Just in time for this summer’s Olympics, Paris has just added a new museum to its already astonishing list. The Musée du Fromage is entirely dedicated to cheese, allowing visitors to not only discover a wide range of cheeses but to also get acquainted with traditional cheese-making processes.
When one is asked to list some of France’s most famous culinary products, wine and cheese might well be the first two to be named. And not without reason. With 7 to 8 billion bottles of wine and about 1.8 million tonnes of cheese being produced each year in France, for once, the cliché turns out to be true. Alhough wine and cheese might be equaly popular, it seems the emphasis in the tourism sector heavily lies on wine. That’s one of the reasons cheesemaker Pierre Brisson, who moved to Paris 15 years ago, has decided to open the Musée du Fromage.
“I realised that lots of things were already organised in Paris to promote wine. Wine culture is developed in France,” Brisson told Euronews. “Cheese is also a big thing, but there were no places where people could learn more deeply about the processes of making cheese.”
In another effort to teach people about cheese, Brisson has previously launched a cheesemaking school called Paroles de Fromagers. However, with the museum, he hopes to touch even more people and to get them excited about cheese and the cheesemaking business.
Brisson also believes the time is right for young professionals to rediscover the art of cheesemaking, as ever more people are leaving the countryside behind. The current economic situation and the fact that more and more people are looking for a more meaningful job could, however, cause a resurrection of the sector in his opinion.
I put everything I have into this project, to finally have a place where everyone can come. The idea is to transmit the passion and the amazement [of cheesemaking].
Pierre Brisson told Euronews
“More and more people are leaving the countryside, and also it’s not an easy job. It’s a job that is well paid, because a good cheesemaker earns well in life, no problem. But it’s still a production job, so every day you produce the same produce, you have to follow very strictly the timing. You need to be very meticulous on the job”, Brisson explained. “More and more people will understand that the wealthy life that our parents and our grandparents [might have] had will not be accessible for us. And it’s time to come back to a more tough life. But a tough life doesn’t have to be horrible. It could be a very happy life.”
The Musée du Fromage opened its doors to the public on 14 June, with reservations open on its website, and can be found at 39 Rue Saint-Louis en l’Île in Paris.
