Featured Cheese - November 2014

White Wensleydale is firm but not dry and hard, creamy yet the surface is slightly uneven and crumbly, and has a slightly sweet but also tart flavor. It’s sometimes described as having a nutty, buttermilk flavor and with a honey aftertaste, and gentle aroma of cut grass. It has a fine curd, minimal texturing, and high moisture content. Wensleydale is usually eaten young, at about a month old. This cheese goes well with a crisp apple and is traditionally eaten with fruitcake.

Open the lid on your Camembert box, and you will notice immediately an aroma of mushrooms with a subtle braised cabbage undertone. These two aromas are the quintessential elements of true Camembert. The rind is an ivory white with red flecks through it, and if you stroke the cheese you will feel the downy texture of the penicillin rind. The rind is essential to create Camembert… as the mold rind grows around the cheese it sends out microscopic roots (rhizomes), and it is these roots, working from the outside in, that turn the texture from chalky to voluptuously soft and gooey.