🧀 Abondance

Abondance is a French pressed, semi-cooked cheese from raw whole cow's milk, born in the Abondance Valley in Haute-Savoie. You can recognise it by its concave side, and its taste is rich in aromas, usually with a slight bitterness. The name has been protected in the EU as a PDO since 1996. ¹³

Where it came from. It has been made here for several centuries, and from the 13th century the monks of Abondance Abbey encouraged it, notably by clearing pastures. Mountains and rainy summers made dairy farming the most obvious way to live off this land. Each family grazed its own herd separately, which is why the cheese long stayed on farms. ³

Why it is small and concave. Both traits follow from that way of life. Its modest weight of 6–12 kg, lighter than other pressed cooked cheeses, is linked to family grazing in the mountains and making cheese on the farm. Semi-cooking gives a softer texture, so a mould was needed to hold the cheese: it is at least 1 cm thicker in the middle than at the edges. That shape is also easier to handle when bringing the cheese down from the alpine pastures. ³⁴

The cows. Milk comes only from Abondance, Tarentaise and Montbéliarde cows, and the Abondance breed must make up at least 45 % of the herd. Named after the valley, it is hardy and well suited to the hard climate and terrain. Holstein milk is not allowed, and researchers have looked for genetic markers to detect it in cheese. ³⁵

Grass and raw milk. Cows graze at least 150 days a year, and silage is banned. This matters because the cheese's aroma starts in the meadow: plants supply compounds that later pass into the cheese. The milk is not treated in any way that could harm its microflora, so that link is kept. ³⁴

How it ripens. For at least 100 days the wheels lie on unplaned spruce boards at 10–13 °C. The rind carries a cloth pattern, because the cheese is first held in cloth, which helps the right microflora settle. A study of six-month-old cheeses found that acidity and the speed of acidification had the closest link to texture, and both depend on the milk as well as the cheesemaker's work. ⁴⁶

Why it matters to you. Every whole wheel has a plate on its side: square and red for dairy cheese, oval and green with the word “fermier” for farm cheese. The month and day of making are marked on the side. Choose by this if it matters to you who made the cheese. Look for the name and PDO mark, and if you avoid raw-milk cheese, note that Abondance comes no other way. ³⁴