Essential French Cheeses and How to Serve Them, According to a Cheesemonger

People in the United States love cheese, but here it’s typically in something or on something—mac and cheese, pizza, burritos, sandwiches, and so forth. Even when we serve a cheese course before or after dinner, it’s likely with crackers or bread if not a whole Instagram-tailored spread of fruit, nuts, vegetables, and meats. But in France, it’s not uncommon to see people tucking right into a plate of cheese—no crackers, no bread, no accoutrement. “I would say it’s a difference in the way that we think about cheese culturally,” says John Montez, a certified cheese professional and the training and curriculum manager at Murray’s Cheese in New York. “In the US I think we’re still getting over cheese being an ingredient. So it’s still a little bit strange, this idea of having cheese on its own.”

But having cheese by itself is indeed a very, very good idea. If you live near a good cut-to-order cheese shop, the best way to put together a great cheese plate or board is to simply chat with a cheesemonger and taste samples. “I think the best way to learn about cheese is to eat cheese,” Montez says. But there are some general guidelines to keep in mind when shopping. Read on for Montez’s advice, plus a sampling of French hard, blue, and soft cheeses to try in the US—along with a few picks that aren’t available here to definitely taste if you’re in France. 

Guidelines for Building a Great French Cheese Plate

Start with three to five cheeses. When you’re assembling a cheese plate, the first consideration is how many cheeses you want. Montez says he typically sticks with odd numbers, mostly because he thinks that looks better visually than even numbers, and he likes to have a minimum of three cheeses.

Mix up the textures and flavors. A general guideline for a basic cheese plate is to have something hard or semi-firm, something soft, and something blue. So a classic French cheese plate might feature a hard Alpine cheese like Comté, a soft cheese such as a Brie, and a blue, such as Roquefort. You may also want to mix up the milk types with a goat, a sheep, and a cow’s milk cheese, for example.

That said, Montez says sometimes he and his cheesemonger buddies will do vertical tastings of several iterations of one type of cheese. “It depends on the sort of philosophy behind your tasting,” he says. “For an average get-together where you’re trying to please a crowd, I think variety is the best way to go. So a range of milk types is great. However, when I’m getting together with my friends who work in the industry, we like to do vertical tastings.” With a recent tasting of three types of blues (Roquefort, Bleu D’Auvergne, and 1924 Bleu) he says, “It was really cool to just be able to taste those subtle differences, but I mean if you’re trying to please a crowd having nothing but three blue cheeses might not be the way to do it.” 

Consider the season. While I’m kind of a hardass about seasonality when it comes to produce (please do not serve me asparagus in the fall and butternut squash in the summer), I never thought much about seasonality with cheese until I spoke to Montez. “I think it’s important to be very seasonal with your approach,” he says. So, for example when considering a soft cheese in the spring or summer, Montez says he might go for a simple fresh goat cheese. “Simple fresh cheeses can taste so good when they are made at this time, when the animals are eating grass and the cheeses are made by a good creamery.” On the other hand, in the fall or the winter, he’d be more likely to pick a heavier soft cheese—for example, a savory, bloomy rind cheese such as Brie or Camembert.

Take it out of the fridge ahead of time—or never put it there in the first place. Refrigeration mutes cheese’s flavors and makes soft cheeses unpleasantly firm, so Montez recommends removing cheese from the fridge at least 30 minutes or preferably an hour before you plan to serve it. “Although my personal philosophy is if you are lucky enough to live near a cut-to-order cheese shop, buy what you’re going to eat that day,” he says. “If you buy just the amount you plan to serve that day, it never needs to even see a fridge.”

He says it’s very common in France to have a cheese box to hold cheese at room temperature. Serving the cheese the day you buy it can also prevent it from picking up funky flavors from your fridge, and keeps it as close to its proper flavor and texture as possible. “Honestly, once the cheese is no longer in the cave that it was aged in it’s no longer in an ideal environment,” he explains. “Once it’s no longer in a wheel, it’s going to start to pick up off flavors. It’s not going to hurt you, necessarily, but it’s not going to taste as the cheesemaker envisioned it tasting.” If you are worried about your soft cheeses getting warm and running all over the place, Montez suggests putting them in a little dish and scooping them up. 

Wrap leftovers properly. “You know, cheese really doesn’t like plastic,” Montez says. If you are wondering why shops like Murray’s display cheeses wrapped in plastic, Montez says that’s because “no one’s gonna buy something that they can’t see.” But once the cheese is sliced in the shop, it should be wrapped in cheese paper, and if you have leftovers you should either re-wrap it in the paper it came in or wrap it in wax paper or parchment paper.

French Hard Cheeses

If you want to go really traditional with a hard French cheese, Montez says you can’t go wrong with an Alpine cheese such as Comté. “There’s a special, wonderful tradition of Alpine cheese making in France,” he says. “When I was a cheesemonger in the Grand Central location of Murray’s, whenever I would hear somebody with a French accent approaching the counter, my hand instinctually went for the Comté. And every time they got it. It’s just a beloved cheese.” In the spring and summer, he says there are some nice 12 to 18 month Comtés with a delicate nuttiness, while in the fall and winter you can sometimes find Comtés aged for two or three years that are “out of this world.” These older Comtes are sometimes labeled as “salt Comté,” and will be heavier, drier, and more concentrated with more crystals and “bold, oniony, beefy flavors.” 

If you want something more rustic, Montez is a fan of the farmhouse cheese Tommes de Savoie, which is made with raw cow’s milk and has a tangy flavor and a craggy—and entirely edible—rind. Montez says it’s a popular pick among French customers at Murray’s. “It’s an easy eating cheese, and it’s one of the rustic farmhouse cheeses—you can tell just looking at the rind that they allow just whatever grows on there to grow. So you get these wild flavors and no two wheels are going to be the same.”

Montez says once you’re really ready to start expanding out on your French cheese selection, he recommends adding some Basque cheeses, which are “not always on the radar like the classic French cheeses.” He says, “I love the Basque cheeses because they’re such a different aesthetic than the rest of France—they’re so much more rugged.” Ossau Iraty, a mountain-style sheep’s milk cheese from the Pyrenees is a fantastic choice if you want to add a Basque cheese to your board.

Finally, another nice (and very approachable) option for a hard cheese is Mimolette, a cow’s milk cheese with an orange hue and butterscotch-like flavor that’s similar to a Gouda or Edam. “It’s famous because they encourage the growth of cheese mites on the rind and they kind of dig little craters into the cheese,” Montez says. “The ones that they send us in the US don’t have the mites. Usually they vacuum them out. They give a little bit of a lemony flavor that you miss out on in the ones they send to us.” Even without its mites, Mimolette is a fun, vibrant, crowd pleasing cheese, Montez says.

French Blue Cheeses

“Roquefort is the ‘king of cheeses’ or actually ‘the cheese of kings and popes’—when I think of a classic French cheese plate, it’s got to have Roquefort,” Montez says of the classic, tangy French blue made from raw sheep’s milk. Beyond Roquefort, Montez is a fan of Bleu D’Auvergne, which he describes as almost a cow’s milk version of Roquefort. “It’s a little bit more mild, and it just has these notes of baking spice and cinnamon. I think it is sometimes a little bit more versatile because it’s not sheep’s milk. Sheep’s milk cheese is so fatty and creamy that you can’t do much with that cheese other than spread it on a piece of bread. Bleu D’Auvergne, you could crumble it, put it in a salad, cook with it. That’s one I really love.”

Another favorite French blue for Montez is Herve Mons’ 1924 Bleu, a mixed milk cheese that is based on an older recipe for Roquefort from before it had PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) status. But overall, he says, “It’s hard to go wrong with a French blue,” so here, again, ask your local cheesemonger what they recommend.

French Soft Cheeses

There are tons of great options among French soft cheeses, from very mild and milky to super funky. If you’re looking to expand beyond three basic cheeses for your cheese plate, Montez says, “I would really fill in with those soft cheeses because I think that’s where you get some of the most variety.”

In the world of soft goat’s milk cheeses, in the spring you might opt for a mild chèvre such as the French-style American fresh goat cheese from Vermont Creamery on the East Coast or Laura Chenel on the West Coast. In the US these fresh goat cheeses will be made with pasteurized milk, while in France they are more likely to be made with raw milk.

For a bolder fresh goat, choose a Loire Valley cheese such as Selles-Sur-Cher, an unaged goat cheese that has an ash rind that encloses a thin cream line with a slightly crumbly interior. The flavor is grassy, tangy, and more robust than the Vermont Creamery chèvre but still relatively mild. Montez also recommends Valencay and Sainte-Maure, two other ash-coated goat cheeses from the Loire Valley. One of these Loire Valley cheeses with a Sancerre “is just one of those pairings that’ll knock your socks off.”

For buttery, delightfully oozy cow’s milk cheeses with a white, slightly chewy bloomy rind Montez suggests picking up Murray’s house brand Brie Fermier or a Camembert Fermier or a similar cheese from another purveyor—just ask them for something on the savory, funky side. (For what it’s worth, Murray’s cheeses are now available at Kroger stores.) Because of US laws that forbid selling unpasteurized cheeses under 60 days, you won’t find 100% proper French Brie or Camembert in the United States. However, the Brie and Camembert fermier—farmstead—cheeses from Murray’s are made with pasteurized milk and then are inculcated with cultures that break down proteins and help the cheese develop a savory, vegetal flavor that’s closer to what you’d find in France. The “fermier” on the label simply means farmstead, so that label doesn’t necessarily mean the cheese has been treated with cultures—you’ll have to chat with your cheesemonger to learn more. One option sold in the US is Fromage de Meaux, a take on the PDO Brie de Meaux, which also has cultures added to give it a more authentic flavor.

For somebody who wants a savory Camembert-style cheese made in the US, Montez recommends Jasper Hill Farm’s Moses Sleeper, which is from Vermont. (Murray’s and other cheese stores also carry untreated Bries that are milder and more in line with what Americans expect from a Brie—”lactic, buttery, a little bit mushroomy, not as traditional.”)

If you want a mild, luscious bloomy rind cheese, pick up a wheel of triple crème such as the almost impossibly creamy, gooey Brillat Savarin, which has a delicate mushroomy and uber-buttery flavor. Delice is another excellent triple crème for fans of the style. “They’re very mild, buttery, creamy, and just very well made.”

On the “funky, stinky” end of the soft cheese spectrum are washed rind cheeses such as Epoisses that Montez loves in the fall and winter for their heavier flavors. With its orangish washed rind enclosing a gooey, pungent, buttery, meaty core, Epoisses is a wonderful choice for anyone who likes a full flavored cheese. “Epoisses is a classic example of a monastery cheese,” Montez says. “It comes in a little box and it’s just so gooey, and bacony, and meaty.”

“‘Monastery cheese’ is a category that is mostly used in Canada in the same way that we use the term ‘washed rind,'” Montez explains. “In Canada, it does not always mean that it actually originated in a monastery, just that washed rinds as a style are believed to have. Some cheese historians doubt this though. My favorite example of a true monastery cheese is Chimay cheese, which is made by the same Belgian Trappist monks who make the beer Chimay. They actually wash the cheese in the beer. Hard to find in the US, but you owe it to yourself to try it if you come across it.” For a gooey washed rind American cheese, Montez recommends Jasper Hill Farm’s Willoughby.

Cheeses to Try When You’re in France That You Can’t Get in the US

As mentioned above, because of the US rules forbidding raw milk cheeses aged for fewer than 60 days, there are some French cheeses you will simply have to go to France to eat. If you have a trip planned (or happen to live in France), Montez recommends trying the wide variety of excellent soft cheeses—some of which are available in the US only when made with pasteurized milk or are aged longer than they would be in France to meet the US requirements. One of his favorites to eat in France is St. Marcellin. “It’s this bloomy rind cheese that comes in this little crock and you’re supposed to bake it, and it’s just beautiful,” he says. “It’s delicate, but there’s also this kind of like complexity of flavor that you get from that raw milk.” (Murray’s sells a somewhat similar cheese called St. Mark’s that’s made with pasteurized milk.)

“Camembert de Normandie is a big favorite of mine,” Montez says. “I would say in France it has a longer shelf life because with that raw milk the flavors continue to develop in a way that a pasteurized version doesn’t—the pasteurized ones will just taste off after a while.”

Another cheese to look for in France is Abbaye de Belloc, which is made in small batches by monks. “It used to be imported into the United States and as far as I know, or at least the story I’m told—you know, the French, they love a good story, especially if it’s about cheese, whether it’s true or not—is that it is such a small batch cheese made by these monks in a monastery and in the 2010s there was some new paperwork they had to fill out in if they wanted to import to the US and they just didn’t feel like doing the paperwork.” While Montez excitedly followed up with me via email to let me know that as of this fall, Abbaye de Belloc “is back!!” in the US, it’s still likely easier to find in France for now.

And if you want to taste Mimolette with its traditional hint of lemon from cheese mites, you’ll need to pick that up in France too.

Drinks to Go With French Cheese

A glass of French wine will generally pair well with French cheese, especially a wine from the same region as the cheese you’re serving. “The classic French cheeses have almost prescribed wine pairings, and I think it’s a great place to start,” says Montez. “These pairings are both based in terroir—you’d have a Sancerre with a goat cheese from the Loire Valley, for example, or an Epoisses with a red Burgundy—and they are sharing aspects of the soil and climate, but so much of it is cultural too. People in that region specifically made these things to go together.”

But Montez says that there’s no reason not to “mix and match” a little bit too. He’s been surprised by how well certain frowned-upon pairings can work. For example, some people will say you shouldn’t have spirits with cheese because it’ll dull the palate. “I think there’s a cheese for every beverage out there,” he says, and “I have had surprising moments of pairing something delicate like a fresh goat cheese with a peated Scotch. You wouldn’t expect it to work. The traditional advice tells you that something like a Scotch is going to totally blow out the palate and you won’t be able to taste a delicate goat cheese but it brought out this lemony, citrus note in the cheese. The best thing to do is play around and see. The palate is always going to know if it worked or not.”

Accompaniments for French Cheese

As noted above, most French cheeses can be eaten straight-up, no crackers or any other accompaniments necessary. That said, a baguette is certainly a very traditional pairing, and can help ferry those particularly oozy soft cheeses to your mouth. Crackers are less common, but acceptable, and a mild cracker can act as a palate cleanser between cheeses, as well.

Preserved cherries, whether whole or in a spread, are a classic French cheese plate addition, especially as a pairing for Basque cheeses and goat cheeses, Montez says. Cornichons are another classic accompaniment if you want to take things in a more savory route. “Other than that, the only traditional thing you are going to see across the board is honey, especially with those fresher cheeses.” Montez says. He would opt for a lighter honey, which you can leave in the jar or put in a bowl with a little spoon for drizzling.

If you want to add some meat to your board, a dry-aged leg of ham such as Jambon de Bayonne is nice with the harder cheeses, while an uncured Jambon de Paris is an excellent everyday ham that can go on a cheese plate or into sandwiches. Saucisson sec, a dry-aged sausage, is another classic cheese board pick. Fresh in-season fruit such as cherries or pears or dried fruits are also nice on a cheese board.

But don’t be shy about just tucking right into completely unadorned wedges of cheese. “What I always find with French cheese plates is that the focus is so much on the cheese. You might have one or two little things that you might snack alongside, but it’s not the kind of overwhelming amount of accompaniments that we see on Instagram—these grazing tables and cornucopias,” says Montez. “There’s nothing wrong with eating just straight-up cheese.”