🧀 Morbier

Morbier is a French cheese with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), made from raw cow's milk. It has an uncooked pressed paste, and every slice shows a continuous, horizontal black line through the middle. According to the specification, the line is obtained solely by coating vegetable carbon on the side of one of the two loaves of curd before pressing.

Milk and zone. The milk comes only from Montbéliarde cows (breed type 46) or French Simmental cows (type 35), or crosses of the two. Fermented feed, silage or not, is banned on the farm all year, and feed subject to GMO labelling is banned for ruminants. Milking, cheesemaking and maturing take place in the approved area in the Jura mountains: all of the Doubs department, most of Jura and parts of Ain and Saône-et-Loire.

Look. A cheese is a flat cylinder 30 to 40 cm across and 5 to 8 cm high, weighing 5 to 8 kg, with flat sides and a slightly convex heel. The rind is natural, rubbed and smeared, beige to orange, and bears the imprint of the mould frame. The paste is ivory to pale yellow, homogeneous, often with scattered small openings.

Taste. The paste is soft to the touch, smooth and melting. The taste is clear, with hints of milk, caramel, vanilla and fruit, and roasted, spicy and vegetable notes appear with ageing. The cheese has at least 45 g of fat per 100 g of dry matter, and the moisture of the fat-free cheese is between 55 % and 67 %.

Why it matters to you. The cheeses mature on spruce boards, and the specification asks operators to place them on the market within 180 days (not counting the best-before date). The label must show the name Morbier in characters at least as large as the largest on the label, the EU PDO logo and the name and address of the maturing facility. A maturing period is optional; if shown, it is the minimum number of days spent in an authorised maturing facility.

Morbier or Comté? Both are cheeses of the Jura mountains, and the story links them: according to the specification, Morbier was first made when there was too little milk for a wheel of Comté. Today it is its own PDO cheese, from raw cow's milk, with an uncooked pressed paste and its black line of vegetable carbon between two loaves of curd. The paste is soft and melting, ripened on spruce boards, and the line is not a mould or a sign of ageing but part of the recipe.

Look for the name Morbier in large letters, the EU PDO symbol (protected designation of origin) and the name and address of the maturing facility. A maturing period is optional; if shown, it is the minimum number of days in an authorised facility. A whole cheese is a flat disc of 5–8 kg with a rubbed, beige to orange rind, so it is usually sold in wedges with the black line visible in the middle. Typical places are a cheesemonger, a supermarket cheese counter or a delicatessen.

History. According to the specification, the oldest document mentioning Morbier dates from 1799, when the cheese was already known in Paris. It was first made when there was too little milk for a wheel of Comté. One theory says that the first loaf of curd was coated with soot from the cauldron and then topped with the curd of the next milking.