1,000 Years of Artisanal Cheesmaking

Portrait of a Great Cheese

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Comté is an ancient cooked and pressed cheese made from raw milk. A wheel weighs about 80 lbs and measures 3 ft in diameter.
Comté is made in the Jura Massif of France, a region of medium-elevation mountains that covers the départements of the Jura and Doubs in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, and the départment of Ain in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
Montbéliarde and French Simmental cows are the only breeds authorized to produce the milk for Comté. The cows graze in vast pastures from spring to autumn, and eat local hay in the winter. All fermented feed is banned from their healthy diet.
There are about 2,400 small dairy farms that produce Comté milk. Producing a high-quality milk is vital for the expression of flavors and aromas in Comté.

Comté is handmade every day by artisans in about 140 small village cheesemaking facilities, known as fruitières.
It takes time for Comté to develop its taste. It is aged in maturing cellars for at least 4 months at a minimum, but aging can last up to 8, 12, 15, 18, 24 or more months. Comté is characterized by its complex aromatic richness. It is not a cheese with a uniform taste. Each wheel of Comté reveals a distinct aromatic composition that varies according the micro-region where it was produced, the local microflora, the season in which the cheese was made, the distinctive style of the cheesemaker, the cellar where it was matured… In this respect, Comté is truly a unique cheese.
Rich in phosphorous, calcium, minerals and protein, Comté is a valuable food whose nutritional contents are useful in maintaining a balanced diet. Made with no additives or artificial colorants, and controlled at each level of production, Comté is a pure, healthy and natural food.

Comté’s Appelation of Origin (AOC/PDO)

Key figures

1st

Comté is the highest consumed AOC/PDO cheese in France. (About 1,750,000 wheels are produced each year. Because it’s an artisanal cheese, production can vary from year to year.)

Located in the Jura Massif between 656 and 5,577 feet (200 and 1,700 m) above sea level, the Comté’s Appellation of Origin (AOP zone) stretches across 3 départements – Doubs, Jura, part of Ain and several communes of Saône-et-Loire.

3.2

Each cow that produces milk for Comté must have a minimum of 3.2 acres (1.3 hectares) of natural pastureland to graze.

4

Four months is the minimum maturing time for each wheel of Comté. Most are aged from 8-14 months and some for as long as 18, 24 and more months.

16

Each fruitière, or cheesemaking facility, must collect milk from dairy farms located within a 16-mile (25 km) diameter maximum.

80

A wheel of Comté weighs 80 lbs on average, with a diameter of 3 ft and a “heel” (thickness) of 4 in.

105

It takes about 105 gallons (400 liters) of milk to make one wheel of Comté. Since one Montbéliarde cow produces about 5.3 gallons of milk in two milkings daily, it takes the milk of 20 cows to produce one wheel of Comté.

1958

Comté was one of the first cheeses to obtain AOC designation, in 1958.

14,000

The Comté PDO creates 14,000 jobs, including 4.500 farmers.

150,000

There are approximately 150,000 cows that produce the milk for Comté (95% Montbéliarde breed and 5% Simmental breed).

285,055

285,055 hectares (1,100 square miles) are occupied by farms in the Comté PDO. This is the largest area of production for any PDO cheese in France, but less than the size of the state of Rhode Island.