After a nine-year absence, real Morbier is returning to American cheese counters. If you didn’t realize it was missing, that’s probably because multiple faux Morbiers have attempted to fill in the gap. The photogenic cheese with the ash ripple in the middle has been MIA since 2014, when the FDA protested that it had never designated the ash as safe. Thanks to the agency's vigilance, Americans have been protected for the past several years from a cheese that the French have been enjoying for two centuries. Are you ready to take a risk and eat some raw-milk Morbier again?
This beloved French cheese was on the FDA’s radar for two reasons, says Stephanie Ciano of World’s Best Cheese, an importer and distributor. The powdered ash that generations of cheesemakers have used to coat the outside of goat cheeses and create internal ribbons was not on the FDA’s “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) list. If any of the millions of Morbier and Valençay and Humboldt Fog consumers have ever been sickened by ash, there’s no record of it.
Waiting room: Morbier in an affineur’s cellar
The FDA did grant GRAS status to a liquid ash produced by a Danish company, Ciano says, and presumably that’s what some creameries turned to after the ash kerfuffle. But the French regulations for Morbier require powdered ash. It has taken years to get a powdered version through the FDA’s approval process. That momentous event happened last September. Only then could Fromagerie Jean Perrin, makers of the Morbier that World’s Best Cheese imports, relaunch production for the U.S. The first wheels landed in January and are just reaching retailers now.
The new cheese tastes just like it did before, says Ciano, “with all the grassy notes and complexity and flavor you can only get from raw-milk cheese.” Here’s an initial retailer list but the cheese will surely be widespread soon.
Pre Ashgate, Morbier was a big seller for distributors and retailers. Losing it was “like having Parmigiano Reggiano go missing, or Taleggio,” says Ciano. Predictably, enterprising producers rushed in to fill consumer demand. “There were a lot of fakes, if you will,” says Ciano, cheeses “that had a wine lees line or blue cheese line or cocoa powder line.” The Morbier consortium tried to restrain the impostors, even taking legal action against some of them, says Ciano.
The other issue that plagued Morbier, and numerous other raw-milk cheeses, was the FDA’s lowering of the tolerance for nontoxigenic (non-harmful) E. coli in cheese, a surprise move in 2014 that created a standard much tougher than Europe’s. Several European producers decided they could not reliably meet this standard and stopped sending us raw-milk cheese rather than risk having it detained and possibly destroyed.
Fortunately, FDA seems to have relaxed their oversight on this matter. I’m no longer hearing about raw-milk cheeses denied entry on the basis of nontoxigenic E. coli tests. And given that ashed cheeses have been ubiquitous in recent years, the agency may have made compliance a lower priority. “There was a period when they were diligently checking everything they knew to have ash in it,” says Ciano. “But then they moved on to the next issue.”
Morbier producers, with so much at stake, chose to play strictly by FDA rules regarding ash. And at long last, thanks to their persistence, we can welcome this classic mountain cheese back.