Comté (PDO) | ADT Ain

Terre de Comté

The Comté appellation d’Origine Contrôlée zone has covered the eastern half of the Ain department, at altitudes of between 200 and 1,500 m, for eight centuries.

It’s a raw-milk cheese, made from the milk of Montbéliarde or Simmental cows, whose flavor is intimately linked to the cows’ diet. Fresh grass in summer, hay in winter, the cows are fed a natural, unfermented diet. Milked morning and evening, the milk is transported daily to the dairy, where Comté cheese is made according to a rigorous artisanal process.

Although Comté cheese is made according to the same gestures and traditions as the rest of the region, each Comté cheese wheel reflects its fruitière, its micro-region, its season, and the particular skills of its master cheesemaker and ripener.

What could be more hands-on than immersing yourself in the day-to-day life of an artisan cheesemaker, who shares with you his passion for making and processing Comté cheese. Understanding how this cheese is made allows you to appreciate all its subtleties when you taste it.

Winter or summer Comté?

Raw-milk cheeses don’t taste the same all year round… or have the same color!

Summer Comté has a much more intense yellow paste. In spring and summer, cows graze on fatty grass in the heart of our open-air meadows. As fresh grass is rich in carotene, it restores this original difference, giving the cheeses a golden yellow hue. Comté is one of the few cheeses that does not contain colorants. Summer Comté is reputed to have a greater organoleptic richness (taste, smell…).

Winter Comté, with its ivory, fresh-cream-colored paste, is characterized by more pronounced hazelnut, vegetal or roasted aromas. During the cold season, meals consist of hay, regain and cereals. But the season isn’t everything: you need to have breathed in the scent of hay to understand the fine aromas that a winter Comté has in store for you.

Summer Comté or winter Comté, all are excellent cheeses that benefit from the attentive care of our cheesemakers.

6fruit

In the Ain

4month

Minimum maturation

40kg

Weight of a Comté cheese wheel

1 600 000wheels of Comté cheese

Produced

GOOD TO KNOW

Manufacturing secrets

Every day at the dairy, milk from neighboring farms is warmed to a maximum of 32°C before being partially skimmed in open copper vats. It coagulates thanks to the addition of lactic ferments and then pressure. The curd is divided, then heated and stirred to the perfect texture. It is then placed in a mold and drained by pressing in the fruitière.

After 3 weeks in the fruitiere, the cheeses are placed with the ripener, first in a warm cellar, then in a cold cellar.

They are matured on spruce boards and regularly salted and rubbed with brine.

Comté takes its time to develop its taste. Thanks to the care of the maturer, the rind forms, the texture gradually becomes fine and supple, and the taste gradually becomes richer. Each cheese wheel spends a minimum of 4 months in the cellar before it can claim the “Comté” label.