Interesting and time-consuming process.
In the vicinity of the village of Châtel (France) is 38 farms, which make mostly cheese. The tourism office organizes once a week a tour of one farm.
Cheese name “Abondance”( Abundance) comes from the name of the valley of Abondance in Haute Savoie, where the monks of the Abbey of Abondance began the manufacture of cheese already in the fifth century. They brought and breed of cows. In 1381 the Abbey of Abondance was chosen as the official supplier of cheeses to the table of the Conclave, gathered to select a Pope. To Avignon was sent to more than 1 500 kilograms of cheese Abondance. At one time this cheese is even served as a monetary coin.
C 1990 Abondance cheese is protected by AOC certificate and is now on 60 farms. It is made all year round, but the best is made from the milk of the summer milking. Abondance cheese is characterized by fruity and nutty notes and a distinctive aroma.
On the farm 35 cows of the Abondance breed. These cows are small, brown, round eyes point, are adapted for life in the mountains.
Cows are milked twice a day, the milk is poured into a copper VAT, add an enzyme, heat, day it oxygen, it turns the consistency of liquid cream. Then take a special linen cloth, type in the curd and put into a mold under pressure. Happened five goals cheese. When a little lie down, changing the cloth on dry and leave under pressure for a day.
The remaining milk fed pig.
After days of lying under the pressure of the cheeses referred to the cellar and put on a special Board made of spruce.
In the cellar is about 400 head of cheeses. All marked with the date and number of the manufacturer. Green means cheese farm.
Further, the attention, every head cheese (about four!) every day turn. Head weighs 7 to 12 kg depending on the number of milked milk. Some coated with coarse salt, and some wash.
Three months the cheese is in the cellar, then pass it to the co-op (lack of space), and there it Matures for three more months, then sell. In the summer cows graze in the mountains, on the ski slopes. A farmer living at this time in the second Chalet in the mountains and there makes cheese. The farm employs only two people – he and his wife. No vacations, no weekends, no travel (cows need to be milked twice a day), but the farmer said that he liked his life and nothing more he did not have any trips.
There, in the Savoy, doing a different kind of cheese – Beaufort. There is a head of 40 kg, they also turn over regularly and wash! In the nineteenth century French writer and Gastronome Jean Anthelm Brij-Savarin, known under the name of Beaufort, this cheese is called “a Prince among hard cheeses”.
