REGIONAL CHEESE PROJECT

INTRODUCTION TO FRENCH CHEESE

• From the well known French Camembert cheese to the lesser known French cheese like the Ossau-Iraty. You already my know this, but French people LOVE cheese and fun fact 96% of French people eat cheese. But unlike French people Americans don’t eat as much cheese as the French do, surprisingly. So as probably many of my peers I’m not a “cheese expert” ,but a cheese connoisseur and even saying that I only eat your everyday cheeses. For example cheddar cheese, or mozzarella cheese if I wanted to spice it up. So when I was researching about French cheese I realized that there are so many French cheeses. The French have so many cheeses that they can eat one cheese for every single day of the year. What I’m getting at is that I’m by no means a expert at this topic, but I do feel like that after researching the superficial about French cheeses that I’ve “enriched” and am more knowledgeable about French Cheeses.

FUN FACTS ABOUT FRENCH CHEESE

• There are over 400 types of cheese, and even more if we think about sub categories. Some people say that when we count those subvarieties, number of types of cheese in France comes to about 1000
• Almost half of the French (47%) eat cheese daily
• Approximately 10 pounds of milk is required to make one pound of cheese

Tourmalet

TOURMALET

• The Tourmalet cheese comes from and is made with raw, unpasteurized sheep’s milk.
• Tourmalet cheese is a farmhouse version of Petit Basque, a well-known Basque-style cheese
• The Tourmalet cheese is described as having a chewy and smooth texture with a nutty flavor and musty aroma.

TOURMALET CHEESE ATTRIBUTES

• The Tourmalet cheese is semi-hard with smooth and chewy textured cheese, Tourmalet has a meaty finish and a distinctive, nutty flavour.
• It pairs well with Madiran (the local red), Viognier wines, and wines made with Sauvignon Blanc.
• The tourmalet cheese is of a pale-yellow
• The tourmalet cheese is rindless with no outer skin
• It has a fat content of 50%
• It is vegetarian friendly

REGION

• The tourmalt cheese originates from the Laruns Valley in the foothills of the Pyrenees and is named after the Pyrenees mountain in the region it was produced.
• One thing you can do in the Pyrenees Mountains is that you can cycle the mountain in the Col du Tourmalet. Also the Col du Tourmalet is one of the most famous climbs in the Tour de France.
• The Pyrenees Mountain has a mountain range from France all the way to Spain.

FUN THINGS TO DO IN THE FRANCE PYRENEES MOUNTAINS!

• You can go to Lourdes, one of the most spiritual sites in the world
• You can hike literally everywhere
• You can go to Parc Animalier des Pyrénées, 60bis Avenue des Pyrénées, Ayzac-Ost, France, a big natural park where you will see over 400 species and 600 animals, including bears.

PROCESS USED TO PICK THE TOURMALET CHEESE

• The first thing I did was pick two cows milk cheese, goats milk cheese and sheep’s milk cheese. I selected them all randomly out of the cheese list.
• I then narrowed it down to 3 cheese’s. 1 cheese from each category.
• The cheeses were obviously the Tourmalet cheese, Fol Epi cheese made from cows milk and the Valencay cheese made from goats milk.
• After that I did research on each cheese and decided which one I liked the most out of the 3 cheeses. In the end it was between the Fol Epi cheese and the tourmalet, but having never tasted sheep’s milk cheese I went with the Tourmalet cheese.

CONCLUSION

• My final thoughts, I’ve learned a lot about French cheeses like never before and feel that I can try to share my knowledge with other people about French cheeses. Also because I learned more about French cheeses I have begun to understand on a bigger spectrum why French people love their cheese and why there are so many different kinds of cheese. So whenever and if I ever go to France, hopefully I can one day try the tourmalet cheese or maybe visit where it is made in.