
The end to a French cheese tradition? - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180618-the-end-to-a-french-cheese-tradition
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mseebach
The French has always had an oddly low confidence in the power of the quality
of their products. The AOC is not a magic incantation, the "proper" Camenbert
has indeed as described survived being mass produced across the world. Now
there's an adjustment to the AOC rules to allow pasteurised milk, and behold,
there are already people working on a quality-label-scheme that is even more
"pure" than the original AOC.

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pnathan
> terroir, the French notion that a product is inextricably linked to the
> place where it is made

are there scientific grounds for this notion?

~~~
romwell
For quite a few things, certainly so:

-Particular climate conditions can have a distinct and pronounced effect on the taste. I am not a wine connoisseur, but all the times I've had oolong tea that tastes like Taiwanese high mountain oolong, it indeed was from that region.

-As others have noted, fermented products take the bacterial culture in the air, and that certainly varies from place to place. Belgian Lambics won't taste the same as Lambics brewed in other places.

I don't think these two examples require much science to be supported.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Lambic is spontaneously fermented and can't be brewed outside Brussels or the
Payottenland in Belgium because only that region has the right microflora
(yeasts and bacteria):
[http://www.beerplanet.eu/index.php?cnt=10&paramID=1&typeID=4](http://www.beerplanet.eu/index.php?cnt=10&paramID=1&typeID=4)

Other beer sold as Lambic (such as Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic) isn't really
Lambic: [http://blogaboutbeer.com/the-case-against-sam-adams-
cranberr...](http://blogaboutbeer.com/the-case-against-sam-adams-cranberry-
lambic/)

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russdill
Would really like to see if any of these cheese experts can tell the
difference between cheese made from raw milk and cheese made from pasteurized
milk. You'd need some extra blinding, the cheese maker also could not know
which milk they are using.

The whole issue seems to be a battle between large producers using industrial
methods and small producers using traditional methods. I think protecting the
name is something they should do.

~~~
evgen
Even a non-expert can tell the difference between a raw-milk cheese and one
that uses pasteurised milk when it is a cheese that is soft-ripened for a
short duration. You may not agree with everyone else that the raw-milk cheese
is better, but you can notice a difference.

