The monks at the Abbaye de Cîteaux make this delicious semi-soft cheese from their own herd of sixty red and white Montbéliande cows, which came originally from a small village in the Jura. The herd grazes in the flat meadows, which surround the abbey. There is precious little left of this once great Medieval building as it was razed after the French Revolution, although it remains the spiritual centre of the Cistercian Order and is open to the public for guided tours from May. The monks from Cluny who settled in Cîteaux at the end of the C11th to follow a more disciplined way of life, originally focused on wine making, developing vine cultivation on the Côte d'Or and building the Château du Clos de Vougeot. It was only after they returned to their decimated abbey in the C19th that they took up cheese making.

The jovial Frère Frédéric showed us the creamery where Frère Joel is master cheese maker. Seven litres of unpasteurised milk is needed to produce 1kg of cheese. "It is more difficult to make, but the flavour is better," enthused Frère Frédérick.

There is nothing special about the production. A culture is added to a wide vat of fresh milk heated to 30 degrees and the resulting curds are forced up a tube and down cylindrical pipes where they are sliced into the familiar discus shape as they emerge, and then pressed under the weight of other cheeses to confirm their shape.

The maturation is more unusual

The cheese matures for just three weeks at around 3 degrees centigrade and every day each disc of cheese is lovingly hand washed in water to control the growth of mould on the skin. By the third week they are pale orange, lightly powdered with a downy mould and ready for sale.

The monks produce 300 cheeses every Monday and Tuesday and the sales represent a surprising 50% of the Abbey's income. If you care to drive to the abbey, you can purchase whole cheeses from the abbey shop. The monks charge 13.5 euros per kilo, so the average cheese is just 10 Euros.

Fresh farmy and surprisingly assertive aroma for a young cheese. The texture is rubbery, but pleasant, and very creamy. It's a rich cheese, with a gentle pungent, stable-like, earthy flavour, while still remaining fresh and clean on the palate. It has soft acidity.

Alain Hess produces Délice de Pommard in a small factory near Place Madeleine in Beaune. Hess is a shy man, the third generation in a family of cheese makers, although he began his career as a chef, which accounts for his creative instincts. Délice de Pommard is a young, soft cow's cheese made with triple cream, flavoured and sold in a distinctive globe shape, about the size of a tennis-ball. After experimenting with different flavours Hess settled on grainy Dijon mustard for his first cheese, a coupling of two Burgundian products, which appealed to his passion for all things regional.

There are now three flavours available. Hess discarded various combinations of garlic and herbs for being too mundane, but found that anise was both original and tasted good. The latest flavour is cassis, locally produced in Nuits-Saint-George. Hess had experimented with cassis liqueur and found it wanting, but then devised a plan to extract the concentrated essence from the bud of the plant. He continues to trial new flavours, but he is yet to find a fourth Délice de Pommard. This cheese is too new to have its own appellation but Hess hopes it will in time.

The cheese selection

The cheese is ordered every day and kept in ideal conditions. If you are interested, the ideal temperature is 8-10 degrees centigrade with 98% humidity for cow's cheese, but as dry as possible for goat's cheese.

Hess also sells his own cheese Délice de Pommard, (see the artisanal producer page).

The few tables are cheek by jowl, so you may have to share the main table with others, but it's all very convivial and reminded me somewhat of student days. The menu is chalked daily on a board. It's inexpensive hearty food, based on the bits of animals we in the UK usually ignore. There was tripe, beef brains, shin, various forms of offal and (at his point I was forced to ask for help in translation) nose...unless I misunderstood. The chap taking our order looked a bit disapproving at this juncture, probably as my companion let out a noise something between a gwarf and a nervous titter. But really, nose is a body part too far for an Englishman. Fortunately there were also dishes for the faint-hearted including trout and salad. I had a robust bean soup...welcome fortification against the bitter weather, and rabbit casseroled in a creamy sauce, which was very flavoursome.