Munster

What is Munster Cheese?

Munster is a soft cheese with a strong taste and aroma, made mainly from milk produced in the Vosges, between the Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté regions of France. The name comes from the Alsatian town of Munster, where the cheese was kept and matured in monks' cellars among Vosgian abbeys and monasteries. Géromé, its variant name, comes from the Vosgien patois pronunciation of Gérardmer, on the Lorraine side of the mountains. In Alsatian it is Minschterkaas.

The cheese began on the treeless mountaintops known as the Chaumes. As early as 1371, cattle herders called marcaires drove their herds up to these summer pastures between May and September. On the way back down to the valleys they settled fees and tithes with the religious and political owners of the pastures, paying in cheese and jars of butter. Abbeys, chanoines and Benedictine houses were among those lords, alongside the duke of Lorraine and Alsatian noblemen. By the 17th century the practice survived mainly in two places, Gérardmer and Munster, which is how the cheese ended up with two names.

The European Union protects Munster with an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée that controls the main steps of production. Milk must come from a defined zone covering much of the Vosges near the Alsace mountains, the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin départements, a few communes of Haute-Saône, Belfort Territory and cantons of Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle. It is made from unpasteurized cow's milk, described as crude or raw. The crust is washed regularly, and wheels mature in damp cellars for about five weeks in the smaller size, roughly 300 g, and up to two or three months for the larger ones, around 1500 g. Brine washing during that time feeds the bacteria that set the taste and color.

Wheels are flat cylinders in two common sizes. Little Munster géromé measures 7 to 12 cm (2.8 to 4.7 in) across, while the big one, usually called simply Munster, runs 13 to 19 cm (5.1 to 7.5 in). Finished cheese has 45 percent fat in dry matter, a diameter of 12 to 20 cm and a thickness of 3 cm (1 in) to 5 cm (2 in). Look for a slick, shiny brick-colored or orange rind with moisture on it and a semi-soft body under it. The odor is penetrating and the taste very strong. A crumbly unripened body, a broken rind, excess salt or an overdone cheese all count as faults.

Summer and autumn cheeses are the best, made from milk off the haute chaumes of Vosges pastures already mowed for midsummer hay. Many people favor the cheeses of the haute vallée de Munster itself, though Lapoutroie, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, Villé and villages in western Vosges also produce it, and local opinion on the best source varies. Production has since spread beyond the protected region, and outside the European Union the word has become generic, sold in the United States as muenster with its own federal standard of identity.