Earthy and cellar
Stone, cave and damp earth: Tomme de Savoie, Saint-Nectaire and clothbound cheddar.
Earthy cheeses smell of cellars, damp stone, mushrooms, hay and soil. The notes come from the natural rinds that grow in cool, humid caves: grey and brown moulds, yeasts and even mites, working on the surface over months. Tomme de Savoie, Saint-Nectaire, clothbound cheddar, Cantal, Ossau-Iraty and many mountain and farm cheeses carry this flavour of place.
Natural rinds
A natural rind is not washed, waxed or sealed: it is left to form its own coat of microbes. Mucor, a grey, furry mould known in France as poil de chat, cat's hair, grows on tommes and Saint-Nectaire, along with Penicillium, Geotrichum and wild yeasts. Cheese mites, tiny relatives of spiders, live on some rinds and add the dusty, mushroomy notes of Mimolette and old tommes. Each cellar has its own community of microbes, which is why cheeses made to one recipe taste of where they were aged.
Clothbound and cave-aged
Traditional farmhouse cheddars are bound in muslin, rubbed with lard and aged on wooden shelves, which lets moulds grow on the cloth and a gentle earthy taste reach the paste. Saint-Nectaire ripens on mats of rye straw in cool, damp cellars in the volcanic Monts-Dore of the Auvergne. Many Alpine and Pyrenean cheeses are aged in caves and tunnels, where steady temperature and humidity let a thick natural rind form slowly.
Tasting earthy cheese
Taste the paste and the rind separately: the rind holds most of the earth. Earthy notes should be clean, like a forest after rain, not sour or musty. These cheeses pair with sourdough and rye bread, mushrooms, roasted root vegetables and chestnuts, and with Pinot Noir, Beaujolais or a brown ale. A cool cellar temperature, rather than full room warmth, often shows them at their best.
Worth knowing
- Tomme de Savoie: Grey-rinded mountain cheese
- Saint-Nectaire: Auvergne cheese ripened on rye straw
- Cheddar: Clothbound farmhouse cheddar
- Cantal: Old pressed cheese of the Auvergne
- Ossau-Iraty: Pyrenean sheep's milk cheese
- Mimolette: Aged with cheese mites
- Tomme des Pyrénées: Mountain cheese of the Pyrenees
Sources and further reading
Original text by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Earthy and cellar on EveryCheese
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