The January Cheese Explorer
New year, new cheese! Don’t worry - I’ve only been waiting about a month to say this, but I’m sure glad that hindsight is 2020.
Welcome to another year of the Cheese Explorer, it’s been wonderful having an excuse to geek out about cheese and provide you all with some special cheeses throughout the year and we’ve got some real fun cheeses to kick things off.
Here’s the lineup:
Tomme de la Chataigneraie - pasteurized goat’s milk, Auvergne, France
Ossau - Iraty Montagne - raw sheep’s milk, Pyrenees, France.
Jerseyhoeve Schorren Reserve - pasteurized organic Jersey cow’s milk, Goerre-Overflakke, Holland
Maggie’s Reserve - raw grass-fed cow’s milk, Williamstown, MA.
What is a tomme anyway? In a world where almost everything is categorized in some form or another, a tomme is a bit of a wild child, In French, “tomme” just means a wheel of cheese, but the practice of making tomme style cheeses is largely believed to have originated in the winter time, when milk and nutrients were more scarce, so your classic wheels of Comte and Gruyere, usually coming in at some 80 pounds, were a little harder to make and the grass rich diet wasn’t possible.
Given the smaller size, these cheeses were typically ones that cheesemakers enjoyed on the farm themselves, and were aged for a shorter period of time than their summer counterparts and they tend to feature more rustic natural rinds that vary in shades from grey to blue and even, in the case of our first cheese, yellow, thanks to the natural flora and fauna where the cheese was made. Tommes tend to be tangy and grassy in flavor with a texture that can range from chalky to unctuous.
Tomme de la Chataigneraie.
Tomme de la Chataigneraie makes me wish I had taken French instead of Latin when I was younger, because Chataigneraie looks like such a fun word to say, and one that I’m sure to mispronounce two-thirds of the time, but it means “chestnut”, and that’s what makes this cheese so special.
The goats who provide the milk for this cheese graze in local chestnut groves because, as the saying goes, you are what you eat. The chestnut rich diet of the goat’s lends their milk a sweeter and slightly nutty flavor, and the chestnut qualities are further enhanced by the affineurs at Herve Mons, who wrap the cheese in chestnut leaves and age it on chestnut boards. It’s the wrap of chestnut leaves that imparts the distinctive yellow color on the rind, and this tomme is truly a taste of place.
You’ve probably seen the term affineur before, and it’s derived from the French term affinage - refining of cheese, and an affineur sources the raw milk from smaller cheese dairies and farmers who produce cheese in traditional methods. In ripening cellars, the cheese will get the care which is necessary for optimal development and quality. They will be brushed, beat, washed and rotated depending on the requirements of the specific cheese, until they have attained the ideal maturity and taste.
In France, affinage is a serious business, and affineurs are highly respected for keeping cheese traditions alive.
Another such example is Rodolphe Meunier, who I first heard of when I tried his Buerre de Barrete, a truly spectacular butter from Normandy that has been cultured to give it a more rich flavor and is without a doubt one of the best things to put on sliced bread, and preferably a hand cut slice off of a rustic French loaf. Beyond his butter, Rodolphe is considered one of the best affineurs in France, and his Ossau-Iraty Montagne reaches back to the foundations of French cheese making.
Cheesemaking has been a part of our history for a long time, like Sumerian cuneiform long, but the practice really goes back to the shepherds and goatherds who didn’t have the benefits of refridgeration or a nearby supermarket, and the best way to have a sustainable source of protein from your flock or herd was to make cheese.
Ossau-Iraty Montagne.
In the mountains along the border of France and Spain, the heart of Basque country, is where French cheesemaking purportedly started, and Ossau-Iraty, named for the region between the Ossau Valley and the Irati National Forest in the Pyrenees. That the French named something after a place should come as no surprise to anyone that’s had a Bordeaux or a Burgundy, or Brie for that matter, but that’s just a part of French tradition. This Ossau-Iraty has a Montagne designation, meaning that the milk was sourced from animals that grazed on mountain pastures, and the flavor of this cheese really shines at room temperature, evoking hints of broiche toast with salted butter. I really can’t get enough of this cheese and I’m glad you get to have it with me. One bite of this cheese makes you see how the French built a whole tradition around it
I’d be remiss to talk about European cheesemaking traditions without mentioning one of the more unusual ones. As one of the largest trading empires, the Dutch have a cheesemaking system built around cooperatives and opleggers “one who lays something on a shelf” who act as the middle-man between the dairy and the market. In fact, a large amount of the goudas that make their way to our shores originate from the same cooperatives, but are branded by these opleggers, who differentiate these wheels by degrees of temperature, which over a period of time can make all the difference between a savory profile and a sweet one.
Jerseyhoeve Schorren Reserve.
I leapt at the chance to snag this wheel of Jerseyhoeve Schorren Reserve because it’s sourced from a single herd of Jersey cows - something you don’t commonly find exported here, and because the deJerseyhoeve “Jersey Farmstead” is certified organic and dedicated to letting their cows live a healthy life. They designate their cheeses by naming them after parts of the island the herd grazes on, “schorren” means salt marsh, and this particular wheel was aged for two years before release by Treur Kaas, the oplegger.
This is a fantastic gouda - and you don’t have to just take my word for it. It took home Best of the Best at the International Cheese and Dairy Awards in 2016, and recently took it home again last year when they ran a smaller competition that put the last four top winners in a head to head competition. I get hints of salted butterscotch and whiskey from this farmstead cheese, and an abundance of those lovely tyrosine cheese crystals.
Maggie’s Reserve.
Rounding out the selection this month is Maggie’s Reserve from our friends at Cricket Creek Farm in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I’ve always had a soft spot for this farm, being close to my family’s farm over the border in Vermont and because it’s important to me that we always carry cheese made in Massachusetts. With a grass-fed herd of Jersey and Brown Swiss cows, Cricket Creek makes their classic Italian toma styled Maggie’s Round, well, year-round, but Maggie’s Reserve is made infrequently, thanks to the time required (some 14-18 months) to age out this cheese. It develops a savory richness, flavors of caramel and pineapple, and a sprinkling of tyrosine crystals that complement the beautiful ridged natural rind.
As for accoutrements, I’ve included the Damson Plum Preserves from our friends at American Spoon out of Petoskey, Michigan. Though these plums are usually too tart for fresh eating, when cooked down with just the right amount of cane sugar, they turn into pure plum magic and are such a wonderful and versatile accompaniment, and for crackers, the Jan’s Farmhouse Original Cranberry Pistachio crisps have been a crowd-favorite for as long as I’ve been a monger, and are truly hard to avoid devouring in one sitting.
Cheers to great cheese.