Last of the Beaufort

The last wheel of the summer Beaufort went onto the board tonight, twenty-two months after it was made and rather more than that after the cows in question walked up to their summer pasture above Are’ches.

Beaufort d’été is made only between June and October, from milk given by animals grazing alpine pasture above fifteen hundred metres, and it does not taste like the winter cheese from the same dairy. The summer wheel carries the flowers — genuinely, unmistakably, a sweetness in the finish that has no business being in a hard cheese and that comes from gentian and clover and forty other things on a hillside.

We buy six wheels a year from Beno’t, whose family has held the same alpage for four generations, and we age them a further eighteen months in the cellar on spruce boards that are washed and turned every fortnight. At twenty-two months a Beaufort is at the point where the tyrosine crystals have arrived but the texture has not yet gone dry.

There is no more until the new wheels are ready in the autumn. The board will carry the winter cheese, which is very good, and a handful of guests will notice the difference and say so.

Beno’t reports a wet June and an excellent August, which he says will show. We will find out in eighteen months.