Brie Pasteurised - Dongé

Size

Type: Soft
Milk: Pasteurised cow's milk
Rennet: Animal
Location: Lorraine, France

The brothers Luc and Jean-Phillipe Donge who supply our usual Brie de Meaux, luckily for us, make very small quantities of pasteurised cheese in their 3rd generation family dairy in Meuse.  This means their usual qualities of traditional make such as hand ladling and using small vats for delicate handling of the curd, also apply to this cheese.  It also means that the milk comes from the same 30 farms that supply them for Brie de Meaux and includes milk from the rare local breed Pied Noir de l’Est as well as the more common Prim Holstein & Montbeliarde.  The only difference is that the milk is pasteurised.

About ten years ago they increased the size of the dairy slightly and this gave them the opportunity to put in the facility for making a pasteurised cheese, largely with a view to export markets that do not accept raw milk soft cheese.

Luc Donge is president of the AOC for Brie de Meaux so this small quantity of pasteurised cheese by no means indicates a lack of faith in working with raw milk.  In fact they only make pasteurised cheese one week in every four and we have to pre-order these cheeses in advance.

Because it is made in such limited quantities its age profile will vary more than our Brie de Meaux did.