Saint-Nectaire

The cheese has been made in the Pays des Monts-Dore of the Auvergne since at least the seventeenth century, when it was known simply as fromage de seigle, rye cheese, for being matured on rye straw. It owes its present name to Marshal Henri de La Ferté-Senneterre (1600–1681), who is said to have introduced it to the court of Louis XIV; by 1768 the traveller Legrand d'Aussy found it celebrated throughout Auvergne. It received its AOC in 1955 and a European PDO in 1996, its protected zone covering villages in the Puy-de-Dôme and a part of the Cantal. A green oval casein plate marks the farmhouse (fermier) cheese made from raw whole milk; a square plate marks the dairy (laitier) version.

The grey-and-tan natural rind smells of cellar, damp earth and mushroom; the paste beneath is ivory, semi-soft and yielding, springy near the rind and creamier toward the centre. The flavour is nutty and mild — hazelnut, mushroom, fresh cream and a clean grassy note from the mountain milk — never sharp, with a faint mineral tang from the rind. A ripe one is soft enough to bend and almost spread. Best eaten at room temperature so the fat softens and the aroma opens.

Saint-Nectaire is a pressed uncooked-curd cheese: the milk is renneted, the curd cut and pressed to expel whey without ever heating it, so the paste stays moist and supple rather than firm like a cooked-curd mountain cheese. Its character is built in the affinage. Ripening for at least four weeks on rye straw in a cool, humid cellar lets surface moulds and a mixed flora colonise the rind — the grey, ochre and white growth that gives the cheese its earthy, mushroomy aroma — while enzymes work inward, breaking down protein and fat to soften the texture and deepen the flavour from the rind toward the heart. The volcanic mountain pasture the cows graze is held to give the milk, and so the cheese, its particular character.