Tartiflette - keeping it real

Nothing beats a good old Savoyard Tartiflette when you are on a winter sports holiday. A traditional recipe of potato slices, bacon, onions covered with a half block of Reblochon cheese and left to melt in the oven. Certainly that is the image that young Savoyard farmers and members of the FDSEA (the departmental federation of agricultural unions) would like to promote. They have taken direct action today against supermarkets in the region that are selling what they see as “fake Tartiflette cheese”.

In Tartiflette We Don’t Trust?

In a lightening operation they descended on a number of supermarkets blocking ailes with full shopping trolleys and putting stickers labeled “Rebloch’ spirit, tartiflez authentique” on packets of tartiflette cheese. Some stores agreed to withdraw the products from their shelves. The farmers claim they are preserving a long standing tradition of “authentic tartiflette” made with local Reblochon cheese. They accuse the manufacturers of unfair competition by selling non-regional or cheap industrial cheese for tartiflette use. However the situation is not clear, some “Reblochon” cheese that doesn’t qualify for the strict Appellation d’Origine Contrôlé (AOC) with its stringent geographic, altitude and productions guidelines is sold for making tartiflette.

At PisteHors we like nothing better than a piece of traditional French cheese, especially Reblochon but what of the tradional Tartiflette dish? Well it seems it dates only from the 1980s and the start of mass winter sports tourism. It was a pure marketing idea to relaunch sales of Reblochon cheese which were in the doldrums at the time. It seems that their marketing wheeze has been a bit too successful for their liking.