Cheese and Wine Tasting in Paris

For the last 18 years I've explored French food, culture, wine and cheese through this blog. Now heading in an exciting and natural new direction, as of spring 2023, I will be offering an in-person experience devoted to tasting and appreciating French cheese.

My goal is to share my deep passion for the subject and to demystify the delicious, often aromatic, sometimes intimidating world of fromage!

The tasting includes:

• A comfortably seated, 2½-3 hour cheese and wine workshop in a wine shop

• 10-12 French cheeses paired with 3 wines (and/or possible other drinks)

• A fun, sensory and educational experience

You will go away with:

• A deeper understanding of cheese

• Confidence in purchasing, serving and slicing

• Cheese and wine pairing insight and know-how

• A new love for cheese, including their varied flavors, aromas and textures

The small group format, maximum 8 people, which includes all the cheese, bread, accompaniments and drinks, is €130 per person (please see note).

They will be offered most Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at noon. Sunday is sometimes also available.

To book a tasting, or for any questions you may have, please contact me at louloufrance@gmail.com

This experience can be customized for private groups, just ask!

Note: Please send an email to discuss a private tasting if you would like to include children under 14 years old

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My French Cheese Workshops Are Now Online!

If you've read this blog for any time now, you know how much I love cheese! And after weeks of working out a new (for me) way to share this great passion with you, I've finally done it.

Three virtual workshops, which I've entitled, French Cheese Fundamentals, are online and available on Eventbrite. They've been up for a few days, but I've haven't had the chance to share them here yet.

Part One is the Basics, a Cheese 101 that covers history, terminology, the French cheese families, seasonality - it's a lot of practical, nerdy information.

Part Two is all about creating Cheese Boards. You'll learn about tasting, serving, slicing, shopping and building beautiful boards.

Part Three is about Pairing cheese with wine, other beverages and food. Even though there are no hard and fast rules, there is plenty of information to learn about creating delicious flavor marriages. 

I'm keeping the numbers limited to just 15 screens for a more personal experience, however I will continue to add the workshops to the calendar on a rotating basis, so if you miss one, it will be offered again in a few weeks time. 

The Basics has already sold out for December (yay!), but there is another one being offered in mid-January, and there is still space available on Cheese Boards this month. Pairing Cheese is being offered for the first time in early January. 

I hope to see you there and if you have any questions, please contact me at: louloufrance@gmail.com

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Coming Soon - My Virtual French Cheese Workshops

As I mentioned in September, I teamed up with Context Conversations and presented an online French cheese tasting seminar that was offered a few more times over the last few months. And more dates have been added in December and January.

I was also invited by La Cuisine Paris to do a live French fromage workshop in November, with another one coming up in mid-December.

All of this got me thinking that it would be fun to create some more comprehensive online workshops of my own, so that's exactly what I did!

For the moment I've got three finished that I'm going to launch shortly (all of the calendar app stuff and payment app stuff is a bit of a learning curve), so watch this space and I hope to share all of my French cheese knowledge and passion with you very soon.

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5 Things

1) My kind of cake!

2) Do I spy Emily in Paris? 

 

3) Giant bouquets of autumn hydrangeas

4) A modern cheese board

5) Café life

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Camembert de Normandie Fermier

One of only two remaining, farm produced Camembert de Normandie is made by La Fromagerie Durand. It is worth the extra €2!

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Le Brin d'Amour

A Corsican ewe's milk cheese sprinkled with aromatic Mediterranean herbs and sold in a perfect state of affinage. Heaven!


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Happy New Year!

We kicked it off with a long walk through the quiet streets of Paris and ended it with the holy trinity - cheese, wine and bread. A good start to the new year!

Wishing you all a very happy 2020!


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Can I Eat That Moldy Cheese?

Cheese + Mold. Is it safe to eat? This is a question I get asked a lot!

This article on the Bon Appetit website came across my radar the other day (even though it was written in 2018!) and after I read the following paragraph, I knew I had to share it.

"The first thing you’ve got to understand is that, by and large, microorganisms like mold are what makes cheese, well, cheese. “In a lot of ways, cheese is mold,” explains Morillo. With the notable exception of fresh cheeses that are meant to be consumed shortly after they are made (mozzarella, ricotta, queso fresco, etc.), most cheeses owe their distinct deliciousness and texture to the microbiological alchemy that occurs when mold, bacteria, and other microorganisms feast on the proteins and sugars present in milk, transforming them into a wide range of flavorful compounds. (Science is cool!)"

Yes, science is cool! And mold, when it comes to cheese, can definitely be our friend.

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Carb(onara) Loading in Paris

Les grèves in Paris continue...*

I've been averaging seven miles a day on foot since last Thursday to get to and from my food tours, but this morning I had a long walk across the river for a cheese workshop, and as an added bonus there was a huge protest march this afternoon, so it took me almost two hours to get home after being rerouted due to closed bridges and roads.

The entire time I was walking (and hungry!) I was focusing on two things;  one was not getting run down by the inexperienced cyclists and trottinette drivers, and the other was making a giant bowl of comforting, filling spaghetti carbonara for dinner when I got home.

And a giant bowl it was! I should have invited several friends over to share it with us. (However, I know I'll appreciate the leftovers when I get home tomorrow night!)




*There are a few more days of strikes (grèves) predicted, but hopefully things will get back to normal by this weekend. 





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Life In France Includes A Lot Of Cheese!

Shopping at Laurent Dubois for one of my favorite Alpine cheeses, Tomme de Chartreuse.



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5 Things

1) Our neighborhood

2) Enzo really needs to learn to chill out

3) Drinks on the terrace at Treize au Jardin


4) Evening light in Saint-Germain-des-Prés

5) Goat cheese - ash covered and sprinkled with sarriette


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Off The Beaten Path In Paris: La Ferme d'Alexandre

Located just a block away from La Grande Épicerie in Saint Germain, la Ferme d'Alexandre doesn't feel "off the beaten path," but I wanted to share it with you anyway. I've come to love this place, not only for their fabulous cheese selection, but for the kindness and knowledge of  the owner Alex, and the entire staff.

I shop here every week to  buy fromage for the French cheese workshop we offer at Paris by Mouth, so I've gotten to know them and what they offer very well. And if you follow me on Instagram, you've most likely seen many of their cheeses and their beautiful blue and gold tile floor!



They always have some interesting sheep milk cheeses from the Pyrénées and right now their goat cheese section is amazing! You can also find the last raw milk farmer produced Époisses in France here, as well as a handful of delicious Italian cheeses.
And in addition to cheese, there is a good selection of charcuterie, unpasteurized butter, cream straight from farms in Normandy, honey, small producer wine and jam, and bread on the weekends.
If you find yourself near either of Alex's fromageries, they are definitely worth a visit!



La Ferme d'Alexandre
19 rue Saint-Placide
75006 Paris

and

21 rue Mouton Duvernet
75014 Paris

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Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Cheese

March 27 is la Journée Nationale du Fromage, or National Cheese Day, here in France. Today we will be honoring rare, small production, farmer produced, raw milk cheeses.

You can be sure that I'll be celebrating!





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French Cheese and Wine

Over the last (almost) 13 years I've covered a lot of topics here on Chez Loulou, and the one that I still love to talk about and am most passionate about is French cheese.
But lately cheese has been getting some competition.

My project to taste all the cheese slowly progresses and I continually nerd out with books like The Oxford Companion to Cheese and Mastering Cheese.
I always want to learn more, read more and eat more cheese.

Also, for the last few years I've had the incredible opportunity to offer a French cheese tasting workshop with Paris by Mouth. It is the highlight of my week and the most fun I ever imagined a job could be.



French cheese will always be my greatest love, but now I've fallen for something else.
I'm having a little fling with French wine.

(shhh....don't tell cheese)

Over the summer I enrolled in an intense, online French Wine Scholar certification program and I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought that after 15 years in France, enjoying the regional wines and even living in a wine making region for 8 years, I would have a pretty solid base to work from. Well....



Now I wake up in the middle of the night and my mind automatically starts listing the principal villages of the Côte de Nuits from north to south and notes which ones have Grand Crus.
I spend time on the Métro memorizing the unusual grape varieties of SW France and remembering which grape dominates which area of Champagne. Terms like gneiss, semi-carbonic maceration, Portlandian marl and sur lie swirl around in my head. I have flash cards and a dozen highlighters.

I am in awe of how much there is to learn and just how much I didn't know. And it's so much fun! I mean, my brain hurts most of the time and I'm slightly terrified of the exam I have to take at the end, but wine is a fabulous subject to study.

Here's to my new love!



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5 (Fromage) Things

1) Oozy grilled cheese at Paroles de Fromagers




2) goat and goat and goat




3) Emballage




4) Merci to the monks for making such delicious cheese!




5) Garrigue





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Montrachet

I've always loved the subtle flavors that leaves, bark, ash and herbs lend to cheese. Montrachet is no exception.
It is wrapped in a chestnut leaf and is one of a handful of goat cheeses produced in Burgundy, a region that is famous for its wine, bien sûr, but also for its cow's milk cheeses, especially of the washed rind variety. Cheeses like Époisses, Abbaye de Cîteaux, Soumaintrain and Ami du Chambertin.
But the popularity of cows in Burgundy doesn't mean you should disregard the wonderful goat cheeses from this region, such as Mâconnais and Charolais, both of which can be made entirely from goat's milk, and sometimes from a blend of cow and goat's milk.

Montrachet is made by a sole producer located in Saint-Gengoux-le-National, a tiny town about an hour north of Mâcon. It is a semi-firm, unpasteurized goat cheese shaped like a squat little barrel. The chestnut leaf keeps it moist and adds a slight note of earthiness. It is tied with a strip of raffia, that when unwrapped reveals a crinkly rind dotted with blue mold that contrasts nicely with a pale, fluffy, natural rind.

The flavor is a little heady at first, then mellows out to sweet, tangy, slightly salty and milky notes. Overall it is a relatively mild cheese, but at the same time offers a richness and a long, satisfying finish. The texture is quite dense and clay like.
It is a delicious cheese that packs a lot of flavor into a nice little package.

Enjoy with a glass of white Burgundy.

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Les Halles De Lyon

Train travel spoils you. No need to get to the airport 2+ hours before your flight, no waiting in long security lines, no strict weight and size limits on your luggage. You arrive a bit before your train is scheduled to depart, stow your bags, find your seat and away you go!
Living in Paris spoils you too. You quickly learn that much of France and many parts of Europe are just a few hours from the city. (and escaping from time to time is good for le moral)

Feel like going to Amsterdam? No problem! Jump on a train and you'll be there in just over 3 hours. Want to taste some wine in Bordeaux? It's only 2½ hours away. Craving some bouillabaisse and time on the beach? You can be sitting in the sun in Marseille in a little over 3 hours.





And of course there's Lyon, a city that is considered paradise for the French food lover and a place that had both intrigued me and been recommended to me by several friends over the years. So last summer I hopped on the TGV and just 2 hours later was climbing up a steep flight of stairs in La Croix-Rousse neighborhood to meet up with old friends.

Lucy, a brilliant cook and owner of the cooking school, Plum Lyon, who I met in Gascony at Camp Cassoulet almost a decade ago, and Mardi, the writer of the fabulous food blog, eat. live. travel. write, who I met in Paris several years ago, were waiting at Lucy's house to welcome me. The first thing we did after I dropped off my bag was head to the covered food market, Les Halles de Lyon.

I instantly fell in love with this place, for the cheese alone! The quality of the food on offer was superb and the people working at the market were genuine and helpful. There was no snobbery here, just people selling products that they believed in and wanted to share with us. I noticed the same thing at the restaurants where we ate. The chefs were proud of their dishes, but they didn't do a great job for the recognition, they cooked amazing food because they are chefs, and that's what chefs do. The lack of pretension was so refreshing.

It was a whirlwind trip, and with Lucy and her family's help, we packed a lot of delicious food, cheese, wine, walking and laughter into 36 hours. But that's all the time it took to convince me; if you love French food, you can believe what they say about Lyon.
It is paradise!

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