🧀 Emmental de Savoie

Emmental de Savoie is a French cheese with a protected geographical indication (PGI), made from raw cow's milk. It is a pressed cooked cheese produced in Haute-Savoie, Savoie and part of Ain and Isère.

Milk. According to the specification, the dairy herd must be at least 75% Abondance, Montbéliarde or Tarentaise cows. Green forage is fed for at least 150 days a year, and all coarse fodder for lactating cows comes from the production area. The milk is used raw; pasteurisation, microfiltration and similar treatments are banned.

Making. The milk is coagulated with calf rennet at 31–34 °C in open copper vats. The curd is cut into grains between a rice grain and a maize kernel in size, heated to 51–55 °C without washing the grain, pressed for at least 5 hours and brined.

Ripening. The wheel ripens for at least 75 days from making, including at least 21 days in a warm cellar (up to 25 °C), where the holes form. Plastic film and antifungal agents on the rind are banned.

Look and taste. A wheel is 72–80 cm across and weighs at least 60 kg once ripened. The rind is yellow-brown to yellow. The paste is firm and supple, with regular holes from the size of a small cherry to a walnut. The taste is frank and fruity. Fat content is at least 28% of the finished cheese.

Labelling. Each wheel carries an identification mark with the workshop number and a sequential number. Packaging shows the name Emmental de Savoie, the name and address of the maker or ripener, the certification body and the geographical origin mention.

Background. According to the specification, the cheese developed together with village dairies (fruitières), a movement that spread through the Alps in the 1820s, and it was the main Savoyard cheese until the 1980s. The name has been a PGI since 1996.