Brandy Before Breakfast

For decades now we have had splendid cheeses in Ireland and therefore splendid cheesemakers

For decades now we have had splendid cheeses in Ireland and therefore splendid cheesemakers. So far we have not seen fit to erect a statue to any one of them. But this has been done in France, honouring the creator of camembert, a noble cheese, and it was a woman. She was Marie Havel, a young farming woman in the village of Camembert in Normandy. In fact, she did not devise the recipe or rather the process all by herself, but got it from a priest who was "on the run" from "la Terreur" after the French revolution. Already she was making cheese, but the priest who came from a noted cheese-making district gave her the instruction which made, eventually, a world-wide reputation for camembert.

The formula was handed down from generation to generation and from 1863, when the French rail system developed, her produce became known in Paris and the rest of France and so abroad. The community of the area of Camembert remained small, at 185 inhabitants, with, naturally, more cattle than people. In the nearby town of Vimoutiers you will see in the main square the statue of this estimable woman, holding her cheeses. It was donated, mark you, by an American enterprise which made a fortune producing a million "camemberts" (note the quotation marks put there by the magazine from which this is taken) per day.

But the essential cheese comes still from that little village. These now enjoy the stamp of ADC, like wine: Appellation d'origine controlee ie guarantee. To get this, the camembert must be made with unpasteurised milk and come from Normandy only. The Brotherhood of the Knights of Camembert advise that the cheese should be soft and velvety on the sides, its downy rind will be dotted with small red pigmentations. You keep it in the vegetable compartment of your fridge, in its original packaging, wrapped in a damp cloth or even newspaper, according to Le Chasseur Francais.

To drink with it? A fruity wine or cider. A French friend used to praise another Norman product - Calvados or apple brandy as it is described. No farmer there, he asserted, from experience, would go out on a winter morning before breakfast without a slug of this drink. Having been given a present of a 15-year-old Calvados, you take a careful liqueurglass of the liquid, gasp, and wonder what it is like when first run. Y