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Normandy
Crémeux du Mont-Saint-Michel
A double-crème born thirty kilometres from the bay, in a former furniture shop.
Bloomy-rind cheese from Normandy.
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AI-generated illustration
Normandy
A double-crème born thirty kilometres from the bay, in a former furniture shop.
Bloomy-rind cheese from Normandy.
AI-generated illustration
The story begins neither in an abbey nor on an ancestral farm, but in 1998, when Jean-Charles Rabache set up his dairy in a former furniture shop in Isigny-le-Buat, in southern Manche. Today, the workshop is run with Caroline Rabache, some thirty kilometres from Mont-Saint-Michel, from which the cheese took its name.
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Crémeux du Mont-Saint-Michel is the creation of a single workshop, not the product of a designated area: no specifications protect it, no syndicate defends it. What the bay gives it is proximity and a name — along with milk, from Normande cows reared in the surrounding area, delivered daily to the dairy.
Those who taste it often detect a Chaource. The comparison is apt: the same soft paste, the same bloomy rind, and above all that same practice of adding cream to the milk before setting it, placing both cheeses in the double-crème family. Neufchâtel, geographically closer, also shares this method.
Appearance
a 220-gramme cylinder with a white bloomy rind.
Aroma
discreet and milky, carried by the cream.
Taste
mild and clean, the acidity of the raw milk held in check by the added fat.
Texture
a soft paste that gains in unctuousness over time — the more it matures, the creamier it becomes.
the milk, raw and whole, comes solely from Normande cows reared nearby, and is delivered daily to the dairy.
cream is added to the milk: it is this step that makes it a double-crème, and gives the cheese its name.
the curd forms slowly; this single stage takes half a day.
the cheese is moulded and then turned by hand.
with dry salt, also by hand.
the rind becomes covered in its white down. The entire production cycle takes four to five days.
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It is eaten at room temperature, taken out of the fridge an hour beforehand, on a pain de campagne whose crumb will hold the paste when it runs. When mature, it is served with a spoon rather than a knife.
Its richness calls for lively wines that cut through the fat rather than accompany it: a local brut cider, or a crisp, taut dry white. Its kinship with Champagne's double-crème cheeses also allows for a champagne, provided it is crisp enough not to be overshadowed.
Crémeux du Mont-Saint-Michel bears no official quality mark. It is not an appellation cheese, but the creation of a single dairy, the fromagerie de Pain d'Avaine, which has been making it in Isigny-le-Buat since the late 1990s. Its name speaks of its proximity to the bay, not of a protected area.
Family-run
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