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Jean d'Alos, The New York Times
A Newly Burnished Bordeaux The City's magnificent 18th-century neo-classical buildings, legacy of the age of Montesquieu, are given new life. By R.W. APPLE Jr …But Nothing matches Jean d'Alos. Like most wine capitals, Bordeaux has always been a good eating town. Mr Jean d'Alos, who most consider the best affineur, or ripener, of cheeses in the country carries on the city's gastronomic traditions. He led us past cheese still lifes on his shop's shelves and down two flights to his aging rooms, which occupy the cellars of a 15th century convent. We tasted one of the city's favorite cheeses, a magically creamy, herb-scented, two-month-old brin d'amour from Corsica, and an aged Gouda, well liked in Bordeaux since the heyday of the Dutch wine merchants. In another immaculate room we admired hard cheeses - Comté, Beaufort and Gruyère - as big as bicycle wheels!  House & Garden, January, 1999Cheese Whiz by Alison Cook Affineur Jean D'Alos practices the vanishing art of ripening cheeses to creamy perfection in his Bordeaux shop. In a way, I suppose I never really understood the aliveness of cheese, viscerally and emotionally, instead of intellectually, until the package arrived from Jean D'Alos's extraordinary shop in Bordeaux. Even the aromas that leapt out of the box were powerfully, mysteriously animate: They spoke of milk and earth, of fuzzy mountainsides and moldy subterranean realms that breed changes beyond understanding. It is typical of the rigorously made raw-milk farm cheeses that D'Alos has championed as a founding member of the international Cercle des Fromagers. Affineurs, the tradition -minded cheese-maturers' association that was a strong supporter of the 1990 French AOC law, by which cheese is strictly classified according to geographic origin and fabrication methods. Cheese ripener, or affineur, is a job description that is all but unknown in the United States, where there are precious few cheesemongers who cut to order, and fewer still who are willing or able to coddle a cheese along to a state of transcendence. D'Alos is the king of true believer who insists on cultivating relationships with all the cheese producers in his flock: Knowing where their animals graze, and on what, and when they are milked, and every last detail of their manufacture. So that when a pilgrim to his shop exclaims over a current of fresh thyme and rosemary in a ten day old chevre, D'Alos jumps in with a narrative about goats that browse on wild herbs near the St. Nicholas monastery in the Cevennes range. This is a world away from the industrially produced, dumbed-down cheese that dominate our supermarket universe (even, alas, in France). Aging, D'Alos's stock in trade, is a delicate if vanishing art. When, exactly, have the yeast and molds that ferment a cheese brought it to a precise point of expression? D'Alos genius knows the right moment to pull an opulent Beaumontois while it still shelters a crumbly and slightly unripe center. A state known as moitie-moitie , or half-and-half. Outside, this towering, dankly pungent round is all salty, vanilla-coloured cream under a streaky ochre rind; inside, it is complicated by that chalky heart. I would swear this cheese was transforming itself even as I eat it. On the other end of the spectrum is D'Alos unusually long-ripened Comte, a gargantuan hard mountain cheese from the Jura, which he sells, like wine, by its vintage year. To compare it to Gruyere does it an injustice: Comte from D'Alos, under its bark like brown rind, has a deep, astringent but curiously mellow nuttiness that unfolds in layers. And as a well-aged cheese, it is ready to eat when more evanescent cheeses are out of season. A man who shepherds his cheeses so devoutly could be expected to have some ingenious uses for them. In the cold mouths, when cheese dishes are particularly apt, D'Alos marinates his julienned Comté in white wine and tosses it into a mustardy field green salad that strikes a fine balance between virtue and dissipation. For a spectacular and simple fondue, D'Alos digs a hole in a broad disk of Vacherin, pours in white wine, and melts the whole thing in the oven, right inside its fragile wooden box. Result: a Molten, voluptuous pool in which to twirl small potatoes boiled in their jackets. Vacherin in almost impossible to come by here (it is not aged enough to meet America's raw-milk strictures), but a high-quality Normandy Camembert produces a similarly dramatic effect. Easier still is D'Alos Ossau, cut into cubes and set off by quince marmalade, as it is traditionally eaten in the Ossau Valley. Notched with the obligatory small holes, subtly nutty behind its distinctive salty-socky tang, the Ossau sings a highly specific song. Its handsomely mottled ring makes mold seem friendly rather than alien. Like all of D'Alos cheeses, the Ossau makes you think. And marvel. And treasure that increasing band of American cheese makers ? Coach Farm in New-York; Cowgirl Creamery in California; Allison Hooper and Bob Reese at Vermont Butter & Cheese Company ? Whom D'Alos would recognize as kindred spirits. |
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