Cheesy Christmas 9: Séchon de Vache

Today we did things just like the French… cheese was the closing chapter to supper, after a perfect-for-a-winter(-ish)-day pork stew from the slow cooker (for all you language buffs… how’s that for a compound modifier!?).

We’re on day 9 and things keep going up from day 7’s Picodon….

(Wondering ‘Why the daily cheese posts?’… read this 🙂 )

Familiar

If we were to sum up today’s Cheesy Christmas choice with one word, I think it would have to be the word ‘familiar’, and that for two reasons:

The folks at LaBoxFromage, along with others, describe the Séchon de Vache as a firmer, dryer, and slightly more pronounced cousin to a Saint Marcellin (Cheesy Christmas day 3).
As we were smelling and eating it, something kept ringing a bell for us. Finally it his… it reminded us of the goat cheese flavour that’s characteristic of a ‘Chèvre chaud’ (warm goat cheese) dish (eg. croque monsieur, pizza or pasta).

Thos are always a favourite, so we started off on good footing!

Day #9: Séchon de Vache

Name: Séchon de Vache
The name gives it away, even though it reminded us of goat cheese, it’s a Séchon de vache (cow). It was actually quite tough to find detailed infomation about this cheese (I suppose, because it’s essentially a cousin to the Saint Marcellin), but the other part of the name is ‘séchon’… which looks remarkably like a dialectal derivative of the word ‘secher’ (to dry). This would make sense since it’s like a dryer version of the Saint Marcellin. If any of you have a better explanation, I’m all ears, please leave a comment below.
Region: The Isère region (see map).
Milk: Cow’s milk, non-pasteurized
Our Score: 4.5/5
Not much more to say about this cheese really. We’d scored the Saint-Marcellin at 4.4, and this one was a 4.5. I think we must’ve been taken in by the slightly dryer texture. Both in terms of texture and yes, even flavour, it reminiscent of cheddar believe it or not. There was something there… not blatant, but something.

Cheese quote of the day

I read the following cheese quote by American comedian Dennis Miller:

“Washington D.C. is to lying, what Wisconsin is to cheese.”

At first I didn’t really get the quote and had to dig deeper, only to find out that Wisconsin is one of the biggest cheese-making states in the union. In fact, I saw a 2019 infographic from WisconsinCheese.com that made the following claim:

“If Wisconsin were a country, it would rank 4th in the world in terms of cheese production.” (Between 5th ranking Italy and 3rd ranking France, in terms of pounds produced)

Who knew!?

Happy Cheesy Christmas….
See you tomorrow for cheese #10