This will be a golden age.
France’s first cheese museum opened in Paris, just in time for the Olympics held in the City of Light.
The Museum of Fromage is described on its website as “an educational and interactive space to discover French cheese-making heritage and regions”.
The founder, Pierre Brisson, created the company with the aim of keeping the art of cheesemaking alive in France. France has 56 regional types of cheese, made from cow’s, sheep’s and goat’s milk.
“It is not an easy task, but it is a fantastic one, and there is a real risk that this task will disappear,” he told The Guardian“I wanted to do something so that people understand at what point there is an ancestral savoir-faire when making cheese.”
“We hear a lot about wine and how it’s made and the subtleties of taste and how it’s produced and nothing about cheese. Although people love to eat it and the demand for cheese is still high, fewer young people want to make it their profession.”
The Cheese Museum, where cheese is made daily, is housed in a 17th-century stone building on Île Saint-Louis, a short walk from Notre Dame Cathedral.
The entrance fee for adults is approximately $21.75 and for children 11 and under, you pay $11.96. Admission is free for farmers and agriculture students.
The entrance fee allows visitors to watch a cheese-making demonstration, participate in a tasting and learn about the history of cheese through the museum’s interactive displays.
There are also cheese guides available, which provide information on things like the history of cheese and its production. Courses and workshops are also offered.
One of the museum’s cheese experts, Agathe de Saint-Exupéry, explained the challenges involved in producing cheese, an industry worth nearly $10 billion in the country.
“It’s a very individual process that depends on so many things, even the humor of the animals whose milk is used. You can make the same good cheese every day, and every day it will taste different. That just can’t be done industrially,” she told the outlet.
Brisson, 38, whose parents are winemakers, spent a decade planning the museum and says his passion for cheese began at a young age.
“My father would take me to the cheesemonger every Sunday after mass. I would stand at the very top of the display and look at all the fantastic cheeses,” he told the newspaper.
“I became fascinated by where they came from and how they were made.”
However, when he moved to Paris, he discovered that there was a lack of cheese education in the city, and he wants to change that.
“I realized there were a lot of places promoting wine, the culture of it and how it’s made, and there were a lot of stores selling cheese, but there was nothing showing people how it’s made,” he told the outlet.
“My dream is that in 20 years someone will say that after visiting the museum he or she decided to become a cheese maker.”