Serious Eats
A Cheese for the Season: Vacherin Mont d'Or
I'm not much a fan of winter in New York. The farmers' market in Union Square is all but shuttered, the weather tends more toward wintry mix than winter wonderland, and night falls even before the local news has kicked off. But there's one thing I look forward to every winter, something that's only available when the temperature drops below 60. I'm speaking of course of Vacherin Mont d'Or, also known as Vacherin du Haut Doubs—a pungently delicious washed-rind cow's milk cheese from the Jura mountains of Switzerland and France.
Not to be confused with its far less interesting near-namesake Vacherin Fribourgeois, Vacherin Mont d'Or is an A.O.C.-protected cheese made with late-season cow's milk not plentiful enough to make the larger format cheeses of the region: Comté or Gruyère. Made with either raw or thermalized milk, Vacherin's texture is soft to the point of being runny, and is so delicate that each small wheel is wrapped in spruce bark and shipped in its own wooden box. Some say the spruce lends a resinous character to the flavor of the cheese, which is otherwise quite tangy, nutty and earthy.
The big downside is the price (especially nowadays with the euro so much stronger than the dollar). There are only 12 A.O.C. producers of the cheese in Switzerland, and since the product itself is predicated on the scarcity of milk in the late summer and early autumn months, the price can be astonishingly high. DiBruno Bros. in Philadelphia carries a 1.5-pound wheel for $49.99. But I think it's worth it. Full-flavored and high in fat and protein, a little bit of this wonderful cheese certainly goes a long way.
