🧀 Tomme des Pyrénées

Tomme des Pyrénées is a French semi-hard uncooked cheese with a protected geographical indication (PGI, registered in the EU on 21 June 1996). The specification allows raw or heat-treated milk from cows, goats or sheep; sheep's milk may only be used in a mixture.

Zone. Milk production, cheesemaking and ripening all take place on the French side of the Pyrenees: the whole of Ariège, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Hautes-Pyrénées, and listed communes of Aude, Haute-Garonne and Pyrénées-Orientales.

Milk. For raw and thermised milk, at least 25% of the dry matter of the annual forage ration must be grass (grazed, dried or fed fresh) from the production area, with at least 91 days of grazing a year. Sheep's milk comes from the Basco-Béarnaise, Castillonnaise, Manech Tête Noire or Manech Tête Rousse breeds.

Look and taste. It is a regular cylinder with two flat parallel faces and rounded edges, with a diameter-to-height ratio of 2 to 3 and a weight of 400 g to 5.5 kg. The cheese contains at least 53 g of dry matter and 24 g of fat per 100 g. The rind is orange combined with white, yellow or grey, smooth with some roughness. Heat-treated-milk tommes weighing 1.5 to 5.5 kg may have a black or gold coating. The paste is white to yellow through ivory, supple, melting and creamy, with irregular openings, and firms up with ageing. The taste ranges from fresh-whey aromas to more pronounced ones, depending on ripening and the milk.

Ripening. Wheels ripen in cellars at 7–16 °C, counted from renneting. Cheeses of 400 g to 1.5 kg need 30 days (heat-treated goat or mixed milk, raw cow or goat milk) or 40 days (raw mixed milk). Cheeses of over 1.5 kg to 5.5 kg need 21 days for a black coating on heat-treated cow's milk, 45 days for heat-treated cow's milk with a rind or gold coating, 60 days for heat-treated goat or mixed milk and raw cow or goat milk, and 90 days for raw mixed milk.

Labelling. The label carries the registered name and the EU PGI symbol, the animal species ("cow's milk", "goat's milk", or the milks of a mixture in decreasing order of weight in the dry matter) and the milk treatment.

History. According to the specification, shepherds made a long-keeping cheese in summer in the isolated Pyrenean valleys and sold it after returning from the high pastures. Because wood was scarce, the curd was not cooked, unlike the keeping cheeses of the Alps and the Jura.