Reblochon

The cheese belongs to the Aravis and the Savoie high country, where cows spend summers on mountain pasture. The second-milking story is the local explanation of the name, and it fits a world in which milk was taxed. Whether every detail happened as the story says, the name is old in that valley culture, and the cheese is a small washed wheel of rich cow's milk.

Tartiflette is not equally old. It is a modern dish of the ski valleys, popularized in the late twentieth century: potatoes, lardons, onions, and a wheel of Reblochon baked until it slumps. The valleys already cooked potatoes with this cheese. The named gratin is newer than the cheese. It is still the dish that carried Reblochon into supermarkets outside the Alps.

Raw cow's milk from the defined Savoie zone is set and molded into small rounds. The cheeses are washed as they ripen, which builds a saffron to orange rind and a soft, creamy paste. A farm cheese, réblochon fermier, is made on the farm from the milk of one herd and carries a green casein mark. A dairy cheese, made from pooled milk, carries a red mark. Both can be the protected cheese. The color of that mark is a useful piece of shopping knowledge.

The wheel is small because it is made to be sold and eaten as a whole soft cheese, often cut in half across the equator for baking. It is not pressed into a keeping wheel like Beaufort, which comes from the same broad mountain world. Pasteurized cheeses labeled Reblochon-style, made outside the zone, copy the dish more than the protection. They can melt in a tartiflette. They are not the farm or dairy cheese of Savoie.

The paste tastes of cream, salt, butter, and a light farmyard savor. The rind smells stronger: washed rind, cellar, sometimes a little meaty. A ripe wheel yields when you press the top. The center should be supple, not a dry chalk and not a brown puddle.

Ammonia means it has gone past ripeness. A complete lack of smell means it is very cold or it is a stabilized copy. Warm a true Reblochon before you eat it plain. Baked, the smell fills the kitchen. That is normal. A bitter or soapy taste is not. The green or red mark does not tell you the flavor by itself. It tells you whether the milk of one herd or of several farms made the wheel.

Bake it for tartiflette, cut horizontally, rind up, over potatoes, onions, and lardons, until the paste slumps into the potatoes. Eat a ripe wheel plain with bread, a green salad, and a dry Savoie wine. Potatoes and this cheese are the regional combination even when you skip the full gratin.

Do not grate it, and do not keep a cut wheel for a long time. Do not replace it in tartiflette with a hard Comté and expect the same slump. A soft washed cheese such as Taleggio can cover the bake if you accept a different flavor. A mild melting block will make cheesy potatoes and will not make tartiflette. Serve the baked dish hot. The cheese firms again as it cools, and the texture people came for goes with the heat.

Protected Reblochon is made in Savoie. In the ski towns of the French Alps it is both a local cheese and a restaurant dish for visitors. Export and supermarket copies carried the name further, mostly attached to tartiflette kits and winter menus.

Buy the protected cheese, and look at the green or red mark, when you want the Savoie wheel. Buy a clearly labeled style cheese only when the goal is a cheap baked potato supper and the shop has no real Reblochon. Brie will not do the washed-rind part of the job. Munster is stronger and saltier. Reblochon is the creamy middle of the washed mountain cheeses: aromatic, not violent, and made to melt into potatoes.