Tale of a Tartiflette

Posted: 1st December 2020

I had a cheese from the Cotswolds last month. It was called ‘Baronet’ and was made in imitation of the famous washed-rind Reblochon cheese from the French Alps. Produced in Worcestershire from the milk of Jersey cows, it was predictably rich and creamy, in a way that the Alpine cheese is not, but then again the breeds that make Reblochon are different. They are the beautifully named Abondance, Montbéliarde and Tarine. Their unpasteurised milk is produced from a diet of mountain herbs, flowers and grasses. The Cotswolds aren’t flat either, but a few rolling hills do not in any way replicate the special terrain of the Alps. It is all a bit like our butter: there is nothing quite as fat as English butter.

Don’t get me wrong: Baronet is pleasant enough, but quite bland. Later on what was left of it went into a tartiflette along with the remains of a Brie de Meaux, which had been quite out of this world when I got it but was beginning to develop that smell of ammonia which comes when it’s past its best, and some English Ragstone goats’ milk cheese made in imitation of a Loire bûche by the great Randolph Hodgson of Neal’s Yard Dairy.