The French start-up Les Nouveaux Affineurs pairs traditional French cheesemaking expertise with a fully vegan lifestyle. Its newest creation, “Albert,” hit the market and immediately walked away with the Snacking d’Or 2022.
By Sascha Melein
After winning over gourmets, Michelin-starred chefs, and flexitarian food lovers alike, Albert has picked up a string of accolades along the way — a gold medal at the 2021 Plant Food Trophies, LuxLife’s Best Cheese Alternative 2021, and a Saveur award in 2022. Now the Affiné d’Albert reinvents itself once more, claiming the prestigious Snacking d’Or 2022 even before its official launch.
A wonderfully creamy interior wrapped in a smooth, supple, faintly floral rind that yields just so under the blade of a knife… a gentle sweetness on the tongue when young, deepening into robust, complex notes as it matures. This is the new Affiné d’Albert, a vegan cheese from Les Nouveaux Affineurs.
Founded in 2017 by Nour Akabaraly, the French start-up Les Nouveaux Affineurs creates and sells cheese alternatives that are 100% plant-based and entirely natural. The company brings together culinary craft, plant-based ingredients, and innovation to give everyone the pleasure of a proper cheese moment — one that meets today’s ecological, ethical, and health standards.
Innovation in the World of Plant-Based Cheese
After three years in development, Les Nouveaux Affineurs has now opened a new factory in Ivry-sur-Seine, where it will develop and produce its plant-based cheese alternatives going forward. With this expanded production capacity, the company is pushing ahead with a multi-channel rollout of its products, aiming to keep pace with the fast-growing demand for plant-based food.
Expertise and Creativity in Equal Measure
To craft its fully plant-based cheese alternatives, Les Nouveaux Affineurs draws on the know-how of traditional cheese specialists, adapting time-honoured techniques to work entirely without dairy. The result is defined by a short, transparent ingredient list built primarily around organic, fair-trade cashews and guaranteed GMO-free, 100% French soy. A handful of ferments, water, a pinch of Camargue salt, and a few organic flavourings round things out — no additives, no preservatives, nothing else.
The Range: Les Affinés and Les Frais
The brand’s two product lines bring plant-based creations that are artisanally fermented and aged, built from a small handful of carefully chosen ingredients with real health benefits: cholesterol- and lactose-free, and rich in calcium.
Les Affinés – the aged cheeses. This line adapts the know-how of traditional cheesemaking to a plant-based base of cashews, and in some cases soy. The vegan cheese ferments and matures for several weeks before it reaches the plates of cheese lovers — and comes in at up to half the saturated fat of conventional cheese.
Les Nouveaux Affineurs has poured its full expertise in fermentation and refinement into the range, developing a new, entirely plant-based recipe that delivers a new texture and an even better flavour. As ever, it rests on an ultra-short list of quality raw ingredients: fair-trade, shelled organic cashews, ferments, water, and Camargue salt. That’s it. No further additives. No genetically modified ingredients. No preservatives. Simply vegan cheese.
