Cheesy Calenders
A few years ago the excellent Arte, a Franco-German culture channel, did a special report on the non-profit organization Fromages de Terroirs and their fight to protect what is left of local unpasteurized French cheese: “Our food has lost the human touch. ‘Nutrition’ has become the watchword while flavours are becoming uniformly insipid.” Fromages de Terroirs was founded in Lyon in 2001 by Véronique Richez-Lerouge, an ex-journalist and attachée, who reacted against attacks aimed at traditional cheese made from raw milk. She has since gone on to give the views of the producers and to inform the general French public about their heritage, including launching eight years ago Journée Nationale de Fromage (National Cheese Day) and four years ago From’Girls Calender, an independent initiative.
The retro girlie pop-art calenders are done in a 1960s’ style reminiscent of the American artist Mel Ramos. A scantly clad dairymaid adorns a particular cheese each month:
Two images are contrasted: that of a sexy and sensual woman and that of cheese, a masculine and earthy product. The idea is to appreciate that cheese made with raw milk can form part of an up-to-date way of life and to realise that living produce can teach us a lot about our country. Holding on to our local producers, encouraging small firms to develop real cheeses, teaching the young to tell a real cheese from a synthetic one…. This is what sustainable development is all about. Preserving local production enriches rural life and helps to conserve the social fabric.
At Mosel Wine Merchant we like French cheese and wine and sympathize with this cause and are also trying to support the local and traditional small wine producers in the Mosel River Valley. Although there’s no dogma on our part, we tend to prefer wines, for example, that are fermented with wild rather than inoculated yeasts.
The 2007 From’Girls Calender still hangs in my kitchen. I better order the new one. Ever since meeting a French girl, named Lydie, during my studies in Austin, Texas in the early nineties, my favorite cheese is Comté. (Back then, I often bought some and other cheese with a baguette from Texas French Bread.) Her family, from the Jura, supplied the milk for Comté, and I’ll never forget on my subsequent visit to Lyon, her making me a sandwich from cheese she procured from home. Years later I was fortunate to have a good friend from Fontainebleau and later a French girlfriend who taught me more about the different sorts of cheese in France.
Tags: Fromages de Terroirs