Dear fellow food-lover,

Welcome to The Cheese Plate , a monthly email from Oldways with curated information about different types of traditional cheeses, with ideal pairings. Let The Cheese Plate be a guide to put wonderful traditional cheeses on your plate. Visit your favorite cheesemonger to find these delicious cheeses!
Mountain Cheeses
This month, The Cheese Plate is serving you three traditional mountain cheeses . In addition to being luxurious and oh-so-tasty , mountain cheeses are made to last! By that, we mean mountain cheesemakers only produce during certain times of year (typically spring and summer when animals are in pastures). They rely on their cheese aging to extend the life of the cheeses.
Comté (France)
Comté , a PDO cheese, is a raw milk cooked pressed cheese crafted in the Jura Mountains of France. Every day, twenty-five hundred family farms deliver milk to over 150 local cheesemaking facilities or fruitières. This milk must be transformed into Comté within 24 hours to preserve the lactic microflora in the milk, ensuring the cheese's aromatic potential. 

After eight months of aging, each Comté wheel is graded and shipped to market. Every wheel of Comté is unique with flavors that speak of the pastures where the cows grazed, the season in which it was made, the craftsmanship of the cheesemaker, and the time spent in aging.

Shave Comté on a salad, melt it on a sandwich, or include it in fondue, gratin, or your favorite quiche.
PY Black Head Manech Ossau Iraty PDO (France)
PY Black Head Manech Ossau Iraty PDO is hand-crafted with milk from Black Head Manech sheep who graze on steep mountains in the Pyrénées around the tiny Irati Dairy.
 
At the dairy, the milk is gently pasteurized and transformed using lactic cultures and traditional rennet. The curds are cut and ladled by hand into old fashioned molds lined with cheesecloth. It is matured on wood boards for at least six months.  
 
Ossau Iraty has deep caramel notes, undertones of broth, and a long savory finish. You can find younger versions for a creamy snack, while this aged version is an excellent option for a savory dessert. 
Mont D’or (France)
Imagine a cheese so gooey it could be served with a spoon. A joyous thought, right? Mont D'or is that cheese!

Mont D'or is a Vacherin-style cheese. This style of cheese is wrapped in spruce bark to give the cheese form (it's that silky and soft!).

Mont D'or's flavors include cooked milk and nuts, and sometimes it has notes of cooked vegetables. Melt it in the oven, and dip crackers, bread, or vegetables into it like you would with fondue or dip.

Because Mont D’or is truly an iconic mountain cheese, we felt it was important to include it in this email. But, here's the catch. For those of you in the US, look for it when you're traveling! As a raw milk cheese that is aged under 60 days, Mont D’or does not meet FDA regulations and can not be sold in the US.
Featured Pairing: Fig Spread
Fig spread is a simple, versatile pairing for cheese. Like yin and yang, the crunch of fig seeds complements creamy cheeses. And, the combination of sweet and milky flavors offer just the right contrast to make the flavors shine.

Elevate your cheese and crackers with a dollop of fig spread, or bake cheese with fig spread wrapped in phyllo dough.

Whip up a batch of fig spread with a couple figs and a lemon. Or try a favorite of ours, the delicious Divina Fig Spread !
Join us for a food and cheese lovers trip of a lifetime