The Curious Case of the Mimolette Cannonball
By John Yanes, May 7, 2023
Mimolette is a cheese traditionally produced around the city of Lille, also known as Boule de Lille. May 7, 2023
Early on in my career here with Le Vigne Winery, I loved learning about the wines, the vineyards, and the history. At every opportunity, I made it a point to ask the winemaker about the wines and the vineyards and our resident cheese monger, Zina Miakinkova about the cheeses, something that I still do every opportunity I have.
I had been away from the wine industry for many years and knew nothing about cheese except parmesan in a plastic bottle and those awful cheese singles that were a brown bag lunch staple as a child growing up. Early in 2012, I was introduced to Mimolette when it appeared on our cheese and wine pairing flight. Zina and I found ourselves alone in the tasting room one morning, so I asked her to tell me something interesting about this new cheese.
A halved wheel (or ball) of Mimolette. May 7, 2023
She told me it’s origins date back the 1600’s during the reign of Louie XIV who wanted to make a native French cheese to replace the very popular Dutch cheese, Edam during the Franco-Dutch War. She also mentioned the legend of an incident where during a great land battle the French ran out of cannonballs and started loading Mimolette into the cannons and firing upon the advancing Dutch army. Skeptically, I responded with something like, “That can’t be true. You can’t shoot cheese from a cannon.” She responded with, “It’s nickname is little cannonball.” Totally inspired, I began telling this story to my guests as they enjoyed their cheese and wine pairings.
Mimolette disappeared for about a year due to FDA concerns but showed back up on our cheese flight sometime in 2013; and so, I began telling this fascinating story once again. One day, after my guests had finished their wine and cheese pairing and I had finished my history lesson, someone suggested we do a search on the whole shooting-cheese-from-a-cannon thing. Within a few minutes, we found a book called “The Best, Worst and Most Unusual” written by Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler. After a brief scroll through the pages, we found the story under the title ‘Most Unusual Cannonball’.
At the risk of copywrite violation, I’ll summarize the account. During a naval battle between Brazil and Uruguay, after running out of cannonballs, the Uruguayan navy began loading cheese into the cannons and after a few volleys, managed to splinter the mast of the Brazilian ship which was forced to retreat. I couldn’t wait to add this historical reference to my tale of Mimolette’s fabled story.
Battle of Montevideo (1823)
The naval Battle of Montevideo (Portuguese: Batalha Naval de Montevidéu) of 21 October 1823
It was during these years of conflicts that the story of Commander Coe and his crew encountering the Brazilian fleet was first documented.
By Trajano Augusto de Carvalho, Public Domain
Still not convinced of the accuracy of this account, I decided to take a ‘deep dive’ into the validity of this story. So, one summer evening after a long day at the winery, I searched for more information in on-line search engines and encyclopedias. And after just a few minutes, I found an episode of Mythbusters called “Greased Lightning – Cannonball Of Cheese”. Can you guess what they were trying to debunk? Yes! Shooting cheese from a cannon! I just about fell out of my chair, yelling at the TV: ‘It’s true! It’s true!’
Today, I wonder if there’s anything left to learn about Mimolette, to which the answer is most likely, yes!
Mimolette, seen here with the 2019 Estate Nikiara. May 7, 2023
Each wine club shipment, we select fun and unique cheeses like Mimolette to be paired with our Estate wines for your enjoyment. We’ve paired this amazing cheese with our 2019 Nikiara in the May Wine Club shipment, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to tell this fascinating story.