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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to 365 Cheeses in the Washed Rind category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Soft is the previous category.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
© 2008 Kirk Samuels
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Washed Rind Archives
"Ow, we want the funk.
Give up the funk.
Ow, we need the funk.
We gotta have that funk."
-George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic
Here is a cheese with funk. You will either love it or ask that it be removed from the room while you have the whole house fumigated to remove its foul stench. I lean toward the love side. My fiancée Fleming leans toward the hazmat suit.
Petit Munster Géromé, "little Gerry" to his friends, is a complex cheese with complex flavors. Others have described it as “earthy” “with a strong farmyard aroma”. That is a polite way to put it. I can do little to fully describe it other than say it is reminiscent of certain bodily fluids.
The outer rind is an orangey slick paste that surrounds a four-inch disk. Inside is the pale yellow cheese that packs a wicked punch. I have found that many of the ripened cheeses have a noxious odor immediately after unwrapping them. Let them sit unwrapped for 10 to 15 minutes and let them breathe out this unpleasantness. Little Gerry still holds on to other odors but these can be your friends if you don't mind having French friends who smell like they never shower. Cut out a small wedge and spread it on some fresh bread. I enjoyed the complexity of flavors. Fleming said it started out good but had an evil finish.
Be bold and give it a try!
Name: Petit Munster Géromé
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: Soft
Produced in: France, Jean Rousset Fromager
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 11/17/2006
Date Eaten: 11/18/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $17.99/lb.
Limburger is synonymous with "stinky cheese". When I was young I remember old cartoons and shorts in which strong smells of any kind were symbolized by this pungent cheese. If you ask someone what the worst smelling cheese is, possibly even the worst smelling anything, odds are they will say Limburger. Odds are also that many people who name it haven't even tried it.
And yet...
Limbuger is far from the stinkiest cheese I've come across. Munster
beats it by miles. Many other rind-washed cheeses are just as bad. But Limburger has the reputation over the decades for foul smells and unless ripened cheese catch on in the United States will probably hold on to it a few more years.
So why is Limburger smelly? Limburger and other rind-washed cheeses are fermented by a bacterium called Brevibacterium linens, the same bacterium found on human skin which is responsible in part for our bodily odor. Aside from the smell this bacterium provides the orange-brown color to the rinds of these cheeses.
Limburger originated in Limburg, Belgium but today it is also produced in Germany and the United States. The Limburger I tried today was labled "bayerischer Limburger" or Bavarian Limburger and was wrapped in copper-colored foil. The smell upon unwrapping was strong but not overpowering. Maybe, I've gotten used to strong smelling cheese but the aroma was not awful. Butting through the brownish rind revealed the soft cream color of the inner cheese. The taste was surprisingly mild, almost overprocessed. This was a pasteurized, factory produced cheese so there was not much exciting about it.
Name: Bavarian Limburger, German Limburger, Bayerischer Limburger or Limburger
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-soft
Produced in: Germany
Date Purchased: 12/27/2006
Date Eaten: 12/31/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $/lb.
From time to time someone will say to me, "You must meet a friend of mine. You two will really hit it off." On a rare occasion, we clash like tartan plaid and pastel polka dots when we meet. When this happens I always have to ask myself if the person is really crass, overbearing and foul or did I just catch him on a bad day. These thoughts occurred to me when I tasted Vacherin Fribourgeois for the first time. Right now the two of us can't stand being in the same room together.
Tales of the cheese's youth are glowingly recounted on the label with words such as "grass", "Alpine pastures" and "butter". No trace of these qualities remained in the cheese I tasted, like a beauty pageant winner who has not aged gracefully. The overwhelming flavor of the Vacherin I tasted was funk, the foul bacterial stench of bodily odor.
Vacherin Fribourgeois is a semisoft member of the raclette family, made from unpasteurized cow's milk in the Swiss canton of Fribourg. The Fribougeois will use it in fondue alongside Gruyère from the same region make a moitié-moitié, half-and-half. Either they use a younger cheese or are more accustomed to the taste.
Name: Vacherin Fribourgeois
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semisoft
Produced in: Switzerland, Fribourg
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, Online Order, www.murrayscheese.com
Price: $26.99/lb.
The French gastronome, Brillat-Savarin, called Époisses "roi des fromages", "king of cheeses". Though not the sole crown of European cheeses, Époisses deserves to sit on a throne. When sold in Europe this cheese is produced from raw cow's milk but the version for sale in the U.S. is pasteurized. This process kills some of the flavor but there is still plenty to go around.
The big argument I find when reading about this and other washed rind cheeses is "When is it at its peak?" Affinage is the French term for aging cheeses to their best ripeness, but when that precise moment occurs is a matter of taste. Époisses starts out semi-firm but softens with age to the point of runniness. Wait too long and the beneficial forces of bacteria that aided in the process turn against the cheese and leave it unedible. Some prefer the cheese soft but still a little firm but as John Cleese's character says in The Cheese Shop sketch, "I like it runny."
The cheese produced by the Berthaut company comes in a niffty wooden round box.
The rind gets its orange color from being washed with Marc de Bourgogne, a distilled pomace wine of Burgundy.
This is a great cheese! I cannot wait for my next trip to Europe to try the unpasteurized variety.
Name: Époisses or Époisses AOC or L'Époisses or Époisses de Bourgogne or Epoisses
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: semisoft
Produced in: France, Burgundy
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chaple Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $13.99 a piece
The name of these cheese tells you a lot about it if you can translate from the Portuguese. I will try my best. "Amanteigado" means "buttered up" and the cheese has a rich, buttery aroma and flavor. "Cardus" is a type of thistle traditionally used in Portugal as a vegetable rennet to coagulate the milk and start the cheese-making process.
The small golden round also came swaddled in gauze bandages requiring it to be unwrapped like the Invisible Man before eating.
The washed rind gives this soft, almost runny cheese a tart yet creamy flavor. A nice and rare find.
Name: Amanteigado Cardus or Cardus or Amanteigado Mini
Type of Milk: sheep's, unpasteurized
Type: washed rind, soft
Produced in: Portugal
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, Online Order, www.murrayscheese.com
Price: $7.99 each
Instead of washing the rind in wine or a bath of helpful bacteria, the Cistercian Trappist monks of Chimay wash certain handcrafted cow's milk cheeses in their other famous product, Chimay beer. If you want a cheese that pairs nicely with a rich, heady beer, this Chimay would be a good choice. Can you taste the beer? Not really. The rind is stronger than the center of the cheese but the notes of hops and wheat are long gone. It tastes like your standard semi-soft washed rind cheese.
Washed rind cheeses, Chimay being one of them, are not my favorite cheeses in general. I find many either too bland or, if overripe, too pungent. At their best most are pleasant but not memorable. Sure, Chimay knocks the pants off your average variety supermarket cheese but for the price I can find many other cheeses that deliver more flavor and appeal.
Name: Chimay met bier, Chimay with Beer, Chimay
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-soft, washed rind
Produced in: Belgium
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $19.99/lb.
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