Graindorge's film on cheese production and some notes on Sainte- Maure de Touraine

So for those who are Pont l'Eveque fans -- and you know who you are -- I ran across this film of Graindorge's production. It focusses mainly on their Livarot, although I think their Pont l'Eveque is superior.

Graindorge Village Fromager film clip

While we were in France, we deemed the Du Plessis Pont to be mighty fine, though I'm sad to say, it seems unlikely we'll see it in the US.

In other news we had a nice conversation with a cheese guy (not our usual Cheesepusher friend) at Whole Foods, but we're still quite confused on the issue of Sainte-Maure de Touraine.

Often Sainte-Maure looks like this, but see that small stick in the middle? That's supposed to help hold it all together when it gets runny. RUNNY... We had a deliciously wonderfully super-rich and runny Sainte-Maure at L'Ardoise in Paris, but have never seen such a thing since.

Can it be repeated? We've asked lots of people about this, and some have told us that the cheese gets less runny as it ages, which runs counter to the usual intuition of older => riper => runnier. We sampled some at the Whole Foods counter -- although we ultimately purchased the Metronome you see below -- and it has some of the same tang, but, see, it was that lovely texture that made us so ecstatic that we almost cleared the whole thing from the cheese plate at L'Ardoise. That's what we're looking for... If we take that cheese home and do the hold in a drawer trick will it turn into a fabulous Dali-esque drooping, melting mass? Apparently not.

He tells us (as did the cheesemonger at Le Grand Epicerie on Rue Sevres) that the cheese dries out and gets harder. He also implies that we are NEVER going to get a young enough Sainte-Maure in the US to see goopiness. Awww...man.

So I guess it'll have to be, um..... back to Paris.