Fourme d’Ambert

Fourme d’Ambert

What it is

A ninth-century chapel porch at La Chaulme, near Ambert, carries the farm's produce carved in stone, and one of the carvings is unmistakably this tall cylinder. The shape is the cheese: 19 cm high on a 13 cm base, it drains standing up and is salted only on the surface, which is why the paste stays supple enough to slice where other blues crumble.

In the kitchen

Cut it in coins down the cylinder rather than in wedges, and take it out of the fridge an hour ahead — cold, its mildness reads as nothing at all.

Goes with

Pear Walnut Celery Honey Rye berries Ruby port

Same species

Fourme de Montbrison

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