Autumn is a wonderful time of the year for all kinds of reasons, not least because it signals the beginning of the season for one of the greatest cheeses known to man: a wondrous, washed-rind, cow’s milk cheese that comes on the market every September, made in small dairies in the Jura mountains, on both the Swiss and French sides of the border. 

In Switzerland this treasure is called ‘Vacherin Mont-d’Or’, in France it’s plain ‘Mont d’Or’ (occasionally ‘Vacherin du Haut Doubs’). Each year as the temperatures drop and the trees start to take on their vivid autumn colours, cheese-fanciers throughout Europe await the timely reappearance of this marvellous product with eager anticipation. 

It’s one of those rare, strictly local, seasonal delights that still punctuate the calendar – a particular pleasure in a world where everything we eat seems to be available all year round, and where our food is increasingly turning into an anonymous commodity undistinguished by links to either place or season. 

The cheeses range in diameter from about 12 cm (5 inches) to about 30 cm (12 inches) – picture a CD and an LP respectively – with a depth of some 5 cm (2 inches). The smallest ones weigh in at 450g (a pound), the largest – the size indicated for a good crowd - is 3 kilos (over 6 lbs). The presentation is distinctive - this is the only cheese that must by law be sold in its sprucewood box, whose weight is part of the price. 

Why the box? The reason is obvious once you plunge in: if the cheese were not firmly corseted in this way, it would simply run away with the spoon.

And a spoon - or a Stilton scoop if you have such a thing – is certainly what’s required. Attempts to broach this exuberant cheese with anything else will certainly end in tears, for inside it’s nothing but a pool of liquid gold. 

Now take a piece and roll it slowly, experimentally, over your tongue. Close your eyes and picture the scene up in the Jura. 

The mountain air is crisp and cool, the mixed sprucewood and deciduous forests have turned to brilliant golds and reds. Speckled Montbéliarde cows are munching peaceably at the last blades of grass in their manicured hill farm pastures; soon they will be taken indoors for the winter. 

In the tiny French village of St Point Lac not far from Pontarlier, Monsieur Michelin is just starting work on his Mont d’Or. 

The small dairy is warm and humid, full of soothing milky smells. 

The raw milk, from the combined evening and morning’s milking, is heating up gently in a huge copper cauldron. The starter, which will give the cheese its inimitable Mont d’Or flavour and velvety-smooth texture, is stirred in, followed at a decent interval by a dose of rennet to curdle the milk into solids and whey. 

Next the whey is drawn off and a huge comb-like instrument drawn back and forth through the curds, which now resemble trembling blancmange. The curds are shovelled unceremoniously into big white buckets and tipped into tall cylinders set on draining trays. 

In another corner of the dairy Madame Michelin is blanching the fragrant strips of mahogany-coloured spruce bark. They perfume the air beautifully, like a steam bath in an expensive spa. Once blanched, they become supple enough to be wrapped around the young cheeses. 

All around is an impressive panoply of buckets, brushes, soap squirters, disinfectant baths, high-pressure hoses and gallons upon gallons of water, prerequisites for the scrupulous hygiene required when working with raw milk products. 

Just across the border in Switzerland in the little village of Le Lieu on the Lac de Joux, Monsieur Hauser is likewise hard at work on his Vacherin Mont-d’Or. He’s one of only 14 producers left in the area (against over 60 twenty years ago), and intensely proud of his artisan cheese. 

In accordance with Swiss law, his milk must first be thermized – a sort of halfway house towards pasteurization where the milk is heated briefly to 62oC (145oF) and briskly chilled - before cheesemaking begins. Then there’s the same, comfortably familiar rhythm of turning the milk and cutting the curds. 

The fresh curds, once set, are unmoulded from their perforated plastic cylinders. Belying their apparent fragility, the lightly pressed curds somehow miraculously hold their shape. M. Hauser slices them horizontally in two and tosses the infant cheeses nonchalantly across the stainless steel surface. There they are retrieved by another pair of hands and braced by the fragrant spruce strips. An elastic band is snapped around to hold the spruce in place during the cheeses’ 25- to 28-day ripening period in the cool, damp cellar next door. 

The final task of the morning for M. Hauser’s small team of helpers is to box up a batch of perfectly mature cheeses that are ready to go on sale. The pale wooden boxes stamped with the dairy’s name are pulled down from a shelf. They’re made purposely slightly smaller than the finished product, so that when the cheeses are deftly coaxed into their containers, the upper crust erupts into a sort of ecstatic, voluptuous wave. The new season’s Vacherin Mont-d’Or is ready to roll.

Whether you choose the Swiss or the French model will depend largely on where you live and shop (unless you’re in the US, where you may not have the choice at all since the 60-day ageing requirement for cheeses officially rules out both the Swiss and French versions). 

Just for fun, do like we did recently and have a tasting of both kinds: you may find, as we did, that the Swiss cheeses are quite deep in colour, inside and out, with a pinkish-gold crust, deep yellow flesh and a very forward flavour. The French ones are generally more delicate, gently infused with spruce aromas but not overly pungent, with an ivory crust and luscious silky flesh like heavy cream that’s come of age. 

Sample them with proper country bread, or allow them to slither gently over baked potatoes, and serve with smoked ham and pickles.

Cheesy sources
 

• Fromagerie Michelin, 25160 St Point Lac, France (+33 (0)3 81 69 61 76)
• Fromagerie Sancey-Richard, 25370 Metabief, France (+33 (0)3 81 49 02 36)
• C. & P. Hauser, 1345 Le Lieu, Switzerland (+41 (0)21 841 11 40)
• Jean-Michel Rochat, 1343 Les Charbonnières, Switzerland (+41 (0)21 841 10 14)
• La Fromagerie, 2-4 Moxon Street, London W1U 4EW (+44 (0)20 7935 0341) 
• The Rosslyn Delicatessen, 56 Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, London NW3 (+44 (0)20 7794 9210)