Affinage: the act or process of aging cheese Affinage does for cheeses what great coaching does for athletes. Merriam-Webster online dictionary
Affineur: An affineur is a person who ages (some like to say “matures”) cheese. Many cheesemakers act as their own affineur, overseeing the aging of all their cheeses. Some cheesemakers hand their cheese over to affineurs to ensure that the cheese is aged properly before being shipped to stores or sold to customers. Increasingly, some cheese stores have taken on the role of affineur, aging cheese to their own idea of perfection before selling it to customers. SpruceEats.com
One of our last Comte tour visits was to the historical aging caves of Marcel Petite at Fort Saint Antoine. On any given day, the caves house more than 100,000 wheels of Comte AOP.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
In 1966, Marcel Petite discovered the defunct military fort (built between 1879 and 1882 following the 1870 war between France and Prussia to protect the French border) in the Haut Doubs region of France. The fort stood at 3600 feet altitude and Petite immediately recognized that this fort, buried under seven meters (about twenty-one feet) of dirt with inside stone walls would make a perfect aging facility for cheese. The fort created the precise atmosphere for slow aging with its constant temperature of 46 degrees F and 95% humidity. At the time of Petite’s decision, many Affineurs were using techniques to speed up the aging process to turn out wheels quickly and in greater numbers. Petite felt those techniques were wrong and would have negative long-term effects on the quality of Comte and its branding.
Today, the Master Affineurs at the fort use their knowledge, experience and instinct (much like the Cheesemakers discussed in my last Comte article) to coax the best attributes of the wheels of cheese and prepare them for the market.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
While the PDO requires a minimum aging of four months, the wheels at the fort are aged a minimum of ten months because of the low temperature. The wooden boards that hold the cheese wheels must be made of spruce. Spruce grains allow the air to flow through and the wood contains no tannins, therefore adding no specific taste to the cheese. Two workers at the fort are tasked with regularly cleaning the boards. (As an aside, you might recall within the last decade our own FDA began questioning the food safety of the use of boards in aging facilities. After studying the issue, the FDA backed off and allowed wooden boards to remain a part of the aging process. As Spaulding Gray loved to say, “Those rat ass bastards in the government are always looking for new ways to save us from ourselves.”)
There are twenty-five employees working in the fort, including five Affineurs who taste and grade the wheels. When the wheels reach a certain age, the Affineurs grade the cheeses and work with the Fruitieres’ representatives and Cheesemakers to set the price of the wheels. Generally, the Maturing Cellars (there are 13 within the Comte PDO) buy the wheels from the fruitieres and take control of all aspects of the maturing. When ready to be sold, some go back to the fruitieres and the others are sold to the clients of the caves, which include restaurants, supermarkets, exporters, importers, etc.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
They use a grading system of 20 points, as discussed in my article about the history and PDO regulations of Comte. The higher the score, the higher the price set by the Affineurs. Comte AOP with a grade of 12 to 15 points will receive a brown band and wheels above 15 will receive the coveted green band. The minimum acceptable taste score is 3 and any wheel receiving a score of zero in any category will be eliminated. Review chart here. I found the chart in French Cheeses, (Copyright 1996, Eyewitness Handbooks) while researching the history and PDO regulations of Comte AOP.
By the time the wheels reach the cave, the green casein plate is covered with the growth of the young rind. The Affineurs stamp the wheel with a hot iron which includes all the information on the original stamp for traceability purposes: the code of the fruitiere, month and week of manufacturing.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
The morning of our visit, a power failure plagued the facility and our Affineur guide, who also is the Cellar Master at the fort, folded us into the public tour which was conducted 100% in French. Lucky for us, our tour leader was French and helped us through the dialogue (also a printed English translation was available which I photographed to read later). You didn’t need to speak French to understand the importance of the workings of the fort nor the majesty of the endless rows of aging wheels. The moment you enter the fort, the aromas begin to tickle your nose and stir your senses.
The first stop was a small cheese museum where our guide took us through the history of Comte AOP, the fort and the early makings of Comte.
Entering the first aging room that houses 10,000 wheels of Comte AOP (aged ten to fifteen months), your senses are assaulted (in a good way) with the sights and scents, including ammonia which is of a low-level and not harmful, of the cheeses. It’s enough to make you weep from the beauty of it all. For us cheese nerds, it’s right up there with seeing the Mona Lisa or the first time.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
The Cellar Master explained that the paste of the Comte AOP will differ depending on the milk: summer milk will be a brighter yellow because the cows are outside, eating grass and flora. Winter wheels will be whiter from the lack of beta carotene when their diet consists of hay and cereal. The location and altitude of the farms will also affect the color of the paste; different plants grow in different areas.
The next aging room housed older wheels of Comte which were darker and thinner due to aging. These wheels were between twenty and twenty-four months of age. While there is no maximum time for aging, few wheels are matured beyond thirty-six months. It is the Affineurs who decide when the wheels have reached their peak ripeness and are ready for market.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
While in this room, we observed a member of the staff programming the robot. Once programmed the robot (there are seven in the fort) works alone, finding its way with a red laser. The robot takes the wheel from the shelf, turns it, salts it and brushes it. It can work on two wheels simultaneously and finish between 100 and 120 wheels per hour. Each wheel is salted once a week; the younger are salted twice a week. The salt is used to develop the crust, protect the cheese from the outside and develop the aromas.
The next aging room we visited was home to about 25,000 young wheels. The Affineur noted the light color of the wheels due to their young age. The wheels remain in this room for four months and then are transferred to other aging rooms. This room is ten degrees warmer than the other aging rooms.
The last room we visited was a newer addition known as the Cellar of the Ramparts. It was an old bunker and built with the same specifications as the original fort. It has stairs going underground twelve meters and a tunnel that leads to the Saint Antoine forest. Today it is used to allow air flow to cool the cave. As the wheels age they emit heat and sometimes it is necessary to bring in cool air to lower the temperature to the proper level.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
At this point, the Cellar Master, treated us to a wheel testing using the dark end of the “sonde” to tap the wheel. He tapped all over the surface and then stopped at one point and told us there was a crack at that point. He inserted the long part of the sonde into the wheel, twisted it and withdrew cheese and there was a crack in the paste. The crack indicates the wheel is ready for sale.
I had noticed a wheel in the last aging room that had a crushed side (most likely from dropping) and asked how he would grade it. He said the wheel would be graded using the criteria per the PDO. That crushed section would be cut out and most likely used for shredding with the rest of the wheel cut and wrapped for selling.
The Cellar Master, in addition to being the onsite caretaker at the fort, he sorts and selects the wheels which are ready to be sold.
- First he looks at the wheel. Is it flat? Does it have a curved stud? He looks at the crust and touches it.
- As described, he tests the wheels with the sonde for cracks and slits, extracting two small pieces: one for tasting and one to reseal the hole. The rind will re-form over the extraction point like a scar.
- He tastes to assess the aromas of each wheel and define the flavor profiles of the wheels.
- At this point, he marks the wheel with a secret code which signifies the quality of the wheel. Only the five testers know the codes, which allows them to select wheels for their clients according to the aroma profiles requested.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
Following the tour, we were treated to a tasting with the entire tour and the Affineur walked us through the proper way to taste and assess the cheese:
- Look at the crust (rind) and judge age from our viewing in the aging rooms. The more aged, the darker the crust.
- Next the color of the paste; reminding us that summer milk will be more yellow (from the beta carotene in the grass) and whiter in the winter.
- Lastly you test the texture, the more flexible the cheese, the younger the cheese. As cheese ages it loses moisture making it harder and more breakable.
There were three samples: one four moths, one fifteen months and one twenty-four months.
After assessing the cheeses for age, he walked us through the flavor wheel explaining there are six families of flavors:
- the lactic family (aromas of cream, butter and yogurt);
- the vegetable family (aromas of vegetables, fresh plants;
- the fruit family (aromas of dried fruits and honey);
- the spicy family (cinnamon, anise, pepper, vanilla);
- the roasted family (aromas of chocolate and coffee
- the animal family encompasses several aromas including leather, egg yolk, beef broth and sometimes the aroma of the stable (what I call “barnyardy”)
The testers generally find two or three families of aromas in each wheel. There is no school for becoming a tester; it’s on the job training. Their palate develops by tasting a lot of cheese everyday – as many as one hundred wheels everyday. The expertise comes from years of tasting and assessing.
You can purchase Comte AOP online by clicking here.
Following the public tasting, the Cellar Master, who had been a car salesman before taking a part-time job at the fort several years before, treated our group to a private Comte AOP and Jura region wine tasting. He asked us to guess the ages of the two cheeses he served; I wasn’t very good at assessing the ages. The Cellar Master placated my embarrassment by telling me it takes years to develop a “sophisticated” Comte AOP palate.
In addition to being an American Cheese Society Certified Cheese Professional, I am a Certified ServSafe Food Production Manager with certifications that also include ServSafe Certified Instructor and Proctor. I am 
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