🧀 Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage

Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage is a French blue cheese with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO, registered in 2000). According to the specification, it is an unpressed, uncooked blue-veined cheese made from cow's milk, raw or thermised (on farms, raw only). Milk, making and ripening all take place inside the Vercors massif, in 13 communes of Drôme and 13 of Isère. ³

Cows. The milk comes only from herds of Montbéliarde, Abondance and Villard-de-Lans cows; each herd has at least 3% cows and at least one cow of the local Villard-de-Lans breed. There may be no more than one dairy cow per hectare of farmland, grazing is compulsory for at least 150 days a year, and the base ration of grass, hay or wrapped grass comes only from the area. Supplements are limited to 1,800 kg of dry matter per cow a year. ³

How it is made. The milk is renneted at 31–35 °C after seeding with Penicillium roqueforti. The curd is cut into pieces the size of a hazelnut to a walnut, stirred, put in bottomless cylindrical moulds 28 cm across in successive layers, without pressing, and turned at least four times while draining. The cheeses are salted with dry salt in individual moulds, at least once on each face, for no more than three days. ³

Ripening. In rooms at 9–14 °C with relative humidity above 90%, where the cheeses are turned and pierced so that the blue spreads evenly. They may be sold only after 21 days counted from renneting. ³

Look and taste. The cheese is a flat cylinder with a convex heel, 27–30 cm across and 7–9 cm high, weighing 4 to 4.5 kg. The rind carries a fine white to grey-blue bloom, sometimes marbled orange to ivory. The paste is ivory to light yellow, melting and homogeneous, with well-spread blue veining and irregular openings smaller than 1 cm². The taste is a mild blue, without excess bitterness, acidity or salt, with a slight hazelnut note and a smell of undergrowth. Fat is at least 48% of dry matter. ³

A cheese paid as tax. In the 14th century the lord of Sassenage collected this cheese as a levy and sold it at Sassenage, which is how it became known outside the massif. Hard access through the gorges pushed farmers to turn milk into something that kept. ³

The nearly lost cow. The local Villard-de-Lans breed almost vanished by the 1970s and is now in a recovery programme, which is why each herd must keep some of these cows. Farm making lasted until the early 20th century; in 1933 Léonard Mestrallet of the Villard dairy cooperative took up the traditional recipe. ³

Why it matters to you. The taste is mild for a blue, with a slight hazelnut note and no excess bitterness or salt, so it is an easy way in. On farms the milk is raw only, while dairies may thermise it: check the label if that matters. ³⁴