Brousse du Rove

What is Brousse du Rove Cheese?

Brousse du Rove is made in Le Rove, a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France. The cheese has been noted since at least the beginning of the 19th century. Eight breeders submitted a dossier promoting it in the spring of 2007, and on 31 May 2018 it received an Appellation d'origine contrôlée.

It is a farm production-only cheese built on whole milk from the Rove goat breed. Other brousses are made from whey; this one is not. The goats live by agropastoralism on the scrublands of Rove, l'Étoile and the other massifs around Marseille, where shepherds work the land near Nerthe, Septeme, Simiane and Mimet. Their feed balances grass, broom and gorse with kermes oak, thyme, rosemary and helichrysum. Each afternoon they return to the farm for milking.

In the commune of Rove, milking is done by hand at the Vérune stable. The milk goes straight into the vat and is warmed gradually to about 90 °C (194 °F), which pasteurizes it, then left to cool to roughly 70 °C (158 °F) before the breeder-cheesemaker adds spirit vinegar. The lumps are lifted out with a skimmer and molded into elongated cones 12 centimetres (4.7 in) long. The milk of these goats is unusually rich at 45 g/l.

The long cylindrical faisselles recall an older habit of serving the cheese in ram's horns, which gave way to tin and then plastic cones. It also turns up in baskets. Restaurants in and around Marseille serve it in many preparations, traditionally in cones with coulis or another accompaniment, or on its own. It is still eaten sweetened, drizzled with orange blossom water, or used as the base for an egg cake.