This cheese has been crowned "best cheese in the world" (and it's French!).

The reputation of French quality is well established! For its 6ᵉ edition, the Mondial du Fromage saw over 1,600 dairy products compete for the year's "Best Cheese Award". And it was Maison Berthaut, from the Côte-d'Or, that was crowned the winner! A well-deserved honor for a cheese that almost became extinct.

An endangered cheese

For three days, from September 10 to 12, 2023, 48 countries gathered in Tours for the Mondial du fromage et des produits laitiers. 1,550 products, from yoghurt to butter to flavored cheese, competed to win the Best Cheese of the Year award. And for this sixth edition, the jury awarded the prize to Epoisses "Perrière" from fromagerie Berthaut, based in Époisses (Côte-d'Or).

Invented in the XVIᵉ century by monks settled in the village of Époisses, this strong-smelling cheese was then designated "king of cheeses" by the gastronome Brillat-Savarin, reports France 3. But by the 1950s, only two farms were still producing the cheese. Since 1956, the Berthaut cheese dairy has been rehabilitating this know-how.

It has to be said that this cheese requires a lot of hard work, much of it human production. "It's a cheese that's too fragile to be washed in a machine, so we make it by hand," Julien Masson, head of maturing and packaging at Fromagerie Berthaut, explains to TF1. This is followed by four weeks of maturing in eight different cellars, and a great deal of care and attention. As a result, the cheese has been awarded the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) and the Appellation d'Origine Protégée (AOP).

With a trophy like this, there's no doubt that this melt-in-the-mouth orange cheese will never again be forgotten!