Want Wine Milk ?

Milk in the bucketExceptionally, this story is not related to wine, but wine will sneak in as usual...
Don't you dream sometimes of having real milk at hand ? I'm addressing the milk lovers among you, but there may not be that many reading wineterroirs actually... When you buy long-conservation milk in a shop or in a supermarket in France, what you get in the square pack is the shadow of the real thing. Even when you choose the supposedly whole milk (lait entier) type, it seems having been beforehand unashamedly deprived of its core nutrients and fat (to make cheese I guess), and it tastes bland and also looks almost watery. Like for wine and its additives, I would like the milk companies to print everything on the milk packs about what happened to this pristine milk since it was abandonned by the cow in the milk shed. The milk available on the market has been going through violent processes which altered the original qualities (including the gustative ones) of the milk. I also noticed that whole milk tastes better in certain countries like Germany for example, either they don't fully pasteurize it or they use another technique like micro filtration, but it does taste closer from real milk. I put the blame for this lack of taste found in many French milks on the use of an antiquated pasteurization method. It seems that the milk is briefly heated at 140°C which is way too violent on the milk and kills all gustative qualities as well as healthy nutrients. There are certainly much softer ways to make the milk stable and safe for transportation and storage, especially for the regular milk which is found on the refrigerated cabinets of the food stores.
After speaking with a farmer in the Loire about my dream of drinking unaltered, freshly-collected milk, I was said to visit the milk farm any day at the end of the afternoon, so I paid a visit to this family farm. They have about 60 milk cows and grow various crops like wheat. I wanted to do this kind of direct-buy in a farm for long, having tried in the past real milk and having enjoyed its strong taste and silkyness. This was a memorable gustative experience along with the fun to see the cows happily empying their milk in the dairy shed.

Coming straight through these pipes...The fight to get this real milk back tour our fridges and kitchens has lots in common with the fight for real wine, additives-free wine. If France seems to lead in this counter-revolutionary trend against technical wines, the Anglo world opened the way for the real-beer (England) and real-milk (America) movements. Speaking of beers, objecters will say that there was at least a country which never departed from its natural-beer culture : Germany can boast having kept the most diverse beer landscape and this, using only natural brewing methods, thanks to their legendary Reinheitsgebot. It is no suprise by the way that the European Union issued a court order obliging the Germans to lift the Reinheitsgebot rules and accept all the additives used elsewhere for industrial-minded beers (the German breweries have, thank Gott, generally resisted this incitement for spoofulating and kept generally following the old rules). The EC bodies have a very poor record concerning real food protection and promotion of artisanal methods, and it has been an instrument to impose norms and rules that benefit unilaterally to the big industry.
Americans have several active groups working to bring real milk back in favor, like Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, which promotes wise traditions in food and farming, and also like Raw Milk Facts, by Randolph Jonsson, a northern California nutriologist. There's nothing more interesting when you ask yourself basic questions about milk and raw milk than informatives pages like this milk FAQ page.Cows waiting impatiently for their turn at the pumpWhen I arrived on my bicycle at the farm at about 7:30pm on a sunday (there's no sunday for cows and alas for non-automatized dairy farms), the cows were gently walking back from the grazing fields toward the dairy shed [last pic on bottom] and the farmers, whom I had met before and spoken to about my desire to buy raw milk, were preparing for one of the two daily milkings. These cows are not organicly fed as far as I know, they get some enriched food called ensilage, but they also spend most of the day outdoors eating grass in the fields.
The milking shed is an aging facility on the side of an open barn, and the cows line on both sides (14 or 16 in all if I remember), the son of the farmers connecting each of them to the milking machine after a short cleaning of the tender extremities.
With the number of small to medium milk farms in France, it's quite easy for many French who opt for a real-milk alternative to go from time to time to such a farm and buy raw milk there. It is also very economical, the cheapest price for a liter of so-called whole milk in a supermarket is 60 cents, and that's the price these farmers sell their wine to the rare visitors who want some. I brought an empty 1,5-liter plastic bottle and the bill would have been 90 cents (they offered it to me, I couldn't have them accept my money), a steal when you taste the thing.Particularly-prominent belly veinIf you buy milk in a milk farm, you can also begin make your own butter or cheese. B.'s mother in Burgundy makes regularly her own cheese from such real milk that she finds in a farm. The aforementioned websites are very informative about raw-milk's safety, and also a good way not to make mistakes is to take advice from people in the countryside (could be the farmers themselves) who keep making their own butter and cheese.
Buying directly milk in the farms is also benefiting to the farmers as if 60 cents seems cheap indeed, it's quite higher than the regulated price paid to the farms by the dairies in France, which is now at 35 cents a liter. A cow typically yields 40 liters a day on average if I understood correctly, and a percentage of cows have on certain days milk which is unsusable for consumption, for example when they got antibiotics, and the farmers have to dump a few dozen liters on certain days. The milk falling in the red bucket for instance will go to the drain, it looks nice but the cow in question being treated with antibiotics for a small problem, it can't be mixed with the production. the milk which is collected by a tanker truck everyday at the farm in the wee hours of the morning must be immaculate. The farmer says that the sanitary checks at the dairy are very strict and if they found a measurable ppm amount of medicine in the milk, the whole tank with the farm-production of the day would be destroyed. For our daily wines I would just wish we had similar strictness at least for the informations (I'm not in favor of any destruction) about the amount of residues from pesticides and herbicides as well as a detailed list of the additives...One-liter-and-a-half of suavity...So, after looking for a while at the successive lines of cows being milked, I had my empty water-bottle filled with pure raw milk with a temperature of 3°C. I rode back on my bicycle, holding the precious bottle in one hand to avoid it being shocked by the dirt-road bumps, and later poured myself a glass. Beautiful, savoury and silky beverage. A drink which is more than a drink, this is liquid food. It's as if my palate was exploring the rich minerals and nutrients of this real milk. Why can't we have this quality everyday ? I was probably too greedy that day and downed several glasses in a row, which ended up me going straight to the toilets. The milk was clean, don't worry, but raw milk is very rich in fat and it must be drank with moderation so that the digestive track can handle it, especially when we have been abstaining from drinking milk for a long time. The Raw-Milk-Facts website advises to eat yogurt and/or drink kefir for a week to get the digestive track better prepared for raw milk.
My advice to every real-food lover : try it at least once. There are many small milk farms around in most countries/regions and you'll not risk anything asking. Many farmers will be pleased to sell you a few liters. You can keep one liter to drink raw for a try and boil lightly the other liters. That could be a good way to meet friendly farmers and rediscover one of the best natural drinks on earth...after wine of course.End of the day : milking time for the cowsThe sun is lowering on the West and the farmer has just a signal to give for the cows to walk orderly toward the milking shed where they'll be lightened from their load of milk. I'm sure that they feel after that a sense of relief similar to the one we humans have when we go to a particular tiny room...

Comments

[Roelof Ligtmans]

Very nice article that makes me think of of the farms around my home village in Holland when I was young (in the 60ies). Why on earth is all fresh milk you can buy in a French supermarket always the same brand, and not really fresh??? I am all for this ¨slow food¨ approach!

Nevertheless, I`d rather spend the rest of the evening with a glass of locally produced wine!

Keep the good work going,

a happy reader of your blog,

Roelof Ligtmans
Mercurey, Bourgogne

[lubilu]

Jean gabin, one of the most famous French actor, used to say :'I'll drink milk when cows eat grapes'.

[Amie Sexton]

I'm all for fresh unpasteurised milk. Sadly in Australia there is a ban on all raw milk products except Roquefort cheese.
A step forward for fresh milk in France is in Langon (near Bordeaux and only 5 minutes drive from Sauternes) - they have installed a fresh milk vending machine just in front of the Coccinelle supermarket close to the centre of town. At 8am each morning the local farmer replaces the tank with a fresh tank of milk, you can then purchase a cup of milk (plastic cups supplied) or by the litre in your own container at a competitive price. Beautiful milk and it almost makes me want to move there - I'm sure a diet of Sauternes and fresh milk is healthy!

[Nigel Havens]

A very evocative article and not one you would expect to read in a wine blog! Really makes you want to go to a farm and buy the fresh milk. Shame about the plastic bottle, I wonder if it would taste better from a cut crystal wine glass!

[Morag]

I'm sitting here in the Sarthe trying to think where my nearest dairy farmer is....

I only found your blog this evening, but I'm really enjoying it.

[Putnam Weekley]

Downriver Detroit, in Lincoln Park, it's Calder Dairy. The "Natural Milk" has the cream line and all the milks have the flavor you're talking about.
http://www.cloverleafwine.com/images/2006/010720calder4.jpg
http://www.cloverleafwine.com/images/2006/010720calder2.jpg