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| Cheese 101 An Introduction to Great Cheese by Raymond Hook (Atlanta cheese guru) I am often asked what is the difference between great cheese and ordinary cheese. There are really so many things that distinguish a cheeses value, but it can be summed up with one word: Passion. The best cheeses come from people who are passionate, almost obsessed, with making great cheese. Some of the simple characteristics of great cheese are great milk, a skilled maker, and proper aging/ripening conditions. I am a firm believer that if you don’t have great milk, you’ll never have great cheese. But what makes great milk? The best cheeses are farmstead - meaning that the animals that produce the milk which the cheese is made from are raised, cared for and milked on the same farm where the cheese is made, as opposed to buying the milk from a different farmer. When you are raising animals to produce milk for cheese, you need to produce the highest quality milk. Versus, when you produce animals to sell their milk, you want to produce the highest quantity of milk. Pasture grazed animals produce the best milk for cheese. Their natural diet of grasses, wild flowers, clover, etc., gives the milk much more depth of flavors than milk from animals that only eat a limited and restricted diet. I am not saying that only farmstead cheeses are great, but it certainly is a characteristic to look for. The skill of the cheese maker is also very important. I have discovered that many of the best cheesemakers I have met could be successes in anything that they wanted to do. They are usually well educated, passionate about food, creative, hard working, and above all, very passionate about their craft. They are always trying to make better cheese and to try something new, and are always on a quest to better themselves and their cheese. Making cheese is hard, often lonely work, and sometimes it is years before a cheese will reach its maturity. The cheesemakers can be somewhat removed from the people who eat their cheese as they usually have someone else who handles the sales and marketing. In turn, they rarely hear the praise for their hard work and dedication. Making the cheese in the proper environment is also a key ingredient to great cheese. How the cheese is aged and the condition that it is kept in is very important. Just the right temperature, humidity, and amount of ageing time reflect so much in the quality of the taste. Some cheeses are intended to be eaten when they are made, some need a couple of weeks or months, others need years. If you do not age them long enough, their subtleties may not show, too long and you’ll miss the window when the cheese is at its best. Age a cheese in too cold a temperature and you will slow down the ageing process, too hot and you’ll speed up the process, not allowing it to fully develop. Likewise, too high of humidity might encourage unwanted mold growth, and too low of humidity and the cheese will crack from drying. Cheese making and aging is a lot of chemistry, skill, patience, and craft. So where do you get great cheese? This is also a frequently asked question. Rule of thumb: Always buy cheese from a shop where they let you taste the cheese before you buy it, cut it to order, and do a reasonable amount of business, so they turn their inventory over regularly. But most important, buy from some one who is passionate about cheese themselves, who respects the cheesemakers hard work, and who run a clean, organized shop. Eating cheese is such a wonderful experience that anyone can enjoy for just a little money. There are so few things that you can try in life that represent the best for less than five bucks. Get a quarter pound of Thomasville Tomme, Everona Piedmont, or Bingham Hill Rustic Blue (all gold medal winners at the American Cheese Society conferences last judging) and enjoy the best of America. Try them with a little wine, some fruit and fresh bread for an experience that cannot be beat. Always be willing to try new cheeses. The more you taste, the more you will be able to define your likes and dislikes. Try cheeses with different wines and food combinations and be experimental. Also use great cheese in cooking, substituting artisan cheese for the industrial produced, factory made cheese, will make a big difference in the quality of the dish. Sometimes just a little chunk of cheese sure hits the spot when you are peckish, mmm…cheese! Raymond Hook is a cheese and wine consultant living in Atlanta. For more information on Raymond, click to the right. |
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| Beloved local cheese consultant Raymond Hook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Click here for Raymond Hook's Bio | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Click here for Raymond Hook's Bio | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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