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| Vacherin Mont d'Or withcheese.co.uk |
The scents of the winter holidays are evocative and comforting: evergreen trees; baking spices; glowing candles; donuts and potato pancakes frying in copious oil; roasting vegetables, meats, and chestnuts; blazing open fires--now I am digressing into Christmas songs!
One smell associated with this time of year that doesn’t make it into holiday songs is the pungent stink of some exceptional, seasonal cheeses, which arrive at market in early winter. If you don’t grab them now, they vanish as quickly as rolls of wrapping paper and Scotch tape from the store on Christmas Eve.
What makes these cheeses so special? First and foremost, it’s their seasonality.
It may be odd to think about a cheese’s seasonality. We usually reserve these notions for fruits and vegetables, but remember that cheese is also a product of the laws and rhythms of nature. Cows, sheep, goats, buffaloes give milk only when there’s a baby to feed. Dairymen stagger the breeding cycles of their cows, which lactate for 300 days, so that there’s milk year round, but the breeding cycle of sheep and goats are a little more difficult to manipulate, so there is a brief period when their milk is not available and hence cheeses made from their milk. Another crucial aspect about the seasonality of cheeses is grass. The flavors and chemical make-up of milk is affected by an animal’s diet. The first grasses of spring are different from the lush grasses of summer, and in the winter, fresh grass often isn’t available at all.
It’s the growing cycle of grass which affects these seasonal stinkers. The king among them is Vacherin Mont D’Or from Switzerland. What sets this gooey, meaty cheese apart is that it’s made with winter or autumn milk. Typically, the most sought-after cheeses are those made from summer milk. Think rich and nutty Pleasant Ridge Reserve, America’s most award-winning farmstead cheese, or creamy Stilton/Stichelton, the blue cheese typically eaten at Christmas in Britain because this is when the cheeses made a few months earlier in the summer are at their peak of ripeness. Why autumn and winter milk for Vacherin? Since it can get too cold in the areas of France and Switzerland, where Vacherin originated, to transport milk to a dairy cooperative, where large mountain cheese are produced, small cheeses are made at home in the wintertime, something so oozing that its middle has to be wrapped in a band of spruce wood to keep the fromage from flowing off the kitchen shelf. It’s so runny it begs to be eaten with a spoon.
One smell associated with this time of year that doesn’t make it into holiday songs is the pungent stink of some exceptional, seasonal cheeses, which arrive at market in early winter. If you don’t grab them now, they vanish as quickly as rolls of wrapping paper and Scotch tape from the store on Christmas Eve.
What makes these cheeses so special? First and foremost, it’s their seasonality.
It may be odd to think about a cheese’s seasonality. We usually reserve these notions for fruits and vegetables, but remember that cheese is also a product of the laws and rhythms of nature. Cows, sheep, goats, buffaloes give milk only when there’s a baby to feed. Dairymen stagger the breeding cycles of their cows, which lactate for 300 days, so that there’s milk year round, but the breeding cycle of sheep and goats are a little more difficult to manipulate, so there is a brief period when their milk is not available and hence cheeses made from their milk. Another crucial aspect about the seasonality of cheeses is grass. The flavors and chemical make-up of milk is affected by an animal’s diet. The first grasses of spring are different from the lush grasses of summer, and in the winter, fresh grass often isn’t available at all.
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| Rush Creek Reserve www.chicagoreader.com |
You don’t need to be shivering in a farmhouse to get out a spoon and dip into Vacherin’s savory goodness. You can buy one right from Sickles. Or if you are after something a wee smaller or something domestic, go for its American version, newcomer Rush Creek Reserve, from the award-winning folks behind Pleasant Ridge Reserve in Wisconsin. This is the cheese I am treating myself to for my birthday, which falls two days before Christmas. Like Vacherin, Rush Creek is made with late-season milk, when their herd is coming off fresh grass and onto dry feed, a change in diet which results in milk that is too full of fat to make aged, hard Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Unlike its European predecessor, this equally runny and silky disk of a cheese, also girded with a flexible strip of spruce, is made with unpasteurized milk, which captures all the varied flavors of this exceptionally high-quality milk.
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| L'Edel de Cleron www.tastingsgourmetmarket.com |
Be merry and stinky this holiday season!
Diana Pittet the Cheesemonger
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