It was possibly the first time we went to stay at our
apartment in Vaison la Romaine. I went to the local cheese shop. The proprietor
of the cheese shop, a meilleur ouvrier de
France recognized by President Chirac for her skill and knowledge, gets to
wear a chef jacket with a red, white and blue ribbon collar that indicates her
status. When I asked her for 200 grams of Roulé,
she looked over the top of her fashionable glasses and said: “Ca c’est un fromage industriel. Je ne le
vend pas ici.” (That is factory-made (processed) cheese. I do not sell it
here.) Her response was so abrupt and (to me) so aggressive, I decided to buy my
cheese from the market vendors.
Over the years, I have gotten to know our famous cheese shop
owner and have overcome my reticence of visiting her shop. Josianne Déal
provided the cheeses for the Valentine’s Day dinner at La Lyriste, our friend's restaurant. For that matter, if you eat
in just about any of the restaurants in town, the cheese they offer is probably
from her store called Lou Canesteou fromagerie.
I now visit the shop regularly because there are so many
varieties of cheese from which to choose and I appreciate the guidance from her
and her staff. The first problem to overcome is to decide among the options for
one style of cheese. Did I want the Comté
that was aged 12 months, 18 months or 24 months? Did I want the Roquefort that was creamy or the Roquefort that was spicier to the taste?
And then, of course, several of the cheeses are sold with the AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) which
means that the product is certified as coming from the region named on the
label.
Last winter, I stopped in the cheese shop and Josianne
waited on me. I told her that there was a difference between her shop and the
cheese store where I shopped in Lansing .
I explained that in Lansing ,
the shop runs on a binary system: “Do you have Roquefort? Yes/No. Do you
have Morbier? Yes/No. Press 1 for
yes, 0 for no… Josianne smiled at me and said: “We have a few more options
for you.”
On Saturday, I stopped at our cheese shop and asked for a
half of a pound of Comté. (Hills
Cheese is the most popular of all of the shops at the City Market. Hills has
been a vendor at the City Market for more than 50 years. Their success is
offering quality cheeses from across the world, not just France . When
you go there on the weekend, expect to be third in line.) The young man that
served me brought me the piece of Comté
that he had cut and told me the price. I asked him if he knew how long it had
been aged (12, 18, 24 mos). He replied that he did not know but he was sure
that the Comté had come in a green
wrapper which meant that it was high-quality Comté; better than the Comté that
comes in the blue wrapper…
