the cheese must be dried for a minimum of 24 hours at no hotter than 23 degrees Celsius, or about 73 Fahrenheit, and must be aged for at least eight days.
Already hot and dry, the region has become hotter and drier — bothering the goats as much as their masters. Where local farmers once kept them inside during August, many say they now bring them into the cooler barns for the whole summer, digging early into the winter store of hay. The owners of the Serre goat farm in Ribes have adapted by building a huge barn costing 300,000 euros, or nearly $320,000, to dry crops during the damp seasons.
Some AOPs are simply demanding a change to their rules — something that can take years. Others worry that threatens to dilute the brand’s reputation, as well as maybe its product’s taste.
“The AOP is a recognition of our history and our values,” said Hervé Barnier, a sixth-generation Picodon cheesemaker with 150 goats near Vesc. “It has saved at least one or two generations. Maybe it will permit some of us to continue this job.”
France takes cheese seriously, very seriously, indeed.
