"Within thirty minutes of meeting Jerome, a short-shorts-clad French dairy farmer, he had shown me his custom-engraved Opinel knife (his name on the handle), introduced me to his family, introduced me to his goats, and then put me to work milking said goats. Frankly, I had never contemplated a goat's udder before. Much less a full one, swollen with milk"
"and herded by a friendly sheepdog (goat dog?) into an old stone barn on a banked hillside outside the town of Chambery, France, nestled in the sheer, dramatically glaciated cliffs of the French Alps. But Jerome's cheese starts with goat milk, and goat milk starts with the goat. And what is more French than cheese? The answer, as I discovered over the course of 48 hours in the Alps, may be an Opinel knife."
A 48-hour immersion in the French Alps combined alpine culinary traditions with artisan knife-making. A short-shorts-clad dairy farmer named Jerome demonstrated goat husbandry, introduced family and animals, and involved a visitor in milking, revealing the origins of goat milk for cheese. Opinel No.08 knives emerged as emblematic tools within rural practice and broader fascination. An Opinel blade accompanied daily tasks, while an Opinel factory fed wood blocks through machinery to shape handles. A lifelong interest in pocket knives started in childhood and led to an expanded collection spanning affordable tradition to high-end titanium designs.
Read at www.esquire.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]