
In France’s Jura Massif, thousands of farmers, hundreds of creameries, and more than a dozen affinage houses work together to protect the land, their culture, and their livelihoods through cheese.
The day’s first batch of Comté at Fruitière du Valromey, a state-of-the-art creamery near the southern tip of France’s Jura Mountains, is almost ready to hoop. As mechanized paddles mounted on a gleaming copper vat stir curds and whey—tinted golden from the cows’ diet of fresh summer grass—cheesemaker Dorian Calvo scoops his hand beneath the roiling surface.
He comes up with a palmful of tiny, rice-like curds, feeling the texture between his forefinger and thumb, squeezing it in his hand. When it’s time, the mass of curds—which, at this stage, taste like bland, rubbery fragments of undercooked pasta—will hold its shape. Calvo pushes a button, stopping the arms and draining the curds through a pipe in the bottom of the massive vat. Shortly, they’ll be formed into exactly a dozen 80-pound wheels.
This moment, when curd becomes cheese, is just one step in a distinctively interconnected supply chain and a regional tradition that dates back at least 800 years. In the United States, farmstead cheesemaking is often considered the most “authentic”—a single family, a small team, or one very busy individual coaxing food and flavor out of a particular patch of land, with their hands in every step of the process—from pasture to cheese vat to market stand.
But there is no such thing as farmstead Comté. Fruitière du Valromey is just one of 140 cheesemaking facilities producing this iconic French cheese throughout the region.
In fact, Comté has endured for centuries, thanks to the collective and collaborative nature of its production. Since 1958, the Comté Cheese Association (CIGC)—Comité Interprofessionnel du Comté—has brought farmers, cheesemakers, and affineurs together as a single entity, tying together the fates of their businesses, their animals, and around 14,000 people employed across the region. The result is a resilient web of supply that supports the economy, culture, and land of the Jura Massif itself.

According to the Comté PDO, cows are milked twice per day, with the first squirt of milk drawn by hand.
All for One and One for All
“From the beginning, the PDO has been managed with a system based on solidarity and full representation of all the actors,” says CIGC director Valéry Elisseeff. In this way, Comté is unique among European PDO cheeses—wheels that can only legally be sold under their protected names if they conform to strict guidelines around where and how they’re produced.
It’s common for a cheese’s PDO to be highly detailed, regulating everything from animal breed and milk handling practices to wheel size and sensory attributes such as appearance, aroma, and flavor. But Comté’s emphasis on the collective is unique.
“Comté cheese is distinguished by its unique taste, its territory, its typical landscapes, and its social organization based on the cooperation of the men and women who make it,” Elisseeff says. “It’s very specific to the Jura region.”
Some of the many regulations in Comté’s PDO have a direct effect on the sensory character of the cheese: It’s made only with the milk of russet-splotched Montbéliarde and French Simmental cows, which are fed a grass-based diet. The milk is cultured with whey from the previous day’s make, and those copper vats are a must to support the ripening process and create that signature depth of flavor.
These specs are important to Comté’s identity, quality, and reputation in the marketplace. But other aspects of the PDO—those that facilitate the CIGC’s one-for-all approach—have an effect far beyond flavor.
A production cap on annual milk output, for example, prevents farm consolidation and ensures that no one producer grows too large. A minimum forage area per cow keeps herd sizes small and appropriate to the scale the land can accommodate. Fruitières can only collect milk from farms within a 16-mile radius, meaning production remains hyper-regional. It also ensures that the CIGC’s 4,500 dairy farmers—who typically own the cheesemaking facilities they sell to—maintain close relationships with actors further along the supply chain.

Comté may only be made with the milk of Montbéliarde and French Simmental cows, which contains fat and protein levels ideal for cheesemaking.
Comté’s collective organizational structure also offers other benefits to producers: resources and support. Those tight relationships among the thousands of member businesses in the CIGC become especially important when it’s time to problem-solve and anticipate challenges such as farmer retention and climate change.
“It’s important to continue farming for the next generation so cheese production doesn’t drop over time,” says Samuel Pertreux, one of the owners of GAEC de la Combe du Val (a GAEC is a cooperative that allows farmers to work together while still benefiting from the independence of their own enterprises).
In the past six or seven years, Pertreux says, he’s had to change up his forage crops due to summer droughts and take steps to keep his 60 milking cows and 60 heifers comfortable in extreme heat—challenges his father never had to deal with. He hopes to make farming in the Comté supply chain more attractive to young farmers by highlighting the collective aspect. “No one is going it alone, and there are resources to help,” he says.
Part of the reason the collective functions so well, Elisseeff says, is because decisions about how the association operates are made unanimously. Every farmer, fruitière, and affineur member must agree that a change is in their best interest. In addition to emphasizing the collective nature of the CIGC, this all-or-nothing approach ensures buy-in and consistency from everyone.

The cheesemaker gauges the texture and firmness of the curd. When it feels like grains of rice, the cheese is ready to hoop.
Flavor Is a Team Effort
The collaborative nature of Comté production continues during the aging phase. After it’s brought to one of the 15 affinage houses, the cheese typically ages for four to 24 months in cavernous, climate-controlled vaults, although a few select wheels are matured for 36 or even 48 months. Throughout the process, affineurs—whose families have often been in the business for generations—use their senses to closely monitor the cheese. They watch as rinds develop in color from peachy-pink to the hue of faded leather, tap over each wheel’s surface while listening for signs of cracks or fissures, and take core samples that they’ll sniff, taste, and feel.
The goal is not to age each wheel as long as possible, says Corentine Seignemartin, a third-generation owner of Fromagerie Seignemartin in Nantua, one of the CIGC affineurs. Instead, the goal is to assess the moment each has attained its peak. That’s true whether the cheese in question is a mild, pliant six-month Comté destined for fondue or a 24-month wheel whose complexity shines brightest as the star of a cheese board.
“Age is only one criterion, not the main criterion,” she says. “It’s about bringing out the potential of each wheel and finding the right age for the right client. Some will have the most flavor earlier than others. Those that aren’t developed may have the best flavor later.”
Throughout the maturation process, affineurs meet regularly with the farmers and cheesemakers they work with to taste batches, creating feedback loops that result in higher-quality cheese. The CIGC even maintains a terroir jury, a communal tasting body made up of Comté producers and locals outside the supply chain who provide important sensory impressions—information that fruitières use to maintain their individual identities while tracking within the CIGC’s defined palette of flavors and aromas.
“Assessing the quality of the cheeses by all the stakeholders helps to unite them around the product,” says Elisseeff. “Everyone is involved in the production process. Everyone bears some responsibility for the quality of the final product, and the exchange of ideas means that the quality of the cheese can be constantly improved.”

Wheels of Comté age to their highest flavor potential at one of 15 affinage houses throughout the cheese’s production area.