Franco PDO 18 Months Comté Characteristics
Fruité Comté is a PDO cheese made from raw, partially skimmed cow's milk with 31% fat on finished product. It belongs to the family of pressed cooked cheeses. Its paste is firm, with a deep yellow color tending towards ochre and brown near the rind. Its hard rind has the typical texture of Comtés, slightly grated and dark brown.
The taste of this fruity Comté is savory and tangy, delicious when enjoyed cold. Mail order Comté is very suitable for this type of cheese, as its paste is particularly well-suited to transportation.
On the tasting side, fruity Comté can be enjoyed with a good country bread or seeded bread, but it is also very pleasant as is because of its soft texture and strong taste.
The 18-month Fruity Comté will also fit in perfectly with a variety of cooked dishes. It pairs particularly well with puff pastries and sweet and sour pears.
The different types of smells, flavors, and colors of Comté
County smells are classified into 6 aromatic families:
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Lactic family (milk flavors and derivatives).
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Fruity family (aromas of fresh or dried fruits, seeds...).
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Roasted family (cooking flavors, caramelization...).
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Animal family (animal-related flavors).
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Vegetable family (green plant flavors, vegetables, mushrooms, humus...).
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Spicy family (spice and aromatics flavors).
The Comté Flavor Wheel brings together the 83 main smells encountered in tasting.
Flavors:
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Saltiness: this is contributed mainly by the salt with which the Comté was rubbed during the ripening. The salty character must be balanced in the other flavors.
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Acidity: not very intense, acidity is often more noticeable in young cheeses than in long-ripened Comté.
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Sweetness: this is found quite distinctly on some cheeses. During maturation, propionic fermentation and proteolysis develop this flavor.
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Bitterness: bitterness can be found, sometimes, at the end of the taste. Unpleasant if it is too pronounced, it nevertheless participates in a positive way to the taste of some counties.
Color:
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Pale, it will match a "winter Comté" made when cows stay in the barn and are fed hay, which results in milk low in carotene, a natural plant coloring.
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Inversely, a yellow paste will correspond to a "summer Comté" made when cows graze in the Jura meadows and feed on fresh, carotene-rich plants.
The History of Comté
The production of large cheeses is attested as early as the 12th and 13th centuries in fructeries. As early as 1264-1280, a cheese production is reported in Déservillers and Levier. This cheese is called vachelin, as opposed to chevrotin cheese made from goat's milk. In 1380, large cheeses confirm the importance of the dairy farms without which the necessary quantity of milk could not be collected. The manufacture of the current Comté cheese derives from the recipe of Gruyère and was introduced around the beginning of the eighteenth century in Franche-Comté, as in the Jura Vaudois, by cheese makers from Gruyère.
The harshness of the long winters gave rise to the elaboration of the Comté by the Jura peasants for a matter of survival. First of all, it was necessary to be able to store the abundant milk in summer in order to take advantage of it during the winter by making a dry cheese that was suitable for conservation.
Making this cheese requires 500 liters of milk. This is the reason why the milk producers decided to join forces. Indeed, the milk of several herds was needed to make a single cheese. The values of solidarity conveyed by these fruitières have survived eight centuries of production.
