Cheesy Christmas 6: Livarot

Today’s cheese tasting began with a slight dilemma … trying to distinguish between the stickers for cheeses ‘6’ and ‘9’, which, trust me… looked exactly the same.

It’s for this reason that you won’t see a still-wrapped photo of today’s cheese. In the end, there was only one way to find out for sure….

(If you’re wondering ‘Why the daily cheese posts?’, see this post.)

Mystery

We knew, from the booklet that today’s cheese choice was going to be the Livarot and we googled to see what its rind looked like (very different from the ‘Sechon de Vache’ cheese that will come on day 9). From there we opened one of the two to do a quick rind check, and as luck would have it… it was the right one.

I give you… LaBoxFromage‘s Livarot :
(is it just me, of does this cheese have a halo? 🙂 )

Day #6: Livarot

Name: Livarot
As is the case with many (if not all) of the French cheeses, Livarot derived its name from the city of the same name where it was traditionally made and sold at market.
Region: Cheese.com lists Livarot as ‘one of the oldest and greatest Normandy cheeses’, with a first reference to a cheese with this name, back in 1693. This is yet another cheese with Designation of Protected Origin and cannot be produced anywhere other than in its traditional production zone.
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s milk
Our Score: 4.3/5
Various descriptions of this cheese refer to a citrusy, nutty, spicy taste…. As I’ve mentioned before, our pallet isn’t refined enough to detect all of these individual flavour notes, however, the nuttiness… yes and citrusy… a little… Had we not read about it before hand, we probably wouldn’t have referred to it as citrusy, but in hindsight… I can see it. The brine-washed rind has a slightly granular texture which is a nice off-set to the creamy / springy texture of the inside.

Fun Facts:

It takes about 5 litres (1.4 gallons) of milk to make a round of Livarot.
In Normandy, milk was first and foremost about making butter… so the fatty matter was used to make butter and the remaining skimmed milk was used to make cheese… in this case, Livarot.
Initially, Norman farmers would let this cheese dry for 6 months and then eat it with bread and apple cider (another product widely associated with Normady) while working out in the fields.

Cheesy quote of the day

“In 1546, author John Heywood wrote in “Proverbes” that
“The moon is made of a greene cheese.”
But in 1546 greene meant new, unaged, not green in colour.”

Tomorrow makes 1 full week
of our Cheesy Christmas….
See you tomorrow for cheese #7