This piece originally appeared in SAVEUR’s Spring/Summer 2025 issue. See more stories from Issue 204 here.

Sangliers are early risers, tasked with following lumberjacks from forest to forest in pursuit of felled trees destined for sawmills. Their prize is the thin, pliable cambium found beneath the bark, which they remove using a steel shovel known as a cuillère, a tool “we have to make ourselves,” Faivre says. 

Fall is the best time to harvest. In spring, rising sap makes the bark more fragile, inviting the presence of beetles. “Once a tree has been attacked by insects, we can’t use it,” says Faivre, noting that the climate crisis is making things worse. 

The next stop is the workshop, where Faivre dries the cambium bands for 72 hours. “They need to be as dry as possible,” she says, noting that “boiling them gives them their suppleness back” when it comes time to wrap them around cheeses. 

Faivre sells to cheesemakers large and small, including Jasper Hill Farm, a producer in Vermont whose award-winning Harbison demands a certain amount of scaffolding. Uplands Cheese also uses her wares for its Rush Creek Reserve, a Wisconsin-made ode to Mont d’Or. —Emily Monaco

Also known as Vacherin du Haut-Doubs, this PDO-protected cheese is made from raw cow’s milk in the Swiss Alps between August and March, and it may only be sold from September to May. Historically, these brine-washed wheels were made in the “offseason” by producers of Comté or Gruyère. In The Oxford Companion to Cheese, Eric Beauvier recommends serving it boîte chaude—in other words, baked right in its box, with a splash of dry Jura wine and black black pepper—alongside boiled potatoes and smoked sausage. Due to restrictions on young raw-milk cheeses, true Mont d’Or is not exported to the United States. However, an excellent heat-treated dupe, Vacherin Mont d’Or, is available here seasonally. —Kat Craddock

An all-American ode to the illustrious Mont d’Or, this lush and silky cheese from Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Andy Hatch is the holiday party flex we look forward to all year. Like its Swiss ancestor, this exceptional little wheel is made exclusively from late-summer and autumn milk from cows transitioning from fresh grass to hay. (Since it’s aged 60 days, this unpasteurized cheese is fair game to sell in the States.) With lactic and faintly bacony notes, it’s a defacto crowd-pleaser, whether spooned at room temperature straight from its spruce-strip binding, or warm and oozing with a dollop of summer berry jam. —K.C.

Jasper Hill Farm rose to fame in the early aughts with brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler’s Bayley Hazen Blue and their hugely popular cave-ripened Cabot cheddar collab; they haven’t stopped turning out the hits since. The Kehlers regularly wrap their softest cheeses in cambium (imported from France and also harvested right on premises in Greensboro, Vermont), and Harbison is a fan favorite in the category. Peel back its bloomy rind to reveal a dense-yet-spreadable paste. Mild and buttery with faintly mushroomy and cabbagey notes, this one is easy to love. —K.C.