TNV’s Guide to Wine and Cheese – Part III (stinky cheese)

After our forays into hard and soft cheeses, the time has arrived to have a peek of the most polarizing province of the cheese kingdom, stinky cheeses. They’re sometimes known as “pungent,” “blooming,” or “blue” cheeses. So, what are they, and where the heck does that smell come from?

As we discussed in the other entries, cheese is created by allowing milk to curdle, separating the curd from the whey, pressing the curd into a certain shape – then, usually, aging the cheese for a certain period of time. The older the cheese, the stronger or sharper the taste and smell usually become. Stinky cheeses are all aged. What makes them different from, say, cheddar?

With most hard, longer aged cheeses, the chemical and bacterial makeup of the cheeses prevent the formation of various kinds of mold and bacteria. With stinky cheeses, the growth of that mold is not only desirable – it’s encouraged! There are two major processes a cheesemaker uses to “stink up” a cheese: from the outside in and from the inside out.

The “outside in” cheese is usually referred to as a washed rind cheese. Once the cheese’s rind forms, the entire block of cheese is cured for a period of time in brine and/or other substances which can bear mold – usually some type of alcohol. Beer, wine, and brandy are common additions to the wash, along with certain spices. Curing the rind in this solution allows the formation of a certain type of bacteria that imparts the stronger flavors and scents to the cheese. A washed rind cheese can be soft or hard. While the rind usually has a very strong scent, the cheese itself is often somewhat mild. Examples are Limburger, Munster (not Muenster!), and Taleggio.

The “inside out” cheeses are known as inoculated cheeses. An inoculated cheese begins its change from normal to noxious early in its lifetime. While the cheese curds are still loose, they’re injected with a specific type of mold – one from the Penicillum genus. This mold has been used to stinkify cheeses for over 2000 years. As the mold propagates, it forms veins through the cheese, altering the texture, flavor, and odor. “Blue” cheeses are in this category, although the mold can also be brown or green, depending on the specific type of mold involved. Common examples of this type of cheese are Roquefort, Stilton, and Gorgonzola. (As a side note -- this is the same type of mold from which Penicillin was first synthesized when it was discovered that certain bacteria don’t grow in the presence of the mold)

We chose three cheeses for our tasting, along with some “classic” wine pairings:

• Taleggio (pairing: Alsace Riesling)
• Stilton (pairing: Australian tawny port)
• Roquefort (pairing: Sauternes)

You may be looking at those pairings and thinking, “One of these things is not like the other.” You’d be right. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sauternes, it’s a sweet, expensive French wine that was simply unbelievable, flavorwise. Sauternes is a “botyrized” wine, meaning that the grapes have also molded with “noble rot.” There are other, less expensive, wines made in a similar fashion. Ask your neighborhood wine person. As an alternative, an Auslese Riesling or a ruby (rather than tawny) port will work. Still, follow the link above if you want to read how that wine made our eyes roll back. Otherwise, onward:

Taleggio – A cow’s milk cheese named for Val Taleggio, the valley in Lombardy, Italy, from where this cheese hails. It’s a washed rind cheese, traditionally sponged with seawater once a week during the 6-10 week aging process. The finished product has a whitish rind like brie, but the two smell nothing alike.

I was introduced to Taleggio via one of my coworkers who simply told me, “It’s good stuff.” When I unwrapped it, I have to admit to a moment of dubiousness. There’s no better way to put it – the stuff smelled like feet. However, once I got some of it on a cracker, my opinion rapidly changed. The cheese does have an earthy funk to it, but it’s light. It’s creamy and the flavor is nicely balanced. Very tasty on its own.

Matched with the wines, the Riesling was the best pairing by far. The wine amplifies the funk and brings out some more complex flavors in the cheese itself. However, I would suggest a slightly sweeter Riesling rather than a dry one. The cheese turned the wine somewhat too sharp and metallic. Even just an off-dry Riesling would be enough to keep out the potential unpleasantness. As for the other two – well, I have in my notes, “Poor Taleggio.” Both the Sauternes and Port absolutely overwhelmed this cheese. In my opinion, this would be a great cheese to melt into risotto or some kind of pasta sauce, but on its own, you may get a bad match if you put it on your holiday cheese plate.

Stilton – Another cow’s milk cheese that you’ll find colored either white or yellow. For a cheese to be legally Stilton, it must be made in County Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire, England. Interestingly, the village of Stilton is not in any of those counties, but instead in the nearby County Cambridgeshire, thus rendering it illegal to produce Stilton in Stilton, for reasons known only to British royalty. Also, Stilton must be made from pasteurized milk rather than raw. (I assume this is to prevent unwanted bacteria from growing.) Stilton is made by piercing the cheese blocks with needles, allowing air bearing the mold into the core of the cheese. Aging of the cheese takes about nine weeks.

On its own, it’s a very full-flavored cheese with a strong salty flavor. The traditional food pairing with Stilton is pears. Sure enough, the two of them meshed very well. The pear-sweetness was an excellent balance for the funky, salty cheese. The traditional wine pairing is port. It was very good. The flavors meshed nicely, and, again, the sweetness of the wine balanced the cheese. The Riesling was pleasant enough. Both experiences, though, paled next to the Stilton with the Sauternes. A little of the cheese, a pear, and the Sauternes was eye-crossingly good. However, I wasn’t trying it with $70 port, so it might not have been the fairest comparison.

Roquefort – This cheese is produced from sheep’s milk and comes from a specific region in the south of France. The particular mold that gives this cheese its particular flavor is found in the soil of nearby caves. The traditional method of making this cheeses involves leaving loaves of bread in the caves until they’re consumed by mold. The moldy bread is then ground into powder and mixed with the curd. The cheese is then aged for about five months. It’s a white cheese, crumbly, and shot through with the mold, which is usually a bright green.

The initial smell of this cheese can set you back a step, but the flavor is one of super creamy goodness. It’s very earthy and salty with a rich consistency and a buttery finish that just goes on and on. “Buttery, yummy mold in your mouth” was a comment from one of us. The Riesling and Port were only average companions for the Roquefort. Neither was particularly outstanding – but few things prepared us for the Sauternes. All of the flavors are very powerful, but they all work together. They practically rotated on our tongues, trading back and forth between the earth and the sweet. After a couple of bites, they settled down, meshing into a combination that simply demanded savoring over a long period of time. Which is exactly what we did, happily.

TNV’s Guide to Wine and Cheese – Part II (hard cheese)

Last time, we looked at where cheese comes from and looked at a few soft cheeses. I thought we did a pretty decent job of reviewing the cheeses, but my Uncle Alan is a big fan of Brie de Meaux – which I panned. As he put it, “Grasshopper, you have learned much about the grape, however your understanding of the mysteries of God's other great gift is f’d up.”

He may be right, and he’s got free rein to put together his brie recommendations in this space. (Seriously.) Still, it takes different strokes to move the world, yes it does, and as I’ve always said, let your palate be your guide.

This time around, we’ll look at some hard cheeses. As we discussed last time, the basic process of cheesemaking is to allow milk to sour and curdle, allowing the solids to settle out into curds, leaving the liquid whey behind. The curds are then pressed into balls, blocks, or logs; the whey is drained off; and you’ve got cheese.

A cheesemaker will sometimes add a complex of enzymes called rennet to the curdling milk. Rennet can be found in the stomach of any mammal. It greatly speeds up the coagulation of the solids in milk, allowing the body to begin working on digesting the proteins and fats. The rennet added to cheese is normally harvested from the stomachs of kid goats or cow calves.

When rennet is added to a batch of curds and whey, the curds form more quickly and more tightly. The whey is then drained away and the curds are put into molds for pressing to extract more water. When the water is gone, the bacteria still in the cheese actually act as a preservative, allowing aging. As a cheese ages, the flavors gain complexity.

We looked at a range of cheeses from semi-firm to hard. Again, we tried to pair with wines that were suggested as “classic pairings.” For this tasting, the Sweet Partner in Crime and I invited our friend, The Hanging Chad, to assist us with our tastings. Our cheese board:

• Mild cheddar (pairing: oaky California Chardonnay)
• Sharp cheddar (pairing: young California Cabernet Sauvignon)
• Gruyère (pairing: French extra dry sparkling wine)
• Parmesan (pairing: Super Tuscan – blend of sangiovese and merlot)

Let’s get it started:

Cheddars: Not to be confused with the TGIFridays-esque restaurant chain – cheddar is one of the more ubitquitous cheeses. It was originally made in England in the town of…wait for it…Cheddar. Cheddar Cheese differs from many other forms of cheese because of the “cheddaring” process, in which the curd is kneaded with salt and then sliced into large blocks, which are left to age anywhere from a few weeks to a few years.

In general, the longer the aging, the sharper the Cheddar. Mild cheddar is usually only aged for a couple of months, while sharp cheddar can be aged for over a decade.

Do not confuse actual cheddar cheese with various “cheese foods” like Easy Cheese (“Fromage Facile” if you want to be hoity toity) labeled with the name. Cheddar cheese has a somewhat pungent flavor which gets amplified as the cheese ages. Cheddar cheese is normally either white or very pale yellow. Those bright yellow cheeses you see all have additives – usually annatto or paprika

Starting with the mild cheddar, which just tasted like…well…cheese, the addition of the chardonnay was a good one. The wine brought out the full flavor of the cheese, which includes some smokiness. The smokiness was mellowed with some cream and the fruit emerged in the wine. The two went well together. The cabernet was also a pretty good pairing. The flavors were certainly complementary, but in a more full way. The sparkling wine was just OK. As Chad said, “The sweet dullness of the cheese thumps through the bubbly, but doesn’t do much else.” As for the Super Tuscan – it tastes like one of those “wine/cheese balls” you can get. Not particularly interesting.

The sharp cheddar with the cabernet was a mixed bag among us. I really liked it. I thought it made the flavors meld pleasantly, while both Chad and the SPinC thought it was considerably worse than the mild cheddar and cabernet. The chardonnay simply made the cheese and wine go “flat.” It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t much of anything else. The bubbly made a combination that was much too pungent. As for the Super Tuscan, it amplified everything. Or, as the Chad cribbed, “Too much tang in the ting tang, too much zing in the zing zang.”

Gruyère: Gruyère is a hard cheese made from cow’s milk. Gruyère originated in Switzerland. Interestingly, Swiss Gruyère is a solid cheese, while French Gruyère is governmentally mandated to have holes. (The cheese from Switzerland that traditionally has holes is Emmental.) After Gruyère is pressed, it’s brined and then ripened at room temperature from two months. It’s then cured for between 3-10 months. It’s often used in cooking, as its flavor typically amplifies flavors in foods without overpowering them. It does have a somewhat distinct “funk,” which adds an earthiness to food.

With the sparkling wine, the cheese gave up the noise and gave up the funk. The flavors all blended nicely. Or, as Chad so nicely put it: “It made a great cheese sauce in my mouth.” With both the Chardonnay and Cabernet, the experience wasn’t as good. We all thought the Chardonnay clashed badly. I noted that it was an “absolute waste of alcohol” to mix these two, and I thought that the cabernet forced the cheese to submissively go belly up on my palate. Similar comments came from Chad and the SPinC, but mine were funniest. With the Super Tuscan, we all agreed that it was ok but unspectacular. About as neutral a pairing as you could find.

Parmesan: Parmigiano-Reggiano is actually the name of this cheese, if you want to be most accurate. Parmesan is the French bastardization of the word, but has come to mean most Italian-style hard cheeses that are cooked rather than pressed. Cooked? When this cheese is made, once the rennet is added and the curds have dropped out, the temperature of the vat in which this occurs is raised to about 130 degrees, further speeding up the curdling process. The curds are then drained, heavily pressed, and put in a brine bath for about three weeks. After brining, the cheese is aged for 10-36 months before it is deemed ready for consumption…and we consumed it.

With the recommended Super Tuscan, we thought it was OK, but not fabulous The strong flavors in both meshed reasonably well, but it didn’t blow any of us away. With the Chardonnay, the SPinC simply said, “Clash. Ugh.” Chad and I concurred. The Cabernet was too sharp. Chad found it particularly problematic, saying that his mouth was on “dessicative fire.” The bubbly didn’t work, either. The flavors seemed to fight. Bottom line, it’s great with pasta or in various foods, and drizzled with balsamic vinegar it’s pretty good – but find another cheese for board purposes.

Next time, we conclude with the stinky cheeses.

TNV’s Guide to Wine & Cheese – Part I (Soft Cheese)

(Note: This series goes out to Dr. Randa. Here’s your daggone wine & cheese column…)

Mmmm…cheese.

Wine and cheese are inextricably linked. Both are the delicious products of well-managed fermentation. Both can be found at almost any gathering where noshables are present. And there are darned near endless varieties of each.

(The two are also at the core of one of my favorite sports quotes of all time. The immortal Sam Cassell called the assembled at UNC-CH’s Dean Dome a “cheese and wine crowd” during his Florida State days. It’s an apt descriptor of the usual level of crowd noise there.)

An important note of irony – as much as we think of wine and cheese going hand in hand, it’s exceedingly difficult to “perfectly” pair wine and cheese. There’s so much variation in individual wines and cheeses that it’s nearly impossible to say with confidence, “This type of wine always works with this type of cheese.” This difficulty gets compounded when you have multiple cheeses with a wine. Still, in the name of science, let’s press on.

There’s a basic process in most cheese production. Milk is allowed to ferment (sour) at room temperature. Certain kinds of mold and bacteria can be added during the fermenting process to impart more distinct flavors. The milk then separates into solid curds and liquid whey. The whey is drained off, the curds are pressed and often salted, and there you have it -- cheese. (Specifically, at this point, it’s cottage cheese – which was Little Miss Muffett’s “Curds and Whey.”)

For firmer cheeses, an enzyme called rennet is added to the fermenting milk. This accelerates the curd separation process. The curds are then often cut into small cubes and pressed into balls or logs. Soft cheeses stop here. Harder cheeses are pressed into molds and squeezed tightly, forcing out more of the whey and creating a firmer, drier product. This, in turn, allows the cheese to cure for a longer period of time. The harder the block, the longer a cheese can age.

Cheese can be classified in any number of ways – by location (much as many wines are); by texture; by flavor; by price; and so on. For our purposes, I’m going to use a three part classification: soft cheese, hard cheese, and stinky cheese. I’ll pick some cheeses for each category that you should be able to find without too much difficulty, along with what is normally considered the “classic wine pairing” for each. Just for fun, we’ll try each cheese and each wine together. Let’s start with soft cheeses. We chose these three:

• Fresh mozzarella (pairing: Chianti)
• Brie (pairing: extra dry sparkling wine)
• Chevre (pairing: Sancerre)

For information’s sake, Sancerre is a delicious, minerally sauvignon blanc from the Loire in France. It’s a little on the pricey side, but I was in the mood to splurge for this experiment. You could substitute a less expensive French sauvignon if you wanted. Extra dry sparkling wine usually works better than brut in my experience. The Chianti should be young. Aged Chianti will lose its complexity. How did things work out?

Fresh Mozzarella – While Mozzarella can be made from cow milk, it’s traditionally made from the milk of the domesticated water buffalo. Until I met the SPinC, I thought you only found mozzarella in baked pastas and on pizzas. I was used to seeing it shredded, imprisoned in a plastic bag instead of fresh, capable of being eaten alone. It’s a “clean” tasting cheese – which is to say that it doesn’t have much of a flavor in and of itself other than “milky and slightly granular.” With the Chianti alongside, it was OK. The cheese calmed the acidity of the wine a bit. It was decent but lacked something, so we ended up making little sandwiches with bread dipped in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, some fresh basil, and hard sausage. (Basically, we used all the things Chianti tastes good with.) It didn’t disappoint. With the sparkling wine, the yeasty flavor of the sparkler came out, but it wasn’t all that interesting. The Sancerre showed as far too acidic. There wasn’t enough flavor in the cheese to balance the wine and the gentle flavor of the wine got lost. Recommendation: mozzarella is a much stronger complimentary player. Consider serving it Caprese salad-style – with basil, tomatoes, and really good balsamic vinegar – instead of just by itself. Stick with Italian reds if you want to pair it.

Brie – The best known soft “party platter” cheese. You’ll usually see this cow’s milk cheese with a white rind, which is the product of the addition of rennet to the curd. The rind is edible if you’re so inclined. The cheese has a lasting, creamy, buttery flavor with a little bit of funk to it. Sparkling wine is the recommended pairing. The bubbles cut the fat & funk and mellow the flavor of the cheese. It’s pleasant. The Sancerre makes the cheese more funky, and the complexity of the wine is completely lost. The Chianti was a disaster. The chalkiness and acidity of the Chianti was as complementary towards the cheese as your average Kentucky basketball fan is towards Christian Laettner. Recommendation: like you need another excuse to bust out a bottle of bubbly.

I made an initial bobble with the brie. I initially bought a chunk of “Brie de Meaux,” an aged brie. When brie is aged, it gets very strong flavors – including ammonia (which is created in the fermentation process.) It’s supposed to be good soaked in café au lait, but I’m not that brave. It was disastrous with all the wines. Stick with the cheaper brie. Brie de Meaux…Neaux.

Chevre – Chevre is French for “goat.” Goat cheese has a tarter flavor than most cow’s milk cheeses because of the makeup of the milk itself (which is actually close to human milk). It often reminds me of buttercream frosting in consistency. There’s a little funkiness to it, but it’s largely a smooth, creamy experience. Sancerre is the pairing here for good reason. There’s something about the makeup of the two together. Fruit, creaminess, tartness, minerality – all balanced and working together as a heavenly, fluidly balanced combination. While there may be no “perfect” pairings, this is close. The sparkling wine was interesting. The thick buttery consistency initially gets stripped away by the bubbles and a blast of minerality & yeast, leaving sweetness and cream behind. An interesting, lively combination. As for the Chianti, my first comment was, “That’s really kinda nice!” An acidic vs. buttery contrast, but still pretty decadent. Recommendation: If you’re doing a soft cheese on a platter and you don’t know what kinds of wine you’ll have, you can’t go wrong with chevre. Easily the most interesting, wine friendly cheese that we had.

Next up – hard cheeses.