BELLEVAIRE
When talking about butter, one cannot fail to mention France, the home of butter par excellence. And when talking about butter of excellence, one cannot fail to mention Beillevaire, one of the most renowned cheese makers in France, as it is the only company to process raw milk and churn butter in wooden vats. When Pascal and Claudine Beillevaire began their adventure in 1980, they had 50 cows, produced fromage blanc, cream, and unpasteurized butter, and sold them at local markets. Today, forty years later, Beillevaire has 20 cheese shops, 10 food halls, and is present in 50 markets per week.
Beillevaire, the excellence of raw milk butter
Real butter – the good kind, the kind that helped make cuisine française the benchmark for gourmands all over the world – is French. Full stop. There’s no getting around this. But even among French butters, you can still seek out excellence. And the very pinnacle of that excellence has a name: Beillevaire, the only company in France that produces raw-milk butter and still churns it – even today – in wooden churns. Just like it used to be done.
The story of Beillevaire is a family story rooted in the Breton marshes of the Vendée, between the mouth of the Loire and the Île de Noirmoutier, a wild and surprising land with a character all its own. It was here, more than forty years ago, that Pascal, together with his wife Claudine, began his adventure, bringing together his two great passions: farming and trade.
His goal? To produce real, artisanal butter, just as his family had always done. At the beginning they had 50 cows on their farm. Pascal’s parents made fromage blanc, raw cream and raw butter. Their products were sold at local markets.
Then in 1982, the range expanded to include the first artisanal cheeses. The first shop opened in Les Sables-d’Olonnes in 1987, then in Nantes in 1989, before finally arriving in Paris in 1998.
All the flavour of French cheese
In addition to its 150 dairy products, production has expanded to 30 cheeses, offered in hundreds of varieties and made in six production and ageing facilities. These are strategically located in those French regions that have always been home to AOP cheeses.
Above all, Beillevaire has succeeded in establishing itself in the premium butter market thanks to a unique business model based on collecting milk from local farmers – five farms that produce cow’s milk and one that produces goat’s milk – who follow the principles of sustainable agriculture as closely as possible, with the utmost respect for the environment and for animal welfare.
But what truly sets them apart from any other dairy company in France comes down to three factors: raw milk, wooden churns and artisanal production.
If Beillevaire is internationally renowned for its raw-milk butter, still made today in traditional wooden churns using a fully artisanal process, its exclusive range certainly doesn’t stop at this single, prestigious product.
In its basket of delicacies we also find flavoured butters with lemon, pepper, chilli and seaweed; crème crue and crème fraîche; spreads; natural and fruit yogurts… and of course cheeses, the true “royal members” of French gastronomy, the very backbone of the blue-white-red identity.
Because of this gourmet privilege, it is no surprise at all that Winston Churchill, during the German occupation of France in the Second World War, is said to have remarked that a country capable of producing more than two hundred types of cheese could not possibly fall. History later – thankfully – proved him right.
With its six facilities, located in the key regions of the most important AOP appellations, Beillevaire is able to produce a remarkable selection of outstanding cheeses, offering the market an extensive répertoire of flavours and aromas.
Unlike many Italian cheeses, which tend to be very large in size and aged for long periods, French cheeses are generally small and mature in a matter of weeks. This characteristic makes them perfect for creating refined cheese trolleys. And to satisfy the palates of connoisseurs and food lovers, Beillevaire has created, exclusively for us at Longino & Cardenal, a petit plateau for tasting: raw butter and four cheeses, 170 grams of pure delight – the ideal single portion for wine bars, gourmet bars and fast-casual venues.
How is Beillevaire’s raw-milk butter made?
Everything starts, of course, with the raw material. The raw milk is collected from farmers carefully selected by Beillevaire, its natural bacterial flora preserved by keeping the temperature between 15 and 36 degrees and processing it within 48 hours of milking. In practice, it enters the facility without ever being refrigerated or stored in any way. This ensures that all its aromas remain intact.
Choosing raw milk is a choice rich in implications.
The first is the strong link with the land – or, to be more precise, with the aroma of the land and of what the cows eat. Any product made from raw milk – butter included – preserves extremely distinctive flavours and nuances which tend to disappear when the milk is pasteurised. This is why in spring and summer, when dairy cows can graze on fresher, greener grass, the butter is more flavourful and a more intense shade of yellow.
The second implication is tied to the artisanal art of cheesemaking: it is no coincidence that, by regulation, all French AOP cheeses must be made from raw milk. Despite having the structure of a large company, Beillevaire still produces its butter in an artisanal way: this means that around 80% of the production process is still carried out by hand.
In this context of dairy tradition and Beillevaire’s artisanal know-how, the true queen is the wooden churn – a sort of “cement mixer” or horizontal barrel that can rotate on its own axis – inside which the actual butter-making process takes place. Under the constant supervision of a master cheesemaker, the cream obtained from the raw milk is vigorously churned to quickly break the fat globules and bring them closer together until the fat fraction completely aggregates and becomes solid and spongy.
At this point, the butter is removed from the churn by hand and is ready to be packed either unsalted or salted with fleur de sel from Noirmoutier, just a few kilometres from Machecoul.
Portioning is also done by hand, using moulds of different sizes. These moulds are themselves made of wood and fitted with hinges to press the butter into the desired shape. Finally, the butter is wrapped – once again, by hand.
Thanks to this fully artisanal packaging process, Beillevaire can customise the butter with a client’s logo without any minimum order quantity: the single portions of raw-milk butter branded “L&C” that you find in our catalogue are made especially for us by Beillevaire.
Our suggestion?
Serve an aperitif with warm bread and perhaps some salted butter: it’s a beautiful way to start a meal.
