Dongé Brie de Meaux

The Dongé family have had their own fromagerie in Triconville in the region of Meuse in eastern France since 1930.  Etienne Dongé, grandfather of Luc and Jean Phillippe the current manager and head cheesemaker, bought the business from his uncle. 

Brie de Meaux, which takes its name from the town of Meaux in whose market it was primarily sold, has been made in Meuse at the eastern end of the production area since the Revolution in 1789. Cheesemaking became more common during the Napoleonic wars when the western region of Brie manufacturing, just east of Paris, increasingly turned to sugar production.  The Dongé creamery is at the eastern edge. 

In the 1930s when Etienne took over the business, there was a fromagerie every 10km in Meuse.  Increasingly these have been bought and consolidated by larger dairy manufacturers such as Lactalis who in 1989 bought the last independent Brie affineur in the region and at this point the Dongé family decided to bring maturing of their cheeses in house. 

Their creamery is still very much a family affair, three generations on.  Not only Luc and Jean Phillippe, but their mother and Luc’s wife Florence are also involved in all aspects of keeping the creamery going day to day, which has maintained continuity and informed the choice to keep using many of the more farmhouse techniques such as small 100litre bidons in which to set the curd.  Others chose larger vessels requiring alterations to the traditional recipe or even chose to mechanise. 

They actively decided to work with very local farms from a small 15km radius of the creamery.  They work with 50 farms in total but will buy from only 25 to 30 at a time which helps deal with any gaps in production due to seasonality or seasonal variability.  This makes it sound like the creamery is a big operation, but each farm will generally have only 40-60 cows which is less than a quarter of the average herd size in the UK.  Smaller herds obviously have the advantage that the farmer can give greater care and attention to each individual animal and this is essential when a cheesemaker intends to use raw milk.  Even so, it takes a comprehensive system of testing of individual farms and of each tanker of milk brought in to have a robust assurance of quality.  It would be far easier to pasteurise and, using a variety of starter cultures, aim to replicate the flavour artificially rather than from the true flora of the raw milk.  Indeed in the UK cheese industry, many soft cheese producers have understandably  done exactly that.   

The Dongé family have not compromised. 

The quality of the raw milk derives not only from small farms with attentive animal husbandry but also benefits from some native and now more rare breed animals such as Pied Noir de l’Est and Montbeliardes as well as the more standard Prim Holstein. Due to this quality, acidification of the milk can take place slowly and overnight.  Starters are added in small quantities the day before renneting and after a 90 minute set, the curd is cut and ladled into banded moulds which are turned various times during the afternoon before being left overnight.  In the subsequent days, cheeses are salted in the warm making room, transferred to a drying room where large fans distribute the air and introduce oxygen so the white, bloomy penicillium camemberti can grow on the coat of yeasts which first colonise the cheeses’ rinds.  After 6 to 7 weeks maturation at around 7C, we receive them into our stores. 

These are among the number of reasons why we prize Dongé cheese so highly but as ever the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.  The buttery, savoury, soy and vegetal flavours of their Brie de Meaux are quite exceptional, easily the best Brie de Meaux you will find.