If a change of the French government is in the air, savvy political commentors phone Roland Barthélémy, dean of Paris’s cheese merchants or fromagers, to ask if someone has been sent by the outgoing administration to pay its bill. Losing power is traumatic enough, but to imperil your credit with Barthélémy would truly be a disaster.
Cheese provides a useful key to the French national character. "How can a single party govern a country that has three hundred and fifty kinds of cheese?" demanded an exasperated General de Gaulle when the Communists aspired to power. (In fact the total is closer to a thousand.) In most countries, to talk of cheese and government in the same sentence would be ridiculous. But in France it wasn’t entirely inconceivable that lovers of brie might refuse to vote for the party that espoused roquefort; even that a roquefort faction, unwilling to cede power to the camembert cartel, might propose its most telegenic member for parliament, barricade the freeways with HGVs, and march on Paris to put their complaints to the Chamber of Deputies, burning down the building to emphasise their point.
Cheese figures for me in one of the most telling incidents of my first weeks in France. It illuminated the fact that this was a different country from any I’d lived in before.
Jean-Jacques, a friend of my wife’s, described something he did every August when he returned to his old family home in the mountainous Jura.
“One morning”, he said, “my two boys and I set out to climb the mountain near our house.”
He described the long climb; the pause at mid-morning for a snack and a drink from the clear and pure stream, the continuing ascent.
“And so, at noon,” he went on, “we reached the home of my old friend, the goat-herd.”
The goat herd greeted him warmly, just as he had done when Jean-Jacques was himself a boy, and climbed the mountain with his father.
They chatted for a while – “and then”, said Jean-Jacques, “he went into his hut, and returned with…a cheese.”
I tried to look impressed.
“He only makes about twenty of these cheeses each year,” said Jean-Jacques, “from the milk of his goats. We carefully wrap it up, and then, after saying goodbye for another year, we descend the mountain once more.”
“Very touching”, I said. “And tell me – how is the cheese?”
The look he gave was withering. Contemplating an event so redolent of tradition and history and family, why would one care what the cheese was like? Delicious or disgusting, its edibility was enormously far from the point.
A few years ago, an old friend from Australia passed through town.
“I’m going to visit my cousin in Dijon,” he said. “I thought I’d take him some cheeses. Where’s the best place?”
Thinking he’d be tickled to shop in the same location as the President of the Republic, I took him to the nearest of Roland Barthélémy’s three shops, on Rue de Grenelle, and explained his needs to the white-coated, attentive, almost priest-like serveur.
“A most interesting challenge,” said the man courteously. “Dijon….hmmm. Well, obviously the cousin of monsieur…” He bowed politely to my friend. “…would be acquainted with the cheeses of his region, so we may exclude those. And …if I may ask…madame….?”
“My cousin’s wife is Swiss.”
“Ah, bon; then we can also forget Swiss cheeses.”
He didn’t hide his satisfaction. Cheese turns even the most fervent internationalist into a patriot. When the Dutch mounted an advertising assault on the French market with the slogan “The Other Country For Cheese”, hoots of derision must have been audible in Amsterdam, if not the North Pole.
Descending into the stone cellar, where cheeses lay on straw in a precisely calibrated chill, our guide surfaced with his arms full of small boxes and packets. The first to be unwrapped was a wizened disc the size of a hockey puck, with an exterior resembling elephant hide. It reminded me of those deodorising discs they put in public urinals.
“Now this,” he said, “I am sure the cousin of Monsieur will never have tasted. A chevre of the Auvergne. The flavour is quite distinctive. With a glass of armagnac, after a dinner of pheasant, or perhaps partridge…sublime.”
Over the next half hour, we watched a master at work. Cheeses of every texture and consistency were produced. Cow, sheep and goat’s milk cheeses; cheeses caked in ashes, in crushed black peppercorns or dried thyme, others sporting coats of furry grey mould, a few so runny that, freed from their shallow ceramic dishes, they’d have spread out to cover the entire floor.
“Maybe,” my friend muttered nervously, “we should include something more, uh, ordinary? Say, a camembert?”
I passed this request to the fromager. His expression probably duplicated that of multi-Michelin-starred chef Paul Ducasse when Donald Trump declined his signature dish of blue lobster tails simmered in court bouillon, preferring fillet of beef and chocolate souffle.
“If you wish,” he said, as if the camembert was not the ultimate cheese cliché. Selecting a distinctive round box of white matchwood, he lifted the lid and contemplated a rind as plump and white as the thigh of a nude by Boucher.
“When would this be eaten?”
“Tomorrow,” my friend said.
The fromager looked pained at his imprecision. “Lunch or dinner?”
“Er…well…dinner.”
A sublimely educated thumb delicately applied pressure.
“Hmmmm…perhaps not quite…”
It took four more cheeses before one of them coaxed a smile of satisfaction.
“By tomorrow evening,” he said, replacing the lid, “I can assure monsieur this will be à point. “
My friend reached for his wallet and looked around for the caisse, but the transaction was by no means finished. Since the cheeses were to travel, our helper wrapped each piece separately in aluminium foil, clearly labeled with its name and region, and placed the whole assortment in a small cane basket.
After paying absurdly little, considering the time and expertise expended, we were conducted to the door with the most effusive thanks for our custom, and confident hopes that the cousin of monsieur would find the cheeses to his liking.
On the sidewalk, he looked back in something like awe. “I’ve had girlfriends who didn’t treat me as well as that!”
I knew then that, the next time he came to Paris, one of his first stops would be Barthélemy. Cheese had worked its magic once again.