Well… our little Cheesy Christmas adventure is coming to a close today.

It’s our last advent cheese of 2020 and we went out with a bang!

Today’s cheese was another from France’s southwest corner… the Basque / Aquitaine region and included not just a special cheese, but also a special ingredient that has it’s own DPO (Designation of Protected Origin)... the Espelette Pepper…

Back on Day 19, we had a Spanish cheese (queso Manchego) and I mentioned, at the time, that it was the first non-French cheese to make it into our Cheesy Christmas menu. I also mentioned that there would be one more in the days to come.

Technically, that’s not true. This cheese was produced in France, but it’s roots are much farther east… in Austria…

Anyone up for some goat cheese from the mountains?
That’s what on the menu for today’s cheese…

What an interesting name for today’s cheese… Abondance (‘abundance’ in English).

Kind of neat that it was scheduled for a Sunday as well…. since, as believers, our abundance comes from the Lord.

Let’s talk cheese…

For today, we ‘left France’ for our cheese of the day.

I’m not sure why this surprised me really. No one said specifically that Cheesy Christmas was a ‘French cheese only’ promotion, but somehow I just supposed that it would be. That being said… it’s one cheese out of nineteen to date, and in the remaining few days, there will only be one other cheese that’s not French.

Vamos…

Today’s cheese was another of the stinky persuasion… but we weathered the storm better than expected really.

Perhaps we’re getting accustomed to all these ‘little stinkers’. One has to wonder… is that a good thing or a bad thing!?

Today, we’re back in the Isère region for another mountain cheese – the Carré du Trièves.

We’ve already been, geographically and in terms of taste, right in the backyard of today’s cheese.

If you’ll recall, way back on Day 4 we say a Fourme d’Ambert. Now you see the connection, or at lease part of it. Not only do the names of the two cheeses share the same first word ‘fourme’, but their story goes back way further than that. In fact, they are connect to all cheeses in a neat way…

Today’s cheese was a fairly easy one to deal with, and Timo was the first to give it high praise! It was, after all, his favourite type of cheese… goat cheese, albeit a little spiced up.