Vermont’s Tarentaise Reserve took top honors at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition last week, surpassing 1,684 other cheeses to earn the prestigious “Best of Show.” I served as a judge and concur that this awesome two-year-old wheel deserved the recognition. It was my first choice. (Judges taste blind, but the distinctive concave rim of this 20-pound wheel gives it away.) Honestly, though, I tasted at least a half-dozen other cheeses that I would have been happy to see at the top. That’s a testament to the growing prowess of America’s cheesemakers.
Read moreRunning the Numbers →
Which cheese will take Best of Show in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition this week? We’ll know soon enough (award ceremony is July 31 in Sacramento), but in the interim, I gathered some stats on prior winners. Could the judges’ past preferences help us predict who might get the gold?
Read moreUps and Downs with Feta →
The same purchase provided the high and low moments on Planet Cheese last week. The high was finding Vermont Creamery goat feta at Oxbow Cheese Merchant in Napa, my neighborhood shop. Vermont Creamery makes some of my favorite bloomy-rinded goat cheeses (Bijou and Bonne Bouche among others), and a sublime cultured butter as well. But I didn’t know the creamery made feta.
Read moreToujours Paris →
America's cheese merchants have never been more knowledgeable or numerous, but for me, Paris still sets the bar. With only three days to spend there in June, I didn’t make the grand rounds, but I did find a few shops that were new to me and thrilling to visit. File these addresses for the next time fortune brings you to France.
Read moreDesert Island Cheese →
What's the one cheese you can’t live without? I asked 10 top American cheese merchants recently to name their “desert-island cheese” and got 10 different answers. Actually, more than that because some folks just could not commit. I know the feeling. I’ll reveal my choice at the end (don’t skip ahead), but here are the cheeses some leading retailers love most.
Read moreKatie’s Creation →
She's not yet 30, but Katie Hedrich is already a rock star in the American artisan cheese world. The daughter of Wisconsin dairy-goat farmers, Hedrich made headlines at the age of 25 when her aged goat cheese, Evalon, scored 99 points out of 100 to become the 2011 U.S. Championship Cheese. The win propelled the Hedrich family to build its own creamery—the winning cheese was produced in borrowed space—and take a deep dive into cheese.
Read moreMove Over, Feta →
In hot weather, I can’t think of many cheeses that appeal to me more than manouri. What an underappreciated Greek cheese, forever in the shadow of feta. Would it do better in the U.S. under another name? Does it sound too much like a soil amendment?
Read moreFlory’s Story →
With raw milk from their 30 Jersey cows, the Flory family of Jamesport, Missouri, is making one of the country’s finest Cheddars. I first tasted Flory’s Truckle at the American Cheese Society conference last year, and finally a few of these handsome wheels have arrived on the West Coast.
Read moreKnock on Wood →
What does Italy's incomparable Parmigiano Reggiano have in common with Wisconsin’s Pleasant Ridge Reserve, England’s Colston-Bassett Stilton and French Comté? All of them, indisputably, are among the world’s finest cheeses, and all are matured on wooden shelves. Because of that age-old practice, common to countless other cheeses, these beauties are currently in the cross-hairs of the FDA.
Read moreCamembert…in Italy?
Although probably 99 percent of Italy’s water-buffalo milk becomes fresh mozzarella, a few innovators are devising new uses for the rich latte di bufala. Surprisingly, some of these creative creameries are in Piedmont and Lombardy, in northern Italy, far from the mozzarella zone around Naples.
The luscious Camembert di Bufala from La Casera, near Lago Maggiore, exemplifies this trend. Made with pasteurized milk from Piedmontese water buffalo, this bloomy-rind disk defies local tradition. Camembert? in Italy? This region’s soft-ripened cheese is robiola, which varies from village to village but never has a Camembert-type rind.
La Casera is an affinatore, a firm that buys young cheeses from other producers and ages them. So the company doesn’t make Camembert di Bufala but manages its progress from infancy to maturity—or, as the company describes it, “from nursery school to college.” I like that.
La Casera excels at maturing robiola—you may have had one of their silky robiolas aged in chestnut, fig or cabbage leaves—but aging Camembert-style cheese requires a new learning curve. These little disks are finicky about humidity and temperature, and they suffer if not pampered in shipping. What’s more, water-buffalo milk is higher in fat than cow’s milk—twice as high in some cases—which would also affect how the cheese develops.
I’ve sampled Camembert di Bufala several times now, with similar experiences. As a wedge comes to room temperature, it slumps and eventually collapses, with the interior puddling like fondue. This is the rare cheese that I would recommend consuming cool, not at room temperature, to savor it before it becomes soup. I would also suggest purchasing and serving the whole wheel—about 9 ounces—to postpone the meltdown. At the cheese counter, if possible, probe the disk with a tissue before you commit. If the surface is heavily mottled and the cheese feels squishy, it could be past its peak.
But a perfectly ripe Camembert di Bufala is dreamy, with a pronounced scent of porcini and a pale, supple interior. The rind is edible, but cut it away if you find it too tough. The cheese marches up to the edge on salt, but bread helps to mute that impression. And with such a runny cheese, bread is a must.
Look for Camembert di Bufala at Cheese Plus, Little Vine and Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco; Pasta Shop in Oakland and Berkeley and Cheese Board in Berkeley; Petaluma Market; Good Earth in Fairfax; Sacramento Natural Foods; Sunshine Foods in St. Helena; Oliver’s Markets in Santa Rosa; Cheese Shop of Healdsburg; Mollie Stone’s (multiple locations) and some Whole Foods. A rich white wine such as Chardonnay would complement it, as would a saison-style beer.