"Les 3 Comtois" 5-Month Comté - Ripened in Poligny, Jura, France

[DonRocks]

I recently groused about a piece of poorly stored Comté, which was a "Les Trois Comtois 5-Month Comté" - here are a couple other interesting tidbits:

* Comté is regulated by the A.O.C. system - its name is protected by law, and it cannot be sold unless it meets nine strict guidelines.

* Rather than re-listing the guidelines, I'll link to them - these are the nine things that are required for a cheese to be sold as "Comté."

* One of these things is that Comté must be aged a minimum of 4 months.

* This particular cheese - "Les 3 Comtois" (which means "The 3 From Comté" and is a clever rhyme) - is aged one month over the minimum, and is a perfectly honorable example of Comté - there's nothing "special" about longer-aged cheeses other than that they take on different flavors - it's like drinking a young Beaujolais vs. a Morgon with some bottle age to it: Both have their time and place.

* More Comté is produced than any other A.O.C.-regulated French cheese. Surprise!

* There are 175 producteurs (producers) and 188 affineurs (agers) of Comté.

* Les 3 Comtois ages 20% of all Comté, and they're responsible for 8,500 *tons* of Comté annually.

* Les 3 Comtois is a union of two affineurs (not three, which is odd (**)). Click here to read all about them: Les 3 Comtois pdf file

* Les 3 Comtois offers "personalized ripening times," which means you can choose how long your cheese is aged. Needless to say, I suspect this is reserved for high-volume and/or high-dollar customers, and it's not like you or I could just pick up the phone and have them age a wheel for us (unless, of course, you have deep pockets).

* The Wikipedia link to Comté says, in the second paragraph, that each tomme (wheel) of cheese measures up to 28 inches in diameter and 4 inches in height, and weighs (this is the part that I find unbelievable) 110 pounds! Think about a wheel of cheese, just over 2-feet long, and 4-inches high, and imagine picking it up - do you really think it could weigh 110 pounds? Think of a 45-pound weight in the gym, and how large those are - that's why this statistic just does not compute, unless cheese is a *lot* heavier than I think it is.

(**) I only skimmed that document, so it's possible I misread it.