What does your day-to-day look like at France 44 Cheese as a buyer and cheesemonger?
The highlight of any day is our customers, especially when we have a cheese they’ve been searching for or help them discover a new favorite. There’s a lot that goes into that moment, though: ordering, unloading the cheese truck, stocking the case, routine cheese maintenance like facing and rewrapping cuts of cheese, keeping things clean and cold, countless trips up and down the stairs to the cheese cave, washing your hands a hundred times a day, and of course, eating lots of cheese to see how it tastes and where it is in its life cycle. Michael Pollan called cheese makers (and mongers, by extension) “merchants of rot” because we deal in the spoilage of milk. We’re always trying to get the right cheese to the right customer at the right moment.
You just competed at CMI (Cheese Monger Invitational). What were some highlights of that experience for you?
Spending a month and a half working with one cheese and devising a perfect beverage pairing, bite, and plate with that cheese is a singular experience. As for the event, being surrounded by people who are all so passionately involved in this thing we call “Cheese” was a great bonding experience. You learn a lot and have a lot of fun.
What cheese is really tasting particularly exceptional in the case for you right now?
We had an Italian air shipment arrive on Tuesday, and I love the playful, three milk (cow, goat, sheep) cheeses the Italians make like il Nocciolo, Rochetta, or robiolina wrapped in chestnut leaves . They have a mousse-like, almost ethereal, texture and a fresh, lactic tang. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a perennial favorite. I always find a new flavor in that cheese.
What are you currently reading?
Two of the books I’m reading now are Il bar sotto il mare by Stefano Benni and Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov.
How do you take your coffee?
I read the Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy as a kid and now I can only take my coffee pitch black.