Artisan Cheese Primer

Handcrafted, Quality Driven Famstead American Made Cheese

Feb 3, 2009 Stuart Stein

Great milk makes great cheese, and great grazing makes great milk. Taste comes from quality raw ingredients, handled with respect and grown naturally.

"Cheese is the Devil's Play Thing!" - Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House

Brian K. Mahoney in Blessed are the Cheesemakers from Chronogram magazine wrote, "Legend has it that cheese was “discovered” by an unknown Arab nomad. This nomad supposedly put his supply of milk into a pouch made from a sheep’s stomach, and set out across the desert. The enzymes in the lining of the pouch, known as rennet, combined with the heat of the sun, caused the milk to separate into curds and whey. The nomad, unconcerned with technical details, found the whey drinkable and the curds edible. Cheese was born!"

Artisan Cheese - Food not Fuel!

• Handcrafted -There is nothing intrinsically wrong with scale, however, it is seldom that you come across a volume producer with first quality products. When the hand that touches the curd or squeezes the grape belongs to the person making the commercial decisions, you get a better product. We want eyes and noses making quality assessments, not lab tests and spectrometers.
• Quality driven - In the end it is all about TASTE. It is about producing the best possible products, about making potentially non-commercial decisions in pursuit of quality and doing things that have food scientists and economists despairing.
• Traditional methods - Food scientists have us stripping all the dangerous scary stuff out of our raw materials, and then stabilizing and sanitizing what's left. Color and flavor are added back in, shelf life considerations lead to the addition of preservatives.
• Farmstead – Cheeses that are made exclusively from the milk of the cheesemaker’s own animals. This requires the cheesemaker to be skilled in raising animals, managing a farm, making cheese and running a profitable business.

Tasting Cheese - Think Tasting Wine!

Taste - the way food hits our tongue/taste buds Flavor - combination of large numbers of sensory inputs that come from food (including smell, taste, texture/mouthfeel, visual appeal)

• The same cheese from the same cheesemaker will taste differently at various time of the year. (Cheese like wine and produce is an agricultural product.)
• Bring cheese to room temperature before serving and tasting.
• Serious cheese requires serious bread (handmade, artisan loaves) and serious wine (great cheese will make an average wine seem greater / average cheese will drag down a great wine).Let the cheese warm to room temperature so that its aromas and flavors are at their maximum levels.
• Aroma - don't be shy about smelling the cheese just as you would wine.
• Visual Appeal
• Taste milder cheeses first and progress to the stronger flavored ones, leaving blue cheeses till near the end and tasting "stinky" cheeses last.
• Taste each cheese at its center first and then work your way to the outside where the cheese is most aged and stronger in flavor.
• Taste the rind/skin last.
• Taste starting from the tip of your tongue working towards the back of your mouth. This takes advantage of all of the taste receptors in your mouth and brings the cheese in contact with of all of the sense areas: sweet, salty, acidic, bitter, etc. "Listen
• Take note of texture (smooth, grainy, crunchy, etc...), density/weight (how compact the cheese feels in your mouth), intensity (how flavorful is the cheese), acidity (tartness, lemony), duration/finish (how long each of the characteristics last), fruit (fresh dairy tones, sweetness), saltiness and flavors (earthy, nutty, roasty, toasted, musty, mushroomy, meaty , etc...).

Part 2 of the Artisan Cheese Primer will explore Cheese Types while Part 3 Storing, Serving and Matching Artisan Cheese will help you in storing and matching wine & cheese.

The copyright of the article Artisan Cheese Primer in Gourmet Food is owned by Stuart Stein. Permission to republish Artisan Cheese Primer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Cheese

Cheese Making Process