Emily In France Exclusive 🇫🇷 5 Under-Rated French Cheeses to Try

From the desk of an expat.

It’s not uncommon for guests on my Parisian cheese tours to gaze wide-eyed into the case with a mix of awe and a little bit of… whelm. There are so many cheeses to choose from in France – an estimated 1,200 to 1,800 different creations in total, depending on who you ask. It’s no wonder it can be tough to narrow things down.

Luckily, a great jumping off point is simply to consider what cheeses you enjoy at home, which is why it’s often one of the first questions I ask.

There are, of course, some cheeses widely available in the U.S. that have no great calque, in France. If you see so many Snowdonia truckles in French cheese cases, it’s because Cantal and Salers, our cheddared cheeses (the original, by the way!), lack the sharpness and piquancy so characteristic of Cheddar. Similarly, while Italian pasta filatas are now made in France thanks to local mozzarella makers like Nanina, there is no endemic French iteration of these stretchy melters.

That said, what you like is a great indicator of what you might like. So think for a second about your favorite thing to grab from your local cheese counter – or your local Trader Joe’s. If you love the rich nuttiness of Swiss Gruyère or the sticky stink of washed-rind Taleggo, if your mouth waters at the very thought of the creaminess of a double-cream Brie or the kick of a veined Danablu… well, I’ve got you covered.

If you like Gruyère…

Technically speaking, Gruyère is a Swiss cheese hailing from the region around the town of Gruyères. A mountain cheese par excellence, this pressed-and-cooked specialty was invented as a means of preserving milk for up to a year, a boon in a region with long winters and short growing seasons. These days, Gruyère can be aged even longer, taking on even more nuttiness and developing even more umami-rich tyrosine crystals with time.

It’s worth noting that not all Gruyère is created alike. The best AOP Gruyères are nutty and rich with a phenomenally creamy texture. I love this cheese for its melting properties, making it the perfect main ingredient in everything from fondue to mac and cheese. But it’s also excellent when you just allow a piece to melt on your tongue, coating your palate with a panoply of flavors floral, lactic, nutty and a bit funky.

Once you venture outside the Swiss borders, however, people use the word gruyère to mean a host of different things. In the U.S., it’s become a generic term referring to any cheese made in the same style, and in France, many use it to refer to grated Swiss-style cheeses like Emmental, which pale in comparison in both flavor and texture. But if you like great American- or Swiss-made Gruyère, there are some French calques worth trying.

Comté is France’s most popular AOP cheese by far, with 63,500 tons sold in 2022. (Roquefort and Reblochon are neck-and-neck for second and third, with about 16,000 tons of each sold each year.) Much like Gruyère, Comté is a pressed mountain cheese, albeit produced not in the Alps but in the Jura.

If there are so many similarities between these cheeses, it’s in large part because they're cousins. Folks in the Jura long hired Swiss cheesemakers to come help them master the art of producing these whopping 88-pound wheels. Until 1986, Comté revealed its lineage with its name: Gruyère de Comté – Gruyère from Comté.

Despite the similarities in their recipes, the differences in their terroir does mean that Gruyère and Comté each have their own personality. To wit, Comté tends to be fruitier when it’s young, evolving towards brothy, umami flavors as it ages. Gruyère is savory from the get-go, and perhaps most importantly, the slight funk of its washed rind is a bit more present.

The PHCheese put it even better than I could:

Comté is Swiss Gruyère’s French fraternal twin.

The cheeses follow the same recipe, the same aging process; but they are made from milk produced in two separate regions, each carrying its specific terroir. As with many, many of the cheeses we know, love and devour today, Gruyère and Comté are simply named for the places they are from.

So the next time you are in a cheese shop hunting for Gruyère and the cheesemonger tells you, “we’re out of Gruyère, but we have Comté,” don’t you dare pitch a fit because that’s not the cheese you want. It IS the cheese you want, you just don’t know you want it.

Comté is Gruyère; it’s just not from Gruyère.

Comté is undoubtedly a must-try in France… but it’s not the only French cheese Gruyère lovers should sample.

Abondance is another pressed French cheese, this time from Haute-Savoie, in the Alps. It’s got a bit more personality than Comté thanks to its washed rind, which gives it a more robust flavor profile, even when it’s young and supple.

If you like that funky, in-your-nose vibe you get from Gruyère, I’d highly recommend giving Abondance a try.

If you like Fromager d’Affinois…

Despite their French-sounding names, common creamy triple creams like Fromager d’Affinois, Saint-André, or even double-cream Brie are produced exclusively for the American market; you won't find them at any cheese shop in France.

A double- or triple-cream cheese gets its rich, buttery flavor and texture from the extra cream added to the milk, with the former containing a minimum of 60% butterfat by dry weight and the latter a whopping 75%. (It’s perhaps worth noting that this is not the finished fat content of the cheese, seeing as there's also a lot of water. A finished double cream cheese has about 35% fat total, about the same as cheddar.)

Double- and triple-cream cheese are especially popular in the U.S., seeing as their full-bodied texture and lactic flavor helps counterbalance the paucity of flavor engendered by the reliance on pasteurized milk mandated by the FDA. Brie in France relies on raw milk, whose natural plethora of microbes support the development of flavors ranging from the brine of oysters to the sulfurous sweetness of cauliflower cheese. You just don't get that in Brie sold on the American market.

But just because you can't find Fromager d’Affinois or Saint-André in France doesn't mean you can't find something similar in a French dairy case.

If the rich, creamy, unctuous mouthfeel of a double- or triple-cream cheese is what you seek, my first recommendation would be Brillat-Savarin, named for France's most popular 18th-century culinary philosopher. This lactic triple-cream was first popularized in the 1930s by Henri Androuët, the grocer who essentially invented the cheese shop as we know it today. In renaming Norman Excelsior after the man who wrote, “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are,” he made a star out of this triple-cream delicacy synonymous with richness and plenty.

In Paris, many Brillat-Savarins today are made with pasteurized milk, which dulls their mushroominess a touch. (It’s not for nothing that this cheese is frequently tapped as a carrier for black truffles.) But if you like your triple cream cheeses with a bit more personality, I've got some other regional specialties to recommend, including that looker oozing all over my board up top.