This week we’re excited for the opportunity to highlight two more fantastic french offerings as part of our weekly pairing series. Last week we visited a dairy located just outside of Paris, and this week we head southeast to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, to a special place deep in the densely forested Haut Doubs, where we stumble upon a relic of the Franco-Prussian war, Fort Lucotte. Purchased in 1967 by a man named, Marcel Petite, this bunker once used for defending troops, is now enlisting wheels of Comté, with the sole duty of aging them to perfection. Situated not far from the border with Switzerland, the surrounding hills of the Jura mountains are made up of thick limestone rock formations which were used in construction of the fort, some 150 years ago. This defunct military bunker provides the ideal environment for aging wheels of Comté, and allows for the type of slow maturation once envisioned by Marcel Petite. Time is money, but a slower, gentler maturation cycle at lower temperature produces superior wheels of Comté. Wheels of cheese are delivered to the fort from local cheesemakers in neighboring villages, and each day, the fort’s affineurs taste individual cheeses and tailor their aging strategy. Some wheels are destined for the table earlier, with others using time to their advantage as they take on deeper, more complex texture and flavor traits. Our wheel of Comté for this week lands at right around 10 months of age, and possesses notes of caramelized onion, roasted nuts and brown butter, with a boozy finish and the slightest hint of hay. To pair with this cheese, we’ve selected, Domaine Paul Nicolle’s 2018 Chablis, a white wine produced in the village of fleys, just a couple miles from Chablis proper. This 100% chardonnay from northern burgundy provides a perfect balance to the rich aroma and flavor within the cheese. The wine’s creamy mouthfeel, high level of acidity, and taut minerality encourage the cheese to develop on the palate, showcasing an evolution of flavors.
The Pairing Week 16: Camembert + Pallus Messanges Rouge
For this week’s pairing, we continue on our journey through France, this time landing on an organic farm just 35 miles southwest of Paris named, Ferme de la Tremblaye. Since 1967 this dairy farm has been working towards becoming their ideal model of sustainable agriculture; one that mimics the rich, lush soils of the nearby Rambouillet forest by encouraging plant and animal biodiversity, meanwhile minimizing their carbon footprint and eliminating demand for outside resources along the way. Combining modern soil management strategy and farming techniques with traditional methods of cheesemaking has proven successful for this dairy business in its effort to produce the highest quality farmstead cheeses. Their herd of 150 cows and 350 goats supplies milk for production of both soft-ripened, bloomy rind cheeses and blue cheeses. This week we’ve chosen their cow’s milk Camembert for our pairing selection. Made with nothing more than pasteurized whole cow’s milk, cultures, natural rennet, and salt, this cheese is the the best version of a french Camembert available to us here in the U.S. When tasting this cheese, early notes of cooked egg yolk and toasted garlic gradually develop into more of an earthy, mushroomy, damp wood aroma and flavor. The cheese is fudgy, salty and creamy, and tastes like the farm — in the best way possible. We’ve paired this perfectly ripe Camembert with a Chinon from Domaine de Pallus Winery, located in the central Loire Valley, along the northern edge of the Vienne river just southwest from Tours. Following a similar approach and care for his soil, Bertrand Sourdais, the winery’s 5th generation winemaker closely monitors the rhythms of his vineyard in his attempt to produce the best grapes possible. We found the wine’s juicy bubblegum fruit, generous acid, and lightly structured tannins complementary towards the cheese and its heady posture. The wine gently tames the cheese’s pungent bite, while the cheese reveals leafy green notes within the grape, bringing on new levels of complexity.
The Pairing Week 15: French Softies
After focusing our attention on German cheese and wine for the last few weeks of our pairing series, we now shift our energy to France. Our cheese cave has just been reloaded with newly arrived French goodies, and the time to explore them is now. For this week’s pairing, we head to the northern region of Champagne - Ardenne, just east of Paris and bordering Burgundy to the south. Here we find a cheese named, Langres, a deeply rich and creamy, soft-ripened cow’s milk cheese produced at La Fromagerie Germain. Made with pasteurized cow’s milk harvested from a small number of farms within 20 miles of the creamery, this savory cheese is complex in both form and flavor. Whereas most cheeses of this type may be flipped multiple times over the course of the first few days of their life, to achieve a balanced, symmetrical shape, Langres is only turned once during its entire production. The result is a hollowed surface on its top side, in which tradition might recommend a splash or douse of Champagne to aid creaminess and add excitement. While not a Champagne, our wine pairing for this week sparkles, and is produced by winemaker Julien Raimbault, a little ways to the southwest, in the wine growing region of Vouvray, within the Loire Valley. This bright and citrusy, lighter-bodied sparkling white, made with 100% Chenin Blanc grapes, promotes the cheese’s yeasty rind and balances its salty, meaty profile. The bubbles help to scrub the palate and the wine’s delicate sweetness lightens the mood. Do yourself a favor this weekend and celebrate this pairing for yourself!
Your Global Shipping Primer
Ready for your crash course in trans Atlantic cheese shipment? Here we go!
Step 1: Five weeks before our scheduled arrival date we email our cheese importer our order.. Cheese is imported on a file system—52 files per year corresponding to the 52 weeks.
Step 2: Our importer starts the process by sending the order to France where the cheese is eventually consolidated at an enormous market called Rungis. There it is consolidated with our British farmhouse cheeses and any of the other European cheeses we pre-order
Step 3: Time to set sail! The cheese is in a refrigerated container for it’s voyage across the Atlantic. The cheese then lands at the port of Newark in NJ
Step 4: Our cheese hitches a ride to a warehouse in Long Island City New York where it meets up with some other products we’ve ordered. All of that product is consolidated onto a single pallet just for us!
Step 5: A truck cruises by that warehouse on a Friday morning and brings our pallet BACK to a different warehouse New Jersey (oh the tolls!). At that warehouse it is place with a truckload of pallets bound for the Midwest
Step 6: Early on a Tuesday morning the most enormous 18 wheeler you’ve ever seen arrives in our parking lot. We climb in and unload 1,000-2,000 pounds worth of product from the back of the truck.
If everything goes according to plan we receive cheese four weeks from the time we send the email. This results in cheese that is actually a little on the young side (don’t tell anyone but we get our cheese faster/fresher than anyone in the cities).
Of course I am here to tell you that there are so many ways this can go wrong and 2021 has been filled with the most shipping challenges we’ve ever encountered. COVID-19 delays, staffing shortages at the port, congestion at the port, rough seas, lack of freight, lack of truckers. You name it, we’ve seen it. Oh, and once the cheese is picked in Europe, we own it . Doesn’t matter if our ship gets lost in the Bermuda triangle—we’re paying for that cheese.
But look again at that picture up there. It’s totally worth it when you can sell someone an absolutely perfect piece of soft French cheese—there’s just nothing quite like it.
The Pairing Week 14: German Wine Detour (Part 2)
For the next two weeks in our pairing series, we’ll focus our attention on cheeses produced at a small dairy in southern Germany, called Hofkäserei Kraus. It is here, in the southern Bavarian Alps, just north of the Austrian border, where Albert Kraus produces his innovative cheeses that taste delicious and differentiate themselves from traditional regional norms. In 2018, Albert completed construction of a new, state of the art production facility designed to increase production capacity of his cheeses, and also provide space for experimentation and future partnerships. Albert’s goal is to inspire the market with cheese that stands out from others in both flavor and form. This week we’re highlighting his first major success, Alex. Named after a local rail route, and inspired by traditional European mountain cheeses, but with new twists, Alex has made a splash within the cheese world. With milk from select surrounding farms, including his older brother’s, Albert turns raw milk from Braunvieh cows into his own version of a classic. Sweet and creamy, with a meaty bite and flavors of deep butterfat and composted hay, we found Alex to pair beautifully with a German Rosé from the Pfalz, a wine-growing region just a few hours to the north. Von Winning Winery’s Pinot Noir Rosé presents a crisp acidity, with complimentary mineral notes, and a mouthful of ripe raspberry, melon and vanilla. A slight sparkle and subtle tannins within the wine both balance the cheese’s richness and efficiently soothe the palate.
The Pairing Week 13: German Wine Detour (Part 1)
For the next two weeks in our pairing series, we’ll focus our attention on cheeses produced at a small dairy in southern Germany, called Hofkäserei Kraus. It is here, in the southern Bavarian Alps, just north of the Austrian border, where Albert Kraus produces his innovative cheeses that taste delicious and differentiate themselves from traditional regional norms. In 2018, Albert completed construction of a new, state of the art production facility designed to increase production capacity of his cheeses, and also provide space for experimentation and future partnerships. Albert’s goal is to inspire the market with cheese that stands out from others in both flavor and form. This week we’re highlighting his first major success, Alex. Named after a local rail route, and inspired by traditional European mountain cheeses, but with new twists, Alex has made a splash within the cheese world. With milk from select surrounding farms, including his older brother’s, Albert turns raw milk from Braunvieh cows into his own version of a classic. Sweet and creamy, with a meaty bite and flavors of deep butterfat and composted hay, we found Alex to pair beautifully with a German Rosé from the Pfalz, a wine-growing region just a few hours to the north. Von Winning Winery’s Pinot Noir Rosé presents a crisp acidity, with complimentary mineral notes, and a mouthful of ripe raspberry, melon and vanilla. A slight sparkle and subtle tannins within the wine both balance the cheese’s richness and efficiently soothe the palate.
The Pairing Week 12: Blue Cheese (Part 2, the Heavy Hitter)
For the second week in a row, we’re focusing our attention on one of the world’s most famous blue cheeses. This week’s pairing selection takes us to a small region in southern France called Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, where we find Maison Carles, one of the world’s smallest producers of Roquefort who export their cheese to the U.S. For nearly 100 years, this 3rd generation cheesemaking family has been producing Roquefort by hand, relying on an old-world recipe and time-tested techniques to achieve brilliance. It was in 1924 that Roquefort became the first French cheese to receive its AOC status, a label indicating that the cheese had been produced in a specific geographical region according to strict production regulations. And now, under the leadership of Delphine Carles, and amongst only 7 producers of Roquefort in the world, Maison Carles stands out to us as one of the best we’ve tasted. Made with milk from their own herd of pastured Lacaunes sheep, and inoculated with house-grown mold harvested from locally made rye bread, Carles Roquefort is deeply complex, subtly sweet, and ripe with bluish green veins of molding. Aging of these wheels occurs underground in cavernous limestone fissures, known as fleurines, which provide the perfect form of natural ventilation needed to ripen the cheese. For a wine pairing, we’ve selected Domaine La Tour Vieille’s Banyuls Rimage 2016. Made from fully ripened Grenache grapes, and employing a process known as mutage, which arrests fermentation within the grape must, producing a sweeter tasting wine, this rich and silky Banyuls dessert wine from French Catalonia provides a perfect balance to this luscious salty cheese.
The Pairing Week 11: Blue Cheese (part 1)
There are few cheeses more widely recognized by name, or tightly woven into our dining traditions, than English Stilton. With its velvety texture, sweet and mushroomy blue mold, and meaty sea salt finish, Stilton hits all the best flavor buttons. Our preferred Stilton comes to us from Colston Bassett Dairy, located within Nottinghamshire County, in the Midlands region of Central England. One of the smallest of just 6 dairies authorized to produce Stilton, and an operation that’s been going strong for over 100 years, Colston Bassett takes pride in its hands-on approach to quality and consistency. Much of their success can be traced to the fact that they’ve employed just 4 head cheesemakers throughout their entire cheesemaking history. A common pairing suggestion for Stilton might be Port wine, and while we don’t necessarily disagree, we’ve found something perhaps a little more fun for this time around. This sparkling Gamay Rosé, from Bernard Rondeau, made in the southernmost region of the Jura Mountains of France, is full of red summer fruit, gentile tannins and a balance of residual sugars and acid that fit perfectly with this sturdy cheese. A fully expressive pairing highlighting the wild streak of natural fermentation.
The Pairing Week 10: Big Cheese, Big Wine
A couple weeks back we highlighted a goat’s milk gouda from the famed, Fromagerie L’Amuse, in Amsterdam. This week we’re pairing another cheese aged in those same cellars, their 2 year Signature Gouda. Made with pasteurized cow’s milk, traditional rennet, and packed with a crystalline crunch that everyone craves, this cheese will certainly grab your attention. Combining a silky smooth paste with a boozy, salty brown butter finish, this cheese leaves your mouth watering. You’ll often hear us Cheesemongers pair this cheese with bottles of bourbon or scotch, but this time we’ve found a match in Januik Winery’s 2018 Columbia Valley Red Blend. With a solid foundation of body, notes of dark red fruit, and a smoky, oaky nose, this wine has met its match with this Gouda. The two play wonderfully together, both benefiting from their high level of acidity, and indisputable character. Don’t just reach for a cold glass of rosé the next time you’re lounging by the pool, as this pairing may be just the trick for beating the heat.
The Pairing Week 9: A Wisconsin cheddar and an Italian red wine walk into a bar...
Some of the best pairings can be found where you least expect them. This week’s pairing is a prime example of the little surprises you can stumble upon when you choose to taste outside the box of pairing theory. In a small village just 40 miles north of Milwaukee, Joe Widmer takes tradition seriously, and has devoted himself to upholding the old-world methods of cheesemaking that have been practiced by his family for nearing 100 years. Joe is one of a small number of Wisconsin cheesemakers who hold the title, Master Cheesemaker, and among the many cheeses he produces at Widmer’s Cheese Cellars, his cheddars are absolutely additive. This week we’ll focus our attention on his 6 year-old cheddar, a cheese with deep richness, a smooth creamy paste, and notes of citrus that appease the tannins of a red wine produced in Alto Piemonte, at the base of the Italian Alps. Tasting of brandy-soaked cherries and cocoa, this Nebbiolo blend, from Antonio Vallana, transforms when eaten along side this adolescent Wisconsin cheddar. The wine’s medium body, firm tannins, notes of dark fruit, and balanced structure of acidity benefit from the cheese, and push forward a delicate sweetness, previously hidden. It is our hope that this pairing will encourage you to take a bit more risk the next time you think about pairing cheese with wine.