Decoding the Distinct Flavors of Comté and Gruyère: A Cheese Lover's Guide

As the days are shortening, and we are finally beginning to feel the chill of mid-fall, I notice a significant shift in the cheeses that my palate craves. This is the season for Alpine-style cheeses to really shine. Aged, nutty, toasty, more savory flavors truly warm the soul as we head towards winter. 

As our cheese display turns a bit more Alpine heavy these days, two cheeses tend to garner the most attention: French Comté and Swiss Gruyère. But what is the difference between the two cheeses? 

Flavor wise, I think of Gruyère as having a much bolder immediate impact on the palate - earthier, a bit more funk than Comté, often with a slight fermented, fruity flavor. Comté can be more subdued; sweetly nutty. But what is behind the differences between these two cheeses?

To start with, I would like to discuss just how similar the production of both cheeses are. Both cheeses are made with fresh, raw milk from local dairies (Comté requires a dairy to be no further than 16 miles from the cheesemaker, while Gruyère limits that distance to 12 miles). Both cheeses require that the cows be fed a grass-based diet, which is where the good microflora comes from, creating a very high-quality milk. Both cheeses are made in copper vats, where whey from the previous day’s make is added to the milk. This helps encourage the proliferation of native microflora. Both cheeses are what is called a “cooked-curd, pressed” cheese, meaning the curds have been warmed, then are transferred to large, flat molds, where they are pressed.

Eventually, the wheels are either dry-salted (in the case of Comté), or soaked in a brine (which is usually the case for Gruyère), before they are aged on spruce boards. Both cheeses are regularly salted, and washed with a brine-bacteria mixture called a morge, which helps the microflora act on the wheels of cheese, creating the depth of flavor as the wheels age.

How, then, are two cheeses that are produced so similarly, so different in flavor and character? 

Each cheese uses milk from a different breed of cow, to start with. Comté only uses milk from Montbéliarde or Simmental cows, both of which are native to France. Gruyère does not specify a breed, though Holstein is most often used. 

One of the most obvious differences between the two cheeses is, I believe, the most distinguishing one. The cheeses simply come from different places. Comté is made in the Jura Mountains of eastern France, whereas Gruyère is made across the Swiss border from the Jura Mountains, in and around the Canton of Fribourg. 

What makes both cheeses so incredible is that both are made with so much respect for the milk. Every step of the production process is taken with the mission of preserving the living microflora within it. By the time a wheel of Comté and a wheel of Gruyère finish aging, completely different sets of microflora have done their work on each cheese. The resulting wheels have characteristics that are pure and distinct representations of where they come from.

We try to provide the best of the best at Talbott & Arding, and our Comté and Gruyère are no exception. Our Comté comes to us from Essex Cheese, an importer who hand-selects every batch of Comté from Marcel Petite, the affineur (cheese maturer) who ages their cheese in an old military fort in the heart of the Jura.  Marcel Petite changed the game of Comté production when he began aging wheels at a lower temperature, and more slowly, than any other producer. While more laborious and time consuming, this significantly increased the quality and flavor nuances of the wheels.

Our Gruyère comes to us via Gourmino, an importer of some of the finest Swiss cheeses, and is made by Michael Spycher, who has won the World Cheese Award for his Gruyère four times. Spycher makes his Gruyère at Käserei Fritzenhaus, where he only makes about 7 wheels of Gruyere a day, with milk sourced from a dairy only about a half mile away.

If you are looking for a taste of the Alps this fall, either of these cheeses will make for a truly transcendent experience.