THE MORTALITY OF CHEESE // Part Two: Out of sight, out of rind
Herding goats in Provence and making natural cheese with the François and Vanessa Masto gets me thinking about belonging, provenance and that cheese is as finite as it maker.
In part two I visit the Masto, makers of Buchette de Manon, Mistralou and Banon, some of my favourite natural cheeses. I knew the cheeses well and when visiting their place of origin, my fascination for them hugely augmented in my discovery that they are like little autographs of the farm and herd, a tour de force of provenance, scarcity and subsequent re-evaluation of our appreciation for produce tied in with deep tradition. The final conversation I had with them reaffirmed my theories of the finite nature of real food, and helped me to celebrate the fact they will not last for ever.
Images are stills from an upcoming film on the specific cheesemaking process that I am working on, due for completion and release early next spring, with the arrival of the new season cheeses.
Paid subscribers receive more captioned stills at the end of the piece, and a 20% discount code to order the last of this year’s cheeses through my cheese family Mons Cheesemongers.
THE MORTALITY OF CHEESE // Part Two: Out of sight, out of rind
Max Jones
Driving through the dry and dusty landscape near Simiane-la-Rotonde in Provence, I find my thoughts nourished by drinking in this highly specific backdrop and think to the hills where, tucked away up there, local folk are transforming this remarkable place into food. Rolling hills and plateaus are broken up by the characteristic purple swathes of flowering lavender fields and Mourvèdre vineyards, whose lines of vines surround peach-pink limestone buildings with sloping Roman tiled roofs, and where walls are strewn with scented climbers like jasmine, honeysuckle and wisteria. The recent rain deepens the greens of the low mountains that are smattered with oak, chestnut, olive, juniper, beech and pine.
I am curious about the people who live hidden and tucked away, locked in to occupying these fascinating, ancient roles.
This developing approach I have, that it is the people that are the recipe and not the product itself, has been beautifully informed by this small journey to visit artisans François and Vanessa Masto. Their setup is small, a golden-stoned farmhouse tucked away in beautiful Haute-Provence. Through more lavender fields and up a yellowed dirt track that leads into dense deciduous woodland, they run a small operation of around 70 milking Rove goats, a breed that has roots in Mesopotamia two thousand years ago when it was brought into the port town of Marseille and interbred with the animals kept by local goatherds. They excel at roving (sorry) the inaccessible coarse, dry, low-growing scrub of Provence to yield milk with a richness that is unrivaled. If one day I start making cheese, it’ll be with a herd of Rove.
François, in his fifties, spends around four hours a day walking his goats around rotating sections in two hundred acres of wild, steep and rocky pasture. He moves at the pace of the herd, sitting with them when they decide to stop to eat the leaves of trees and other vegetation, keeping them safe from wolves. He leans against trees whilst waiting with the herd, looking into the distance in silence, in some cases for over an hour. I feel a profound sense of humility and gratitude being able to take in this timeless sight, calm and quiet save for the tinkling clank of goat bells and the forced rustle of leaves being torn from branches by the hungry herd. I think about how hidden we are and how when François points out a distant landmark in a beautiful view to where he was next heading, how perhaps all views in this staggering landscape might contain other goatherds, other cheese making chalets, other packs of wolves, hidden from sight.
The goats move on, as I stare out into the Provençale landscape that has become richer for this knowledge, and I know I will not see it the same way again. François hands me a juniper berry with a wink, beckoning me along.
As we walk there is a powerful aroma that comes from the herd treading on strong, earthy herbs like wild thyme, rosemary, winter savoury and lavender. This is the scent of the Provençale landscape, the breeze thick with the heady volatile compounds released from essential oils. Perhaps this is what they were talking about all those years ago in London at tastings, how these animal’s milk was redolent of the wild herby pasture upon which they grazed.
“Goats don’t like eating these wild herbs”, François tells me, reading my mind.
“It is a myth that you can taste these herbs in the cheese from what they eat.”
This statement made me remember another fantastic cheese I knew well, Lingot de St Nicholas made in Herault to the west, a young, fresh ewe’s milk cheese that 100% tasted of thyme. Jon Thrupp from Mons told me that he spoke to Père Gabriel, the maker, who swore blind that it was the wild thyme that the sheep were eating that gave the cheese its distinctive herb flavour. Eventually, the holy man avowed that this wasn't the case as his recipe actually involved adding some droplets of his own, home-made thyme oil concocted from the wild thyme that grows in abundance around the monastery. That’s him right there! No more solid proof that the people are the recipe!
There are certainly notes of taste within these Provençale lactic cheeses that are redolent of the strong, herby vegetation. I was once posited the spurious explanation that the milk would absorb these strong flavours through the udder whilst the animals grazed, and now, being with François’ herd, I see that the idea actually has legs. When the animals rest, lying in patches of thyme and these “herbs of Provence” that have been crushed under hoof, the fragrance is overwhelming. When I smoke oily fish like salmonids and scombroids in Ireland, the level to which flavour compounds in smoke fervently attach themselves to fats can attest to this theory, and I am no longer as dismissive as I once was; I am certain that the rich Rove milk absorbs something of this, and that the natural starter that ferments the milk unlocks exciting herby flavours from fatty acids, which are augmented by the addition of salt.
The goats return to the farm where they are milked on a raised platform a few feet from the ground and are front facing, so that “their view is wide and not constrained, and they can see us and smell us”.
Vanessa and François move the milk to the small cheese making room attached to their home where whey (starter) is added and let to ferment overnight for the production of lactic Mistralou, a small, square puck the size of a cobble stone, and Buchette de Manon, a long cylinder the shape of a large, uniform cigar. Rennet and starter are added for the production of Banon, one of the more famous heritage goat’s cheeses of Provence.
The previous days’ cheeses are then moved to the kitchen in their home, where Vanessa takes dry sweet-chestnut leaves gathered in the autumn and rehydrates them with boiling water for a minute, then lays them out, wiping them dry with a clean muslin cloth. The Mistralou (named after the Mistral, a northerly wind that gusts through Provence) are dusted with winter savoury, another strong, fragrant herb that tastes somewhere between marjoram and thyme, that grows wild on the land around the farm and wrapped in a single leaf, tied off with a strand of raffia. The Banon are placed on two crossed leaves, and tightly cinched closed to “eliminate oxygen and come into full contact with the cheese to hold in moisture”, she explains.
I had always thought that this technique was an old, traditional method of hygiene in a time before chemicals and sterilisation to trade cheese at markets by hand (certainly the case for Mistralou), but the wrapping of Banon really is part of the recipe, ensuring high-moisture, anaerobic fermentation and almost camembert-like autolysis breakdown (gooey), as well as protecting them from flies.
Having observed such a beautiful cycle of motions, one after the other, with groundhog precision and outcome, I see that the Masto are completely locked in to the process of cheesemaking, of transforming that landscape into some of the finest examples of truly artisanal food I have come across, and without doubt, amongst some of my favourite cheeses. Their alchemical skill in producing such delicate and beautiful things is wholly tied up with the life that they lead, tending to their herd that roams the land in which they dwell. Their routine runs like clockwork and is entirely dependent on the herd. François only has one eye, which when not locked in my gaze with earnest conversation, darts to his wrist-watch. Our conversations are often cut short by something he has to do somewhere on the farm, right then, which takes immediate priority.
And then I get that I am witnessing a very honest and natural thing. I think about all the Mistralous and Buchettes I have eaten over the years in London, arriving on their little trays on the counter at Mons. I must have eaten a hundred in my time as a cheesemonger, and I think that each and every day through the spring and summer, into autumn, whilst I was in the busyness of the city, François and Vanessa would have been making this way always.
“Every day is the same”, Vanessa tells me with a wink.
I think of all the animals in the natural world, and what they might be doing at any given moment, anywhere, anywhen, in their own individual certainty of being. And then I think again about identity, and the individuals behind this perfect food, made in tiny, constant batches.
“But François, are you not afraid that there is no-one to continue your cheesemaking after you are gone?”
“No, not at all” he says smiling, with unnerving gentleness.
“I don’t care if no-one makes it when we’re gone. We will be gone, and with us, our cheese. The important thing is to hear from people like you, that we are doing a good job, and our cheese is being enjoyed. It gives sense and purpose. Our decisions we have made ourselves, to live this life the way that we do. And if we make good cheese, if we do our very best, that is our purpose. That is what we do. Our daughter lives her own life. Let the next people make what they want, based on their decisions. It will be different, but of the same worth, if that is what matters to them”.
With these strong ideas occupying my mind, we left the Masto and drove west for half an hour into the Vaucluse, to the “Ferme du Plateau”, a tiny farm run by David and Fanette Ladu where my thoughts on identity and place were immediately affirmed upon arrival. Jaysus, and I ate one of the best cheeses I have eaten in the middle of bashing out some tunes on guitar with its maker.
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