At first glance, Valençay can look a little alarming. Small, gray-blue, uneven, the top as if it had been cut off. It looks like a pyramid left too long in a cellar.
It is a goat cheese from central France, made with raw milk. You know it by the shape. It is a pyramid with the top cut off, covered in a gray rind.
That rind is not dirt. It is mold. You eat it. And yes, the cheese tastes of mold. That is the point.
Why is Valençay gray?
The cheese is salted, then covered with wood charcoal. Then mold grows on the rind. The charcoal and the mold give the gray, the white, sometimes a little blue.
Without that rind, it is not really a Valençay. The taste of cellar, mushroom, and damp earth comes mostly from there. The inside is paler and milder. The mold is the rind.
Does it actually taste like mold?
Yes. Not like food forgotten at the back of the fridge. Like a cheese that was allowed to live.
A young Valençay is softer, with a little sweetness still. The older it gets, the firmer it becomes, and the more the goat and the mold come up. Mushroom, cellar, wet wood. A little hazelnut too, if the cheese is not too old.
If you cut off the rind to avoid the mold, you take away the cheese.
A pyramid with something missing
The cheese has a square base and four sides that rise, but no point. It is a pyramid without a top. Today it has to have that shape. Where does the shape come from? There is a well-known story.
Talleyrand lived at the château de Valençay. He is said to have received Napoleon after the war in Egypt. The local cheeses still had a point, like the pyramids. Talleyrand is said to have had those points cut off, so Napoleon would not be reminded of a war he had lost.
Did Napoleon really cut off the pyramid?
It is a very good story. It is probably not true. France's appellation office, the INAO, tells it with aurait. Nobody has proof.
Talleyrand really did live at Valençay, and he liked a good table. The cheese already existed in the region. The Napoleon story was added later.
A cheese from Berry
The name comes from a town in central France, in the old Berry. People have raised goats there for a long time.
Today, only a cheese made in this region, with this milk, this shape, and this rind, can be called Valençay.
Before you go
If you see a small gray-blue pyramid covered with mold at a cheese shop, don't assume that it has been forgotten in the back of a cellar. It may be a Valençay, and its strange rind is exactly as it should be. As for its missing point, you can tell the story about Napoleon, as long as you mention that no one really knows whether it is true.