6 French Cheeses to Elevate Your Holiday Cheese Board

Plus, get my comprehensive cheese and wine pairing guide with an assortment of ideal wines to serve with every type of cheese!

Impress your guests this holiday season with a cheese board that’s anything but ordinary. Featuring six exquisite cheeses I discovered while living in Burgundy, France, this quick guide will help you create a show-stopping spread that pairs beautifully with your holiday wine selection. Whether you’re hosting a cozy gathering or a festive soirée, these French cheeses are guaranteed to enhance your hosting game. Opt to create a French themed cheese board to pair with a curated selection of French wines, or simply grab one or two of these cheeses to mix up your typical cheese choices. Either way, your guests are sure to be delighted by some French fromage. 

For more in depth cheese and wine pairing advice, check out my guide available for download at the end of this article. It dives into the best wines to savor with every type of cheese. 

Époisses - A Irresistibly Creamy Yet Stinky Star 

Époisses is a soft, washed rind cheese made in a small Burgundian village of the same name. The farmers of this zone have been producing Époisses cheese since the 17th century. In 1991, cheesemakers began Époisses production under a controlled designation of origin known as an Appellation D’Origine Protégée, which basically means cheesemakers were held to stricter standards of production.

This French cheese is made from cow’s milk and has a soft, wrinkled rind that’s tinted orange. Though the interior is a creamy white. Époisses is packaged in a traditional round box made from wooden reed and should be stored in this box in the refrigerator.

Serving Tip

Remove Époisses from the refrigerator thirty minutes before serving so the interior becomes soft and creamy. As the cheese comes to room temperature, it becomes runny and gooey enough to spoon onto a fresh baguette. *cue the drool*

How Époisses is Made

To make this delicious French cheese, milk is heated to 30°C and held at that temperature for sixteen hours. The curd is then cut into large pieces and placed in molds to drain. After two days, the cheese is salted and set on racks.

As the cheese ages, it’s rubbed with a mixture of brine and marc, a rough brandy similar to grappa. This mixture inhibits mold growth while allowing bacteria to grow. And these bacteria are what give the cheese its distinctive aromas and flavors. The cheese is washed three times a week for four to six weeks. Then, Époisses is packed in its signature round wooden box for sale.

What Does Époisses Taste Like?

Époisses has quickly become my favorite cheese. It has the most heavenly savory flavor, and the creamy texture is addicting. The flavor is a combination of tangy and nutty with hints of grass and hay. Yet be warned—Époisses is not for the faint of heart. This is one stinky cheese! Every time you open the refrigerator, you’ll be looking around to see who just took their shoes off. But the flavor is so much milder than the smell. I’ve also found that if you store Époisses solely in its wooden box as opposed to plastic or tupperware, it tends to stink a lot less.

Recommended Wine Pairing

What grows together goes together definitely applies here. Époisses pairs beautifully with hearty red or white Burgundy. It paired especially well with this Premier Cru Pinot Noir from Beaune. 

Brillat Savarin – A Delectably Creamy French Cheese

Made from cow’s milk, Brillat Savarin is a triple cream, soft-ripened cheese. The triple cream status is obtained by adding cream to whole milk to reach a 75% fat content, which means this is decadent stuff. This cheese was originally created in the 1930s by Henri Androuët, though it’s named for the epicurean Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.

Since Brillat Savarin is produced in various regions throughout France, it’s designated as an IGP rather than an AOP. This basically means the cheese is classified in specific zones, but its ingredients can come from elsewhere.

How Brillat Savarin Is Made

Brillat Savarin is typically made from pasteurized cow’s milk, which is uncommon in France. For pasteurization, the milk is heated to 160°F for 15-20 minutes to kill off any bacteria, molds, and yeast.

Next, the milk goes through a filtration process before coagulating into cheese curds. Then the curds are shredded, drained off of any remaining whey, salted, and milled. Cream is then added to take this cheese to triple cream status. It’s put into molds, then aged for three weeks under refrigeration, uncooked and unpressed. The outside forms a soft bloomy rind of white mold throughout the aging process. 

What Does Brillat Savarin Taste Like?

Brillat Savarin is a lusciously creamy cheese. The soft rind is bright white, but the interior is a buttery cream color. This cheese has a rich texture that becomes even creamier when served at room temperature. Closer to the rind, the texture is ever so slightly chalky. The cheese has mild earthy, grassy flavors with a bit of tang and butter, too. Every so often it’s just a touch piquant on the finish with a spiciness comparable to that of a radish.

Recommended Wine Pairings

Sauvignon Blanc is a great match for this cheese. The grassy, herbaceous, and grapefruit citrus notes would complement Brillat-Savarin perfectly. For a red, I’d reach for a Cabernet Franc, Châteauneuf-du-Pape , or Vacqueyras.

Pouligny Saint-Pierre – The Pyramid Cheese

If you saw a pyramid-shaped cheese at the market, could you resist the urge to buy it? I definitely could not. This French cheese is called Pouligny Saint-Pierre AOP.

Pouligny Saint-Pierre is produced in the smallest delimited zone, or Appellation d’Origine, for cheeses in France. Actually, this cheese is made in the heart of the Brenne Regional Natural Park. The bell tower of the church of Pouligny Saint-Pierre inspired the cheese’s pyramid shape. It’s been made here since the 18th century and has the oldest AOP in France for goat's milk cheese, as it was established in 1972.

How Pouligny Saint-Pierre is Made

This French cheese is shaped by hand, salted, and then left to mature for ten days. The maturation process forms a thin, slightly blue tinted soft rind. 

There are two labels for Pouligny Saint-Pierre, one green and one red. The red label indicates the cheese was produced at a dairy and the green label means it’s a farm produced cheese.

What Does Pouligny Saint-Pierre Taste Like?

The cheese has delicate aromas of straw and natural honey. The texture is firm, yet supple and creamy. While the taste is stronger than you’d expect based on the aromas, with flavors of hay and tangy goat milk.

Recommended Wine Pairings

A mild goat cheese like this is ideal with sparkling wines, light-bodied white wines with bright acidity, rosé, and fruit-forward, light to medium-bodied reds. If red wine is more your style, try Pouligny Saint-Pierre paired with Burgundian Pinot Noir or Cabernet Franc from Chinon or Saumur. For a white wine pairing, I’d go with a Sauvignon Blanc from Loire Valley or a Blanc de Blanc Champagne.

Morbier – A Grey-Striped, Nutty French Fromage

For me and Morbier, it was love at first bite. The first time I tasted this French cheese was at a friend’s house for a small get together shortly after I arrived in Burgundy. The hostess asked me which cheese I had yet to try from a handful of options she had on hand. I pointed to the cream-colored cheese with a grey line running through it. Since that first creamy, savory bite, I was hooked.

Morbier AOP is a raw cow’s milk cheese specifically from two types of cows, Montbéliarde and Simmental. These must be happy cows with regulations stipulating one hectare per dairy cow for grazing. 

Morbier is an uncooked, pressed cheese requiring a minimum aging period of forty-five days. It has a pale orange rind encompassing a dense, but melt-in-your-mouth creamy paste. A dark grey line running through the center of the cheese is Morbier's trademark.

How Morbier is Made

This cheese originated in the Jura-Massif. Around two centuries ago, in the secluded farms of Franche-Comté, Morbier obtained its signature mark. After the cows were milked in the morning, the farmers made a curd, pressed it into a mold, and covered it with a layer of wood ash to protect the forming cheese. Then, they added curds from the next milking the following day to finish the cheese. Today, this grey stripe is created with edible vegetable ash.

A wheel of Morbier cheese measures 35 cm in diameter and is 5-8 cm thick, as controlled under the AOP established in 2000. Around 11,000 tons of Morbier are produced each year.

What Does Morbier Taste Like?

Morbier has a mild yet complex taste which is completely irresistible. It has a wonderfully tangy, nutty, and fruity flavor with lingering hints of hay and nuts.

Recommended Wine Pairings

Vin Jaune from Jura makes a great match for Morbier. This wine is made from Savagnin grapes and gets its unique flavors while aging in a barrel under a veil, or voile, of flor yeast. Vin Jaune has complex flavors of citrus, nuts, pine resin, and anise, all of which nicely complement the nutty, fruity flavors of Morbier. Other fantastic pairings for Morbier include Pinot Noir, Gamay, Viognier, and Roussanne.

Neufchâtel – An Adorable Heart-Shaped Cheese Related to Camembert

Neufchâtel cheese was created in 1035 in Normandy, France. The soft-ripened cow’s milk cheese is one of the oldest cheeses in the country.

Though Neufchâtel is formed into a variety of shapes, the most common and eye-catching is this heart-shaped form. Legend has it that the Farm girls fell in love with English soldiers during the Hundred Years War. They began making heart shaped cheeses to demonstrate their love.

Established in 1969, the Neufchâtel AOC encompasses industrial, farm, and artisanal production. 

How Neufchâtel is Made

Traditionally in France, Neufchâtel is made with raw, unpasteurized cow’s milk. Once the milk has coagulated for 24-36 hours, the curds are drained off and the remaining paste is pressed. The pressed curd is covered with penicillium candidum and shaped into its heart form. The cheese is then salted for preservation and typically matured for eight to ten weeks, resulting in a dense but creamy center and a soft, bloomy white rind.

What Does Neufchâtel Taste Like?

Neufchâtel is in the Camembert family of cheeses. It offers yeasty aromas and flavors of butter, grass, hay, and mushrooms, plus a sharp, piquant finish.

Recommended Wine Pairings

Blanc de Blancs Champagne makes a great match for Neufchâtel cheese. The crisp texture and weighty body from the secondary fermentation in the bottle are perfect for the cheeses’ texture and mild flavors.

For a red wine option, I’d reach for a Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. Medium-bodied with moderate tannins, Cabernet Franc leads with notes of red fruits, herbs, and a peppery earthiness. These flavors are delicious alongside the mild earthy flavors of the cheese, while the high acidity of Cabernet Franc contrasts the creaminess of Neufchâtel beautifully.

Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Grüner Veltliner, Cava, and Beaujolais would all also be delicious wine pairings for this French cheese.

Langres – A Pungent Cheese From Champagne

Let’s wrap up this French cheese adventure in the Champagne region with Langres AOP. Langres received its AOP designation in 2012, signifying quality and certain standards of production. Yet this cheese has had a Certified Designation of Origin since 1991.

How Langres is Made

Originally, farmers made this cheese by pouring warm cow’s milk into terracotta molds called fromettes. The cheese was eventually flipped out of the molds onto lime tree leaves. Then, left to dry and subsequently aged on beds of straw.

Today, this is a washed-rind, cow’s milk cheese produced with an intense process of successive washings throughout the maturation period. These washings result in a brilliant orange, bloomy rind and quite pungent aromas and flavors.

What Does Langres Taste Like?

Named for the Langres high plains region of Champagne, this cheese is in the same stinky family as Époisses. However, I found its flavors much stronger and more potent than those of Époisses. Though after reading different websites, others say Langres is more mild.

This cheese has a semi-soft texture.  At room temperature, it becomes even more supple and completely melts in your mouth. Expect aromas of mushrooms, earth, and hay. For me, Langres had very strong flavors of mushrooms, grass, and hay, plus a piquant spiciness.

Traditionally, Marc de Bourgogne or a splash of Champagne fills the small indent in Langres’ domed top for optimal enjoyment.

Recommended Wine Pairings

A Blanc de Noirs Champagne is the ideal pairing for Langres cheese. This style of Champagne is made using a majority of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes. The result is a fuller-bodied Champagne with a richer texture and fruitier aromas. These characteristics are bold enough to stand alongside the cheese’s potent aromas and flavors. While Champagne’s high acidity is a delicious contrast to the supple, creamy texture of this French cheese.  

Alternatively, pair this cheese with a dry Chardonnay from Puligny-Montrachet or a complex Pinot Noir from Gevrey-Chambertin. If you’re into them, oxidized white wines like Vernaccia di Oristano D.O.C. are fantastic alongside stinky cheeses like Langres AOP. Their aromas of nuts, mushrooms, and umami flavors are the perfect match for the flavors of this French fromage.

Ready for More?

Take your cheese board to the next level with my wine and cheese pairing guide! 

• Simplify your wine and cheese shopping.

• Create perfect, delicious pairings every time. 

• Wow your guests with ease.