Fruitière de Pleure

Fruitière de Pleure is a French cooperative cheese dairy (fruitière) based in the village of Pleure in the Jura department of eastern France. Fruitières are a distinctive Jura institution: small, collectively owned dairies in which local farmers pool their milk to produce large, long-aged cheeses, most famously Comté. The Fruitière de Pleure follows this model, transforming milk from surrounding farms into traditional Jura cheeses. The cooperative is a commercial brand as well as a production site, selling its cheeses under its own name. Its product range centres on the classic cheeses of the Jura massif — Comté, Morbier, and related cooked and pressed varieties — made according to the protected designations that govern these cheeses. Because fruitières are owned by their member farmers rather than by outside shareholders, the business is best understood as a producer cooperative rather than a conventional listed company. As a small regional producer, Fruitière de Pleure operates primarily in the French market, supplying local shops, markets, and distributors, and increasingly reaching consumers through its own website. Its identity is tied to the terroir of the Jura: mountain pastures, Montbéliarde cattle, and the long affinage that gives Comté its character. The brand represents both a specific dairy and the wider fruitière tradition of eastern France.

The Fruitière de Pleure belongs to the long tradition of fruitières in the Jura massif of eastern France. Fruitières emerged in the Jura as collective dairies: because the milk of a single farm was not enough to make the large, long-keeping wheels of Comté, neighbouring farmers pooled their milk and shared the labour and the returns. This cooperative model has shaped the rural economy of the Jura for centuries and remains the organisational basis of Comté production today. Pleure is a small commune in the Jura department, and its fruitière serves the surrounding agricultural community. Like other fruitières, it collects milk from member farms, processes it into cheese, and ages the wheels before sale. The cooperative is associated with the protected designation of origin (AOP) framework that governs Comté and other Jura cheeses, which sets rules on geography, cattle breed, feed, and minimum ageing. As a named entity, the Fruitière de Pleure is recorded in structured knowledge bases such as Wikidata, and it maintains a commercial web presence at fruitieredepleure.com. Detailed founding dates, membership figures, and production volumes are not established in the available evidence, so they are not asserted here. What is clear is its role as a small, locally rooted cooperative brand within the Jura cheese economy.

Traditional cooperative Jura cheese dairy producing terroir-driven Comté and related cheeses.

• Comté cheese

  A large, cooked and pressed cow's milk cheese aged for months, the flagship product of Jura fruitières.

• Morbier cheese

  A semi-soft Jura cheese with a characteristic dark ash line through the middle.

1. 1Fruitière de Pleurewikidata.org
2. 2Fruitière de Pleure official websitefruitieredepleure.com