Beaufort

Beaufort is a hard, cooked, pressed cow's milk cheese of the high valleys of Savoie — Beaufortain, Tarentaise, Maurienne, and Val d'Arly — in the French Alps. Wikipedia documents its AOC status as granted in 1968. The designation requires raw milk from Tarine and Abondance cows grazing the high mountain pastures, and recognizes three appellations: Beaufort, Beaufort d'ete (made from summer milk), and Beaufort de chalet d'alpage (made in alpine chalets, twice daily, from the milk of a single herd at altitude). The large wheels, often twenty to seventy kilograms, are turned and salt-rubbed in cave-like cellars during the long affinage.

A wedge of Beaufort shows a firm, smooth paste the color of deep straw, with a dense, slightly elastic texture and the occasional crunch of tyrosine crystals. The flavor is complex and fruity — almond, warm hay, brown butter — with a clean, lingering finish that intensifies with age. The paste melts beautifully, which is why it is the canonical base of fondue savoyarde.

Beaufort is a cooked, pressed Alpine cheese, built on the same principle as Comte and Gruyere. Rennet coagulates raw cow's milk; the curd is cut, then heated to roughly fifty-three to fifty-five degrees to shrink it and expel whey. The hot curd is pressed into large molds under heavy weight, salt-brined, and moved to cool cave cellars for affinage. The long, slow aging — a minimum of four months, often twelve to eighteen — drives moisture loss and concentrates the flavors through slow enzymatic proteolysis and lipolysis; the milk's own enzymes, plus those of the ripening cultures, break proteins and fats down into the free amino acids and fatty acids that build the nutty, fruity complexity. The tyrosine crystals that crunch under the tooth form as the amino acid tyrosine concentrates during aging. The high-mountain summer milk, from cows grazing wildflower pastures, gives the most aromatic wheels.