L'amuse Signature Gouda

by Austin Coe Butler

No doubt you’ve seen the stack of dark orange wheels on our counter, simply standing at room temperature, likely with the cross-section of a half wheel or wedge spangled with crystals. Customers seem to gravitate towards it, mesmerized. This enchanting tower of cheese is built from wheels of L’amuse Signature 2-Year Gouda, and there is no gouda crunchier, or more crystally that L’amuse Signature in our case. Its rich, butterscotch, burnt sugar sweetness and creamy paste studded with crystals have us refer to it lovingly as “cheese candy.”

But what are those craveable, crunchy crystals? In cheese, crystals are typically either calcium lactate or tyrosine.

Calcium lactate is formed as cheese ages and lactic acid comes into contact with the latent calcium in cheese. It’s most often found in aged cheddars, where it is seen on the surface, and doesn’t concern us at the present moment. Tyrosine is an amino acid found in many well-aged cheeses like Alpines, goudas, cheddars, and Grana style cheeses. It is the tell-tale sign of the bacteria Lactobacillus helveticus hard at work. L. helveticus is highly proteolytic, meaning it likes to break down proteins into amino acids like tyrosine. Proteolysis is central to cheese making, as it happens primarily when rennet is added to liquid milk causing casein proteins to break and unravel, and thus coagulating milk into curd, the foundation of cheese. Proteolysis can also happen secondarily, though, through the microbial metabolism of bacteria, yeast, and mold endemic or introduced to the milk, and as the microbes continue to break down proteins, deposits of tyrosine begin to form. (We could also call this by another name: fermentation, as cheese is a living, breathing food.) Calcium lactate and tyrosine are often erroneously called “flavor crystals” or “salt crystals,” but neither calcium lactate nor tyrosine have any flavor, and instead they are great indicators of flavors.

Why call them that then? Simply, marketing. But their presence almost always means you’re about to crunch on a piece of cheese that has had time to concentrate big, complex flavors.

L’amuse Signature 2-Year Gouda has all of these big, complex flavors like aged soy sauce, roasted hazelnuts, or brown butter as the result of a daring, unorthodox process that pays off big. Fromagerie L’amuse is Amsterdam’s premier cheese shop run by Betty and Martin Koster and they provide many of our favorite goudas like Wilde Weide and the goat’s milk Brabander. Betty and Martin buy young wheels of gouda from the Cono Cheesemakers, best known for Beemster, and then their team of opeleggers, the Dutch word for an affineur, or cheese ager, “finish” or mature the cheeses at their own facility by aging them in ideal conditions, and here that big risk, high reward comes in.

What distinguishes L’amuse Signature 2-year gouda is the temperature at which the wheels are aged. Most goudas are aged at a fairly cool temperature, between 45–50ºF, and the Koster’s age most of their goudas at this temperature. But for L’amuse Signature they age the wheels at a warmer temperature, much closer to Parmigiano Reggiano’s maturing temperature than to other goudas, around 55–60ºF. Higher temperature means more microbial activity, more fermentation, more proteolysis, more tyrosine crystals, and more of those big, sweet flavors. The risk is that if there’s anything amiss with the cheese, or if there are any “off” flavors to begin with, they will be accelerated and exacerbated, and the investment of two-years into that wheel of cheese while taking up space and not paying rent was all for naught.

Signature 2-year is phenomenal for all occasions, but it is especially at home for dessert. Served alongside chocolate and espresso at the end of a meal, the bitterness rounds and complements the sweetness. There’s a complex flavor like deeply browned, tantalizingly burnt meat at play in L’amuse Signature that is right at home with a strong, dark Dutch beer or snifter of peaty whiskey that make for an unforgettable experience after dinner pairing. Absolutely inundated with tomatoes during late summer? Try this recipe for “Snow with L’amuse Signature,” a tart made with tomatoes seasoned in balsamic vinegar and black pepper on crisp phyllo dough topped with dusting of L’amuse Signature and enjoy alongside a glass of crystal clear beef-stock. Or just eat it on its own. When was the last time you paired a Butterfinger?

Cheese Profile: Chiriboga Blue

by Austin Coe Butler

Chiriboga Blue has it all: an international love story, historical roots tied to two storied cheeses, a cult following, and the most unorthodox blue cheesemaking process you’ve ever heard of that all comes together to create a cheese with an irresistible flavor that, even more remarkably, will bring blue lovers and blue haters together.

Arturo Chiriboga was born in Quito, Ecuador, where his father had two small fincas. His father made fresh cheeses for the family’s consumption, and early on in Arturo’s childhood he became interested in cheesemaking. He wanted to study cheesemaking, but there was no place to do so in Ecuador, so he packed his bags and moved to Switzerland to study. At a Cantonal School in western Switzerland he met the love of his life, a Bavarian dairymaid, and three years later, once they finished their studies the two moved back to Ecuador to open their own creamery. Ecuador was plagued with political, economic, and social woes at the time though, and the two soon move to his wife’s home town of Heidelberg, a small town in Bavaria, Germany. Arturo answered a job listing for a cheesemaker at Obere Mühle, a celebrated restaurant and dairy in Bad Hindelang and soon became the head cheesemaker, making over 20 different cheeses. In 2006 he began making Bayerischer Blauschimmelkäse (Bavarian blue cheese), or what we now know as Chiriboga blue. All was well in Arturo’s life until….

Chiriboga Blue began infecting the other cheeses made at Obere Mühle! A solution was easily found though: Arturo moved production to Hofkäserei Kraus, where Albert Kraus makes Alex, Lisa, Red Casanova, and Alp Blossom–cheeses you’ve no doubt seen in our shop. At Hofkäserei Kraus Arturo was able to have his own space to make and age Chiriboga Blue.

Chiriboga Blue has its origins in two iconic cheeses that it bears no resemblance to at all. Arturo first wanted to make a blue cheese because he loved Gorgonzola, but found it very strong and wanted something milder and creamier. The recipe Arturo started with for Bayerischer Blauschimmelkäse was created by Basil Weixler at the start of the 20th century to create a German cheese to rival Roquefort. But Chiriboga is not like either of these storied blues (or any other blue cheese really) for an unheard of, and completely unorthodox, reason that has big implications for flavor.

It’s important to note that “blue cheese” is not a style of cheese but a technique of cheesemaking. Cheesemakers add blue mold (typically Penicillium roqueforti or P. glaucum) to to the milk at the start of the cheesemaking process, which allows the mold to disperse throughout the cheese and mature. The cheese is pierced to allow oxygen into the paste and inspire, or bloom, the nascent mold. The mold is inside the cheese and not being injected or introduced externally to the cheese by the piercing. But Chiriboga Blue is the exception to this rule. Arturo makes his cheese and then dips needles into a solution of blue mold and then pierces the cheese, thus introducing the mold.

In addition to this unorthodox introduction of blue mold via piercing, Arturo also does several other things that distinguish Chiriboga from other blues. Most blue cheeses are crumbly, salty, and spicy, all of which Chiriboga isn’t. Most blue cheeses aren’t “pressed” when they are in their forms, leaving their texture open, craggily, and crumbly, like Roquefort or Stilton. Chiriboga however is pressed and made with whole fat brown Swiss cow’s milk, which creates a dense, buttery paste that limits oxygen and contains mold to the piercings, creating a delicate blue flavor that isn’t spicy. Chiriboga is low in salinity, being brined in a salamoia, or brine, that is only 18% salt compared to the typical 24%. The cheese is also aged for a mere six to eight weeks before being ready to consume, whereas most blue are aged for three to five months, which limits the strength of the blue flavor.

The result is a blue cheese that is subtle, nuanced, and complex in its flavor that has something for everyone. It has the richness of clotted cream with a delicate yeasty tang and the faintest tingle of blue spice with a texture like warm butter or fudge. As an added bonus, Chiriboga is visually stunning, its dense ivory paste and subdued blue marbling give it the appearance of an ancient mill stone. There are many ways to enjoy Chiriboga. It pairs well with sweet wines like Riesling, Spätbegrunder, Trollinger, or Eiswein (ice wine). Simply spread on an Effie’s Oat Cake or fresh bread or used to frost meatloaf (allegedly), but my favorite recommendation comes from a German website, “läßt sich wie Eiskrem mit dem Löffel essen,” “it can be eaten like ice cream with a spoon,” as I am gleefully at the time of writing.

ACS Judging and Competition

by Austin Coe Butler

What you’re about to read may sound strange, but it is wonderfully, wildly true: there’s a multi-day event where people sit down to eat dozens of cheeses and judge them. It’s called the American Cheese Society Judging and Competition, and it happened in Minneapolis this past May. It’s a fantastic time in the cheese industry, when so many of us in our isolated shops and creameries across the country come together to celebrate. A few of our staff members were there all the way from receiving and breaking down the cheeses for the judges to crowning the winners!

ACS Judging and Competition was held at the Huntington Bank Stadium. Cheeses arrive in the most discreet manner: all branding or other information that can reveal its identity is removed or covered with tape to maintain anonymity. The only identifier is a coded label provided to the cheesemakers before the event. Each label consists of two letters and a number indicating the category, subcategory, and identity of the cheese respectively. For instance a label reading TC114 would mean this cheese is competing in the washed rind (T) cow’s milk (C).

An exhaustive number of categories and subcategories exist, and almost every imaginable cheese or dairy related product made in America besides a glass of milk is represented. Here’s a light sampler: Salted Butter with or without cultures; Creme Fraîche and Sour Cream Products; Cottage Cheese, Cheese Curds, Mascarpone and Cream Cheese; Cheeses wrapped in bark, leaves, or grass; Soft-Ripened Cheeses; Low Fat / Low Salt Cheeses; Italian Type Cheeses; Cheddars; and so many more. And each one of these categories is divided into subcategories like Flavored Cheeses, Butter, and Cultured Dairy Products with a vertiginous twenty-one(!) subcategories. You might feel full just reading this!

These cheeses are delivered to the stadium where they are received, organized, and wheeled to their designated walk-in refrigerators to be held for the next day’s judging. We’re talking four walk-in refrigerators designed for an industrial kitchen that feeds a college stadium all filled with speed-racks of cheese.

The next day judging begins with a complex routine of wrangling cheeses. In order to make sure the judges are tasting the best representation of the cheeses they are judging, the cheeses, depending on their size and style, must be pulled anywhere from an hour to several hours ahead of their judgement to temper or “temp.” The majority of the flavors we taste in cheese (and most other foods and beverages) consist of aromas perceived through retronasal olfaction, or a “backwards smelling” that happens in your mouth when you eat or drink. This is why we always say to let your cheese come up to room temperature before you eat it! People with walkie-talkies are radioing back and forth, and volunteers wheel speed-racks loaded with sheet trays of cheese through the hallways and up freight-elevators to get to the judging floor in time for the cheese to temp.

Judges (including our very own Benjamin Roberts) are paired off and assigned several categories and subcategories. Judges will take a sample of this cheese, either a core of a harder cheese, a slice of a softer one, or a spoonful of the softest, and then score them based on taste, flavor, aroma, texture, and appearance. It must be said that scoring cheese is a complex blend of managing the subjective bias of taste with scientific observation. (ACS has a forty-plus page lexicon and glossary to identify these qualities). They are also eating a tremendous amount of cheese, potentially over sixty different cheeses, which as pleasant as it might sound is actually quite hard. The judges’s scores are placed in a software that immediately calculates the overall points and ranking of the cheese, determining whether it proceeds to the final round of judging or not. Those that proceed are held, while those that don’t make the cut are wheeled back to the pantry to be broken down, repackaged, and delivered to local food banks.

On the final day of judging, best of show begins. A team of cheesemongers breaks down and portions the best of show candidates. Judges, refreshed and with a significantly smaller pool of cheese on the table, sample five of the categories and score them. Again, the scores go again into the magic algorithm which instantly calculates the winners. We didn’t learn the winners right away though! This year, the winners were announced at the ACS Conference in Portland, Ore., just two weeks ago, and we are proud to carry many ACS award winning cheeses:

Pleasant Ridge Reserve (1st place – open category washed rind cow’s milk)

Blakesville Lake Effect (2nd place – Open Category goat’s milk)

Blakesville Sunny Ridge (2nd place – open category washed rind goat’s milk)

Sherry Gray (2nd place – triple crème)

Liuzzi Burrata (3rd place – Burrata)

Dirt Lover (1st place – open category, sheep’s milk)

Marieke Gouda (3rd place – farmstead category, 60+ day cow’s milk)

Sogn Tomme (1st place – farmstead category, 60+ day sheep’s milk)

Carpenter’s Wheel (2nd place – open category goat’s milk)

Vermont Creamery Chevre (3rd place – rindless goat’s milk)

To celebrate, they’re all 15% off this weekend, so stop by and try some of the finest cheeses America has to offer.

By the way, next year’s ACS judging will be happening in Minneapolis again, so if you want in on the action and cheese, be sure to volunteer! We’ll see you there!

Grillable Cheese

by Austin Coe Butler

For most grillmasters, cheese on the grill is limited to a slice of American wilting on a sizzling patty. And there are, of course, the ooey, gooey melters like raclette, mozzarella, and Alpine cheeses such as Gruyère, Pleasant Ridge, and Fontina, all of which are excellent on your burgers. The idea of slapping a block of cheese directly on the grill is downright ludicrous—dangerous, even. But! there are cheeses that can truly be grilled, that don’t have to be safely cradled atop a slice of bread or burger to keep from dripping into the coals or turning crisp and lacy a ripping hot pan. The two we are featuring this weekend, Cypriot Halloumi and Blakesville Creamery’s Croatian inspired Grilling Cheese, neither melt nor stretch, but absolutely deserve a place on your grill this season.

Halloumi is a sheep and sometimes goat’s milk cheese whose origins are obscure, but it is enjoyed all over the Middle East and Levant. The most celebrated Halloumi comes from the island of Cyprus. Halloumi is salty and tangy with an craveable texture that is springy and squeaky, browning and blistering beautifully in an oven, pan, or on the grill, while never melting. How does it do this?

Like all cheeses, Halloumi starts as milk. That milk is warmed and coagulated with rennet into curd before being pressed and drained of its liquid byproduct: whey. This cooking happens quickly though, and the heat at which it is cooked kills the bacteria and cultures present in the milk that acidify milk, resulting in a low acidity cheese. (More on this is a moment!) Many cheeses stop here, but Halloumi is cooked a second time in that clarified whey at 195° F, well past the melting point of most cheeses. Instead of melting, the proteins in the cheese (casein) cling together forming a rigid structure that holds up under the scorching heat of a grill or a screaming hot pan.

Blakesville Grilling Cheese sits opposite of Halloumi on the pH spectrum, having a high acidity. Joe Flamm, chef and restauranteur of Top Chef fame, commissioned the cheese for his Croatian inspired, Chicago based restaurant Rose Mary. This soft goat cheese is wrapped in grape leaves soaked in Maraska, a Croatian plum brandy. The milk is warmed gently and allowed to coagulate or “set” naturally by acids produced by lactic bacteria consuming the lactose sugars in milk and converting them into lactic acid. This highly acidic environment also forces these the proteins together, but without the addition of rennet and a second cooking like Halloumi, this Grilling Cheese has a soft, spreadable texture. Goat cheese will soften under heat, but it will never melt the same way cow’s milk cheeses like Mozzarella or Fontina.

The bright acidity of the goat’s milk with the sweetness of the Maraska and smokiness of the grill make this a star at any cookout. Its soft, spreadable texture is perfect on grilled bread and drizzled with honey, or topped with grilled stone fruit like plums. (For an excellent halloumi recipe, check out our Cook like a Monger this week!)

These two grilling cheeses are versatile canvases for whatever flavors and treatments you can imagine this grilling season.

Cook Like A Cheesemonger: Grilling Cheese

by Erin Gilliland

It's HOT out there, friends! To keep things consistent, we’re going 100% this week, and we’re grilling halloumi! 

Traditionally prepared from goat's and/or sheep's milk on the Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Halloumi is made to resist high heat. It undergoes a double heat treatment, which binds the proteins within, allowing it to resist normal melting temps. Its flavor is tangy and salty. Grilling it feels a little bit like magic, and eating it is pretty magical, too. 

Once cooked, it becomes beautifully crispy and savory on the outside and sensuously melted on the inside, similar to the consistency of a marshmallow when toasted. It's incredibly versatile! Try it pan-seared with eggs and toast for a Cypriot breakfast, or grill it with all those beautiful summer veggies from your garden for an easy go-to lunch or dinner. 

I love to utilize what’s in season, when flavors are the best and brightest version of themselves. This week I pan seared halloumi and cut up some stone fruits (cherries, peaches, plums). I added a handful of arugula and some beautiful heirloom tomatoes for a little brightness onto a heaping spoonful of rich full fat Greek yogurt. 

It was salty, sweet, and exactly what I wanted to consume during this sweltering week, and it made a perfectly balanced lunch. Pair it with a chilled red or a refreshing n/a beverage. 

Ingredients:

Halloumi cheese
1 cup of your favorite Greek yogurt variety (full fat tastes better, just do it ok) 
1 Yellow Peach

2 small red plums
½ cup ranier cherries 
1-2 heirloom tomatoes
Arugula 
EVOO to finish
Flaky sea salt to taste

 Directions:

1. Put a generous amount of greens or yogurt on a plate or shallow bowl. 
2. Slice fresh and juicy summer peaches, plums, rainier cherries, and heirloom tomatoes into one-inch pieces, and add to your plate. 
3. Cut your halloumi into half inch slices. If you plan on grilling your halloumi, oil with EVOO. If pan-searing, place a tablespoon of oil into a pan and heat until shimmering. 
4. Cook your cheese for 3 minutes on each side or until golden and crispy. Plate on top of your salad, and finish with a generous drizzle of olive oil and salt. 

THAT’S IT! YOU’VE WON! You can thank me in person when you come into the shop to grab your grilling cheese. I'll be waiting.

A Primer for French Cheese

by Austin Coe Butler

France is a relatively recent historical fiction. Millennia before the unification of the country we now know as France, this patch of continental Europe stretching from the Pyrenees to the Alps and the English Channel to the Balearic Sea was a collection of ancient, isolated, and obscure Pays, small cultural communities bound by their dialects, traditions, and food. You and your fellow paysans would likely never leave the mysterious confines of your pay in the course of your brief, laborious life. When Charles de Gaulle asked, “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” he was speaking about the challenge of governing a country dominated by divisions and distinctions between these older regions. (In reality there are well over 1,000 distinct French cheeses.) In the intense individualism of the pays, resisting all bureaucratic and administrative impositions, great cheeses were born.

France has an immense wealth of climatic, geographical, agricultural, and historical diversity. The cool, coastal regions of Brittany and Normandy give us bloomy rinded cheeses like Camembert and Brie, while the mountainous Jura gives us Comté, Morbier, and Vacherin Mont d’Or. The isolated, impenetrable Central Massif rich with volcanic caverns is the perfect environment to make sweet, fudgey blues like Fourme d’Ambert, while the dry, limestone rich karst systems to the south in Occitania produce spicy, crumbly Roquefort. The rich tradition of goat cheeses in the Loire Valley like Chabichou du Poitou and Bûche de Luçay are the legacy of the Ummayid Conquest. The timeless Basque people of the Basque Country stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Pyrenees is rich with cheeses like Ossau-Iraty, Chebris, and Somport. The ecclesiastical and monastic traditions of France gives us pungent, gooey washed rinds like Époisses and Langres, which required meditative washes with brine. France also has many well respected affineurs (cheese agers or maturers) like Hervé Mons or Beillevaire. Affinage is an art form that is as import to cheese as the aging and cellaring of wine is to the final product. With the exception of the late Crown Finish Caves, there are few American affineurs, and none operating on such a grand scale as these French houses. In France, cheese is a reflection of history, culture, and place.

Having spent so much time making and thinking about cheese, the French inevitably devised systems of categorization like Les Huits Grande Familes de Fromage (The Eight Great Families of Cheese):

1. Fromage frais ou blanc / Fresh or “white” cheese (cottage cheese, ricotta, petit suisse).

2. Pâtes molles à croûte fleurie / Soft cheese with a natural or bloomy rind (Camembert, Brie).

3. Pâtes molles à croûte lavée / Soft cheese with a washed rind (Langres, Époisses).

4. Pâtes pressées cuites /Pressed, cooked cheeses (Comté).

5. Pâtes pressées non cuites / Pressed, uncooked cheeses (Ossau-Iraty, Chebris).

6. Pâtes persillées ou bleus / “Marbled” or blue cheeses (Roquefort, Fourme d’Ambert).

7. Fromage au lait chèvres / Cheese made from goat milk (Chabichou du Poitou).

8. Fromages a pâte fondue / Cheese made from a blend of other cheeses, often spreadable (Boursin).

Within these families, production is divided between four categories: fermier, artisanal, coopérative, and industriel. Fermier, meaning farmhouse or farmstead, signifies that the cheese is produced on the farm where the milk is produced. Artisanal cheese is produced in small quantities using milk from the farm or purchased from local farms. Coopérative cheese is made from a cooperative of local milk producers in an area that can be large or even industrial in scale. Finally, industriel cheese is factory-made from milk sourced at the local or regional level depending on the AOC/PDO regulations for specific cheeses.

France itself has been experiencing identity crisies as the country modernizes. Cheese is often at the center of it. Salers production. The production of Camembert with pasteurized milk. The ravenous exapnsion of gargantuan French cheese producers at the expense of small, traditional cheese producers. Cheese has, and will always remain, a key facet of the protean French identity.

To express profound sadness, the French say, "triste comme un repas sans fromage," "like a meal without cheese,” and we would agree with them.

God Save the Cheese: Cheeses of the British Isles

Austin Coe Butler

 British cheeses are (loosely) defined by a backbone of acidity. In the cooler, wetter lowlands of the British Isles, it is difficult to dry hay for winter consumption compared to the sun-drenched southern climes of Spain or Italy. British farmers adapted by fermenting silage instead. However, spoilage bacteria present in soil and in fermented silage produce a gas in cheese which can build over maturation and explode or “heave” a wheel of cheese. British cheesemakers found that if they allowed more acidity to develop during the make of the cheese by allowing naturally present lactic bacteria convert lactose into lactic acid and then add salt to the cheese before moulding it, they could effectively prevent “hoven” cheeses, and thus, as Bronwen and Francis Percival elegantly write, “the entire panoply of British territorial styles, from Cheddar to Stilton, is a response to the question posed by a maritime climate.” (A curious aside: the Dutch faced a similar problem but found a different solution that lead to the development of Gouda.)

At France 44, all our cheeses from the British Isles come from the esteemed Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. In many ways our shop thrives because of the pioneers at Neal’s Yard. Originally founded in 1979 as an eclectic co-op by Randolph Hodgson and Nicholas Saunders at a time when when factory produced Cheddar reigned and traditional foods were lost in the wake of industrialization, Neal’s Yard unabashedly championed traditional farmstead cheeses. Along with concurrent food movements like the Campaign for Real Ale, the Real Bread Campaign, and eccentrics such as Patrick Rance, they led a food revolution whose benefits we eat.

As a general rule, our case will be well stocked with the following British cheeses: a Cheddar, a British territorial (traditional regional cheese), Ogleshield, Coolea, Cornish Kern, Stilton, and Stichelton. We cycle through Cheddars territorials, so you may come in one week to find a half wheel of Montgomery’s Cheddar sitting stoutly in the case only to be greeted by the petite Hafod the next, or the sunset glow of Cheshire replaced with pale Caerphilly. Stop by often to see our variety. Farmstead and artisanal cheeses—those cheeses made by hand and of exceptional milk from a single farm or local farms in the immediate vicinity respectively—are variable by nature, and wheels of ostensibly the same cheese can often have delightfully beguiling differences from one to the next. These are the joys of cheesemakers, mongers, and eaters to savor.

Our outstanding offerings at the moment include:

Cheddar

 Montgomery’s Cheddar is one of the archetypical West Country English Cheddars. It is rich, robust, and grassy with well balanced acidity. Our monger’s have certainly sent you home with a wedge of this. We also sell Montgomery’s Ogleshield, a Raclette-inspired cheese made of Jersey cow milk with a supple, fudgey paste and savory notes of fried, salted peanuts and chicken stock. When melted, the salinity comes to the fore and this cheese shines.

Territorials 

Gorwyd Caerphilly is a Welsh cheese made by the Trethowan brothers, who also produce Pitchfork Cheddar. Pronounced “GOR-with CARE-philly,” the velveteen, mushroomy rind on this cheese gives way to a rich cream line and a crumbly, citrusy center. A minerally, yogurty brightness blends with flavors of earth, grass, and moss. It was popular among coalminers and farmers as the natural rind was ideal to hold with hands dirty from hard work.

Cornish Kern is a contemporary classic that stands out in the British pantheon of cheeses—it is a cooked, pressed Alpine-style cheese, with flavors that are by turns sweet and winey or savory like caramelized garlic. Owing to its make, it is matured sixteen months, much longer than traditional English cheeses. “Kern” means round in Cornish. 

Coolea is an Irish gouda of Dutch extraction. It tends to be nutty not just in flavor but in texture, with the richness of macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, and almond meal that compliments the delicate brown butter sweetness.

The Blues

Colston Bassett Stilton is remarkably balanced blue owing to its delicate, handmade care and longer  maturation period before being pierced to allow blue mold (Penicilium roqueforti) to bloom. Colston Bassett Stilton has a luxuriant, silky taste of sweet cream that can sometimes astonish with a bubblegum flavor. Skip the port and savor this with a brown ale.

Stichelton, an arguably more traditional form of Stilton has a bright, buttermilk feral funk to it owing to the raw milk.

Il Bel Formaggi: A Cheese Monger’s Guide to Italy

Left to right: Pecorino Foglie di Noce, Bufarolo, Bocconcino di Capra, Camembert di Bufala, Fontina Valle d’Aosta, Furmai di Suna, Robiola Bosina, Pecorino Marzolino, La Granda

by Austin Coe Butler

What I love most about Italian cheeses is how playful and varied they are. Each region, valley, and village has their own distinct cheese they’ve made for centuries, if not millennia. They are too vast and many for me to praise all of them, so instead I’d like to take you on a sprint through Italy, from the north to the south, while mentioning a few cheeses we carry in the shop that will tell us something about the country and you can try along the way.

Much of Italy’s cheese culture and variety stems from the north, and so much of the cheese in our case comes from here: Piedmont, Lombardy, Valle d’Aosta. Girdled by the Alps and flanked by the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas, the immense climatic and geographic diversity of northern Italy offers endless opportunities for locals to create both large wheels of hearty mountain cheese and delicate soft bloomy-rinded cheeses. Formaggi alpeggio, or cow’s milk alpine cheeses, like Fontina, Asiago, and Furmai de Suna reflect the millennia old tradition of transhumance or transumanza, the practice of taking livestock up into the high altitude meadows to graze freely on fresh grasses and flowers.

Furmai de Suna, a new addition to the case, is a style of cheese known as Bitto and is a true formaggi alpeggio. It’s made at over 6,500 feet between mid-June and mid-September by the Bongiovatti family in their calec or malghe, a squat, stone shelter that serves as a seasonal dairy. They make only four wheels of cheese a day in a copper cauldron over a wood fire from the fresh, raw milk of their forty-five cows. The cheese has a remarkable flavor like dry cured salame and pepper reminiscent of soppressata.

Fontina Valle d’Aosta is unrecognizable from the cheap, mass-produced Fontina, Fontinella, and Fontal sold in supermarkets and all billed as “Fontina.” Real Valdoastan Fontina is earthy, mushroomy, and tastes of rich, raw milk with a fudgey, pliant texture. It is as good on your cheeseboard as it is melted in hot-dish or fonduta. Another cheese from the north, Toma La Granda with its bright, buttery flavor and elastic paste has won the Slow Food Master of Taste Award five years in a row.

The cool, damp climate provided by the Alps created the perfect environment for delicate, moist cheeses like Taleggio and Robiolas to thrive in caves and cellars. This environment invites molds and funghi to colonize the rinds of cheeses like Robiola Bosina or Camembert di Bufala or bloom within blue cheeses like Gorgonzola. It also encourages the bacteria that give salty, meaty washed-rind cheeses like Taleggio and Nababbo, a goat’s milk play on Taleggio, their characteristic funk.

As the Alps recede and the lush Po River valley opens into the northern plain of Emiglia-Romagna, we enter the kingdom of grana cheeses like Grana Padano and the King of Cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano. These enormous, nutty cheeses share the legacy of alpine cheesemaking techniques (cooking, pressing, brining, aging) blended with their monastic roots of Cistercian monks who used the abundant salt of the brackish marshes of the Po Valley to create a cheese which could easily be aged two, three, four, or even more years in their monasteries, which yield the nutty, crystally, complex cheese we love. Our Parmigiano Reggiano is given the highest distinction of produtti di montagni (made in the Appenine mountains) in Emilia-Romagna and aged by Giorgio Cravero in Bra, Piedmont. And while Giorgio’s Parmigiano Reggiano is fabulous grated onto pasta, we implore you to savor a hunk of it on your cheese board with a flute of Prosecco.

Near the heart of Italy, the story changes. The drier hills and valleys of the Apennine mountains come into view and the Tuscan sun and Mediterranean climate takes hold. Here we see traditions based on pastoralism or shepherding, and the classic Pecorinos (sheep’s milk cheeses) of Italy with their rustic, intense, aromatic, and full-bodied flavors are king. Pecorinos should not be thought of as identical, but as territorials–each region and village has their own distinct style. The saltier, spicier Pecorino Romano, favored by Roman legionaries, lacks the more mature, nuanced, and nutty flavors of Pecorino Foglie di Noce, which are wrapped in young walnut leaves that impart an herbaceous, earthy quality; the firm, tenacious Pecorino Toscano of the elusive and inscrutable Etruscans differs from the velvety, lemony tang of Pecorino Marzolino, a younger cheese that is made only in March (Marzo) and rubbed with olive oil and tomatoes to give its rind a distinctive red glow.

Further south, the pasta filata or “spun paste” cheeses like mozzarella are found. These cheeses are made by melting the curd with boiling water until a single mass coalesces that can be stretched and shaped. Pasta filata cheeses include not just fresh cheeses like Buffalo Mozzarella, Fior di Latte (cow’s milk mozzarella), or Burrata, but also firmer, aged cheeses such as Caciocavallo, Scamorza, and Provolone. Burrata, which was only invented in the 1950s in Puglia, is one of the younger arrivals to Italy. And here we arrive again at our shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we make both fresh Fior di Latte and Burrata on Friday and Saturday mornings.

Stop by this weekend to celebrate Italian cheeses with us. If you’ve read this whole post and would like to learn more about Italian cheeses, you may be interested in our upcoming class on northern Italian cheese and wine at the Harriet Place on July 7th!

Manchego y Más: A Tour of Spain’s Cheeses

Clockwise starting top left: Garrotxa, Rey Silo Rojo, Magaya de Sidra, Pasamontes Manchego, Moncedillo Pimenton, Mahon Semicurado, Cabezuela

by Austin Coe Butler

Spanish cheeses have been historically maligned. English travelers in the 19th century found them dry, dank, and inedible, comparing them to rusks of bread. It didn’t help when decades of brutal dictatorship by Generalissimo Francisco Franco isolated Spain as a pariah state while French and Italian cheese and culture entered international renown. Only in the 90s, after a successful marketing campaign, did Manchego become internationally recognized as and synonymous with Spanish cheese. Spain however has an incredible cheese culture that is more than just Manchego, with well over two-hundred varieties, and despite its obscurity it has thrived in recent years.

Spain’s remarkable cheese culture was saved by the persistence of cheese black markets. Under the Franco regime, dairies producing more than 10,000 liters of milk were required by law to send it to centralized factories that produced Manchego–a cheese which could be easily mass produced–and it became illegal to sell artisan cheese. These cheese black markets would appear in village streets before the sun rose, artisans would sell their cheeses made with purloined milk, and then vanish before any government official could arrive, preserving these traditions into the present moment.

This weekend, we are celebrating Spanish cheeses, so stop by to taste and discover the amazing variety of Spanish cheeses we offer.

Manchego

Manchego is one of the most iconic, sheep’s milk cheeses in the world. Our Manchego comes from the Pasamontes family, who have been making Manchego for five generations. They have consistently been recognized as one of Spain’s best Manchego producers and consistent DOP winners of Premio Gran Selección, Spain’s most prestigious food and wine awards. We sell their 3 month (creamy, nutty, mild), 12 month (firm, salty, tangy), and Romero, which is coated with rosemary from the pasture the sheep graze on, perfuming the cheese.

Garrotxa

I wrote a post on Garrotxa back in September which you can read here. Garrotxa has a remarkable story, and with its mild flavor and semi-firm, smooth texture it is the perfect gateway to goat cheese for the uninitiated.

Mahón

Named after the port city and capitol of the island of Menorca, Mahón is the second most consumed cheese in Spain and one of the oldest cheeses in history. Ancient Greek seafarers praised the cheeses made on the Balearic Islands and often imported it to their colonies. Mahón is a firm cow’s milk cheese that is rubbed with olive oil and paprika while curing. It has a brittle texture with a pleasant Sherry vinegar-like acidity and a briny, mineral flavor befitting of its sun-drenched island home.

La Finca Pascualete Retorta

Torta or retorta style cheeses are one of the most distinct styles of Spanish cheese. These are sheep’s milk cheese that have been coagulated with thistle rennet, which causes the cheese to undergo proteolysis, the process by which proteins in cheese breakdown, in a way that gives it a custardy texture. Cut the top off the crusty rind and scoop out the custardy filling with a spoon for an incomparable experience. It’s been theorized that this cheese descends from the legacy of Sephardic Jews who once lived in Spain before their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. Kosher law prohibits the mixing of dairy and meat, and if traditional rennet, which is derived from the stomach of a young ruminant, it violates Kosher law.

Moncedillo Red

Similar to torta styles, this is another sheep’s milk cheese coagulated with thistle rennet. Its rind is coated in pimentón, smoked Spanish paprika, that brings a fruity, smoky flavor to the cheese. While the texture is not as custardy as the retorta, it does have a delightfully pliable fudgy texture.

La Cabezuela Tradicional Semi-curado

This semi-firm, goat’s cheese is made from the milk of Guadarrama goats, an endangered breed that only lives in the foothills surrounding the Madrid basin. Juan Luis Royuela fell in love with these goats and their milk and dedicated his quesería La Cabezuela to making cheese solely from their milk, bringing them back from the brink of extinction. The natural bloomy rind tastes of button mushrooms, while the cream line is buttery and mild with a cakey, crumbly center that has all the classic herbaceous, lemony notes one expects from a goat cheese. A definite staff favorite.

Magaya di Sidra

Perhaps the most unique cheese we have in our case at the moment. This firm cow’s milk cheese is packed into barrels and cured with the pulp (magaya) from apple cider pressings—you can see the apple skins and pips on this cheese’s rind. Curing the cheese gives it a delightfully fruity, yeasty flavor and a tartness reminiscent of a dry, unfiltered apple cider.

Rey Silo Rojo

This petite button of cow’s milk cheese has paprika added to the curd which brings them a beautiful sunset glow and a playful, lingering spice. Its flavor bright, tart, tangy, and intense in with a texture that clings to the palate like another famous Spanish cheese, Afeuga’l pitu.

Castanya

Our newest and rarest addition to our Spanish selection. This soft goat’s milk cheese has chestnut flour and chestnut liqueur added to the curd, it is topped with a whole roasted chestnut, and then wrapped in chestnut leaves. The result is a remarkably soft and creamy goat cheese that is by turns spicy, feral, funky, and sweet, which pairs perfectly with a Madeira.

Cheese Profile: Ossau Iraty

by Austin Coe Butler

Ossau-Iraty is the ancestral cheese of the Basque, or Euskadi, as they call themselves. These timeless, mysterious people have been living in Europe from the Pyrenees mountains to the Bay of Biscay so many millennia that their history is obscure. They are the last indigenous people who lived in Europe before the arrival of Indo-Europeans, and as a result the Basque language, Euskara, is a language isolate, meaning it has no relationship to any of its neighboring European languages or even any other Indo-European language. From the impenetrable reaches of the Pyrenees mountains, the Basque have seen kingdoms and empires rise and fall. And all that time the Basque have been making ewe’s milk cheeses.

The Basque call their cheese Ardi-gasna, which translates simply to both “local cheese” and “sheep cheese.” Sheep are essential to Basque culture. Their distinct breeds like Latxa and Manex tête noir (black headed) are especially hearty and suited to the rugged beech forests and mountainsides of the Pyrenees. The sheep provide milk, meat, fiber, hide, and warmth to the shepherds, who in turn tend to the sheep. In a traditional Basque house, whitewashed with green or red trim with festoons of Espelette peppers drying in the sun, the sheep live on the ground floor, while the shepherds and their families sleep above them, benefitting from the rising animal warmth. Only the tête noir though are taken up into the highest reaches of the mountains to graze on the remote estives, high mountain pastures rich with fragrant grass and wildflowers.

Isolated on these estives from the nearest towns, shepherds collect milk from their herd and move into their chalets or cayolars for the summer. These chalets are not the grand, imposing wooden structures found in the Alps or Rockies, but small, stone huts like burons that pass from generation to generation and where the cheese is made for the season. It is a site of labor and rest. Estive cheese by its nature is made from raw milk and in small batches. The fresh milk is gently warmed and coagulated before the curd is cut and pressed into wheels, sometimes only with the use of hands.

Our Ossau-Iraty are estive wheels made by Les Bergers du Haut-Béarn and matured for 4 to 6 months by Beillevaire at Cave du Haut-Béarn. The cheese has a rich, roasted chestnut sweetness to it and a pleasant subdued tang. Like Manchego or the many Pecorinos of Italy, Ossau-Iraty has the classic granular texture of a sheep’s milk cheese, but it is also remarkably creamy. It is fantastic with American Spoon Sour Cherry Preserves in a nod to the Basque tradition of serving Ossau-Iraty with cherry jam, and enjoyed with a young, fruity red or bright, zingy Txakoli.