Sandwich au Langres

Tip a little Champagne into the dimple on top of a Langres and the cheese drinks it. That dimple, the fontaine, is the reason this cheese behaves the way it does in bread. Langres is a small washed-rind cylinder from the plateau of the same name in Champagne, and it is never turned while it ages, so the surface slowly sinks into a concave well. The rind is sticky and orange-bronze from a wash of brine and annatto. The classic sandwich pours wine into the well, lets it soak the paste, then lays the loosened cheese onto a baguette over a thin film of beurre demi-sel. The cheese arrives already moistened, half spread before it meets the crumb.

The mechanics follow from the well and the wash. Because the fontaine holds liquid, the cheese carries its own dressing and needs none built around it; the Champagne slackens the dense centre and pushes the lactic sharpness forward instead of masking it. The rind stays on, because it holds most of the brine-driven pungency, and a peeled Langres reads flat. A ripe one is closer to a thick spread than a sliceable block, so it is scooped and laid rather than shingled in coins.

The build fails in specific ways. Strip the rind and the sandwich loses its bite; scoop the cheese too early, before it has softened, and it stays tight and chalky at the core. Pour too much wine into the fontaine and the paste turns to a slack puddle the bread cannot hold. Spread the butter thick and the sandwich goes greasy, because the cheese is already doing butter's job. The baguette needs a firm crust, since a ripe paste is forever trying to soak its way into the crumb and a soft loaf simply gives way.

Open the bread and the smell is brine and cured meat off the washed rind, sharper and more lifted than the heavier orange cheeses. The crust cracks; the paste behind it is loose, glossy, faintly pink from the soak. It is cool rather than cold. The first taste is lactic and tangy, the Champagne a dry thread running under it, the rind a salty edge that arrives last. The cheese coats the tongue like a soft spread and the bread carries it dry and clean. A drier slice eats firmer; a very ripe one almost has to be eaten with the bread held flat.

In the country around the fortified town of Langres this is market food, the cheese sold by the cylinder at the weekly stalls along the ramparts. The plateau treats the wine pour as a small ceremony rather than a necessity: a splash of the region's own Champagne, or of marc for a warmer, more spirituous soak. Variations stay on the washed-rind rack. A young Langres scooped firm gives a cleaner, tighter sandwich; a few slices of crisp pear set the lactic sharpness against a sweet counter. The nearest sibling is the Sandwich a l'Epoisses, another washed-rind cheese soaked in spirit, but Epoisses is washed in marc de Bourgogne and runs softer and gamier, where Langres stays brighter and more acidic and keeps its upright cylinder shape.

Origin and history

Langres is named for the medieval fortified town of Langres and the high plateau around it, a watershed where the Seine, the Marne, and tributaries of the Rhone and Meuse rise. Production on the plateau is documented from at least the 13th century, when the cheese was a local farmhouse make.

It became more widely known in the 18th century, when farmers carried it to the weekly markets held along the town's ramparts and sold it by the piece. The custom of filling the fontaine with Champagne is younger than the cheese: it took hold after the Champagne houses began their aggressive marketing in the 1880s and 1890s, when restaurateurs saw that pouring real Champagne into the well gave diners a small spectacle and a matching flavour.

The legal protections arrived in the modern era. The rules they set confine production to the Bassigny and the Langres communes and require milk from Montbeliarde, Simmental, and Brune cows pastured at least six months of the year. France registered the cheese as an Appellation d'Origine Controlee in 1991, and the European Union granted its bloc-wide Protected Designation of Origin in 2009.