Month: October 2025

We were on a day trip from Dole to Arbois when we decided to pause in the tiny village of La Ferte to check out the local cheese. We have long been fans of Comte Cheese and while travelling the D469 to Arbois through La Ferte we noticed La Fromagerie de la Ferte which specialises in the production of Comte to AOC standards. We decided to take a look…

… and what a find! This cheese factory, unlike others we have seen, operates a ‘Cheese Bar’. It’s brand new, light and airy, with plenty of seating inside and outside and there’s sooo much cheese to see and eat.

The staff proved attentive and well informed regarding the cheese and the menu offered plenty of choice. In addition to a selection of Comte cheese of varying ages) there was Morbier, Bleu de Gex, Raclette, Tomme and others. To accompany the cheese there was also a range of cold meats from Jura (dry cured ham, sausages and terrines) and a selection of locally produced craft beers. Oh and, of course, yellow wine. Yellow wine and Comte is a marriage made in heaven.

We settled down for a small feast with me opting for a mixed cheese and ham charcuterie washed down with one of the artisanal beers (the cheeses included Old Comte AOP, Fruity Comte AOP and Morbier) and Vanya going for a Comte Fondue which she made herself following instructions from one of the staff.

It was pure luck that took us to the Fromagerie de la Ferte but we’ll be back.

A little bit about the production of Comte Cheese in the event you’re interested…

(a) Comte is an unpasteurised cheese and part of the Gruyere family of cheeses. It is favoured by a great many of our top chefs.

(b) The milk used to make the cheese comes from Montbeliarde cows which eat only grass and hay and are recognizable by their dark red and white coats. They are milked twice a day at regular times to avoid stressing the animals.

(c) AOC recognition requires that Comte cheese be made with milk that is not transported more than 25 kilometres from where the cow was milked and within 24 hours of milking.

(d) The cow’s milk, with a fat content of not less than 45%, is transported to large copper vats. A few centilitres of natural rennet (obtained from the dried intestine of a calf) is added to help clot the milk and the resulting curd is then stirred and heated to 54 degrees centigrade for 1 hour. The curd is then drawn off and pressed into cheese wheel moulds before being stored in the fromagerie’s cellars to mature.

(e) The cheese must remain in the cellars for at least 4 months before it can be called Comte. Of course most of it will be matured for much longer. The average is 18 months but it is not unknown for Comte to be left for 36 months which makes for a considerably stronger tasting and more friable cheese.

(f) So many factors affect the taste of the cheese (e.g. the microclimate of the area the cheese is produced in, the time of the year the milk is collected, the time allowed for maturing etc) and every cheese wheel differs in terms of smell and taste – Just look at the aroma wheel below. Generally however, a young Comte will have a milkier taste and aromas, while more mature cheeses can have fruitier (citrus and hazlnut) and smoky flavours.

And on to Arbois….

Eleven completed tours and not once have we visited the Franche-Comte part of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte Region. That had to change and so we came to Jura. Jura, together with French departments of Doubs, Haute-Saone and Belfort forms Franche-Comte; a beautiful land of mountains, lakes and rivers, picturesque villages and towns, small vineyards and a huge forest (the Foret de Chaux – the second largest forest in France). We started in Dole, a small attractive town on the banks of the River Doubs which is dominated by the impressive Collegiale Notre Dame de Dole on Place Nationale.

At least part of this imposing church can be seen from just about any point in the town but it is the view from the Avenue de Lair, on the south side of the river, which most appeals. Inside it is stunning. It houses several small chapels, the Sainte Chapelle du Miracle de Faverney being the one which attracts most attention. This renaissance style chapel serves to house a relic that was miraculously saved from a fire at Faverney Abbey. However, to my mind, two other chapels are worthy of special mention – one dedicated to France’s fallen in WWI and another to recognise the surprisingly large number of church officials in Jura who were guillotined during the French Revolution.  

Dole was once the capital of the Jura although this honour now belongs to Besancon. It’s a small attractive riverside town of less than 25,000 people. The old town, which was built around l’Eglise Notre Dame de Dole, is not very large but neither is it lacking in character. Connected by a jumble of stairways, narrow winding streets and passageways, most of the town’s older buildings are made of pale pink or white stone and date from the 17th century or even later. The most impressive of these is the Hotel de Dieu, the main part of which was completed in 1636. It served as a hospital for the poor until 1992 when it was transformed into a mediatheque (a multimedia library and storage centre for the municipal archives).

To ensure I didn’t miss out on any of the town’s more interesting features (not that my debacle at Les Riceys is still fresh in my mind) I visited the Dole Tourist Office on Place Grevy and obtained a map of what is known as the Circuit du Chat Perche (which broadly translates as the perched cat trail). It’s a 4 kilometre circuit connecting the town’s principal features and the map provides a brief description of each.

I’ll let the photos do the talking…

… although the area behind Rue Louis Pasteur does perhaps warrant special mention.

Louis Pasteur was born in Dole in 1822 and the house he was born in is now a small museum dedicated to his memory while the street he lived in (at least until he was 5 and the family moved to nearby Arbois) is now named after him. Louis was raised in the poorer quarter of Dole (his father, Jean-Joseph Pasteur, was a tanner there) and yet he grew up to become a biologist, a chemist and the father of microbiology. Most famous for developing the treatment of beer, wine and, later, milk to prevent bacterial contamination (i.e. the process now known as ‘pasteurisation’), he also discovered both the rabies and anthrax vaccines.

The south side of Rue Louis Pasteur, running alongside the Canal du Rhone au Rhin(e), was filled with tanneries; so much so it is named the Canal des Tanneurs. Properties in this part of Dole are now amongst the most sought after and the area has become known as the ‘Little Venice of the Jura’. Again, it is not a large part of the town but it is one of the prettiest…

And the final word of this blog entry must go to food. After all, this is France and the French like to talk about food as much as we British like to talk about the weather.

At the last count, there were three Michelin Restaurants in Dole but we didn’t check even one of them out. That’s not to say however that we were not well fed during our stay in the area. No, our concern while in Jura was not so much with visiting the local restaurants (although we did our bit in that regard, as can be seen from the photos below) but; with sampling Comte Cheese (and we would be heading for La Ferte for that) and; Cremant de Jura (we’d be going to Arbois for that) and Yellow Wine (perhaps to Poligny).

Oh… and the local markets. Opposite the Collegiale Church on Place Nationale is the Marche des Halles. There’s a farmers market held in this covered glass and steel market hall every tuesday, thursday and saturday morning and, during the summer months, there’s an evening market on Fridays.