Index

The complete register

Every entry on the site in one list. Each one is a single step between the pasture and the cellar.

Section	Entry	What it covers
The Alpage	Working altitude	The alpage is high pasture used only in summer, and the whole calendar of the valley is organised around the weeks it can carry animals.
	Transhumance	The herd is walked up in early summer and back down in autumn, on foot, along routes that have not moved much.
	Chalets d'alpage	The building on the high pasture is a workplace with a byre, a dairy room and a hearth, built from what was on the slope.
	Chevaline and Seythenex	Two communes on the same massif whose pastures sit at different altitudes and so keep different calendars.
The Herds	Abondance	A mahogany-and-white mountain breed named for its valley, admitted by the designations that matter here.
	Tarine	A small hardy brown breed suited to steep ground and thin summer grass.
	Montbéliarde	Red-and-white, higher yielding, and admitted by all three of the designations.
	Grazing and forage	The rules limit what an animal may eat, which is how a designation ties a cheese to a specific slope.
The Fruitière	Pooled milk	One farm's milk was never enough for one wheel, so the neighbours pooled it — which made the dairy a shared institution rather than a business.
	The tour de rôle	Members took the finished cheese in turn, in proportion to what they had brought, recorded in a book.
	The copper vat	Copper conducts evenly and behaves predictably with the curd, which is why the material outlasted every reason to replace it.
	Whey	What is left after the curd is the second trade under the same roof, and it has always been fed to animals rather than discarded.
The Designations	Reblochon de Savoie	The cheese exists because of a tax: tenants under-milked in front of the landlord's agent and made cheese afterwards from the richer second milking.
	Tome des Bauges	A grey-rinded wheel from the massif next door, with its own specification for breed and altitude.
	Plates and markings	A small casein marker pressed into the rind records where and when a wheel was made.
The Cellar	Spruce boards	The wood is part of the process, not the furniture: the board takes moisture from the rind and gives back a flora that the cheese needs.
	Emmorgeage	Washing and rubbing the rind at intervals encourages one population of organisms and discourages another.
	Turning and time	Each wheel is turned on a schedule so it does not settle, and the schedule is most of the craft.