Terroir, vous avez dit Terroir?

Terroir is a French word that comes from Terre (Land). It sums up the special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place express through various local products such as wine, coffee, chocolate, tea, and of course cheese.

The concept of terroir is at the origin of the French wine and French cheese Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) system.

Each and every region in the world has its unique characteristics, and the AOC is a sort of a protection but is equally and uniquely a way to celebrate a particular region. With that system in place, we acknowledge that what comes from this area is truly unique and impossible to be reproduced anywhere else in the world.

But terroir is not only about land. It is also about men and women working that land. It is also about the culture they inherited from their ancestors.

Have you ever wondered why certain cheeses look the way they do and why?

Mountain cheeses for instance are not only a tribute to the quality of the milk they come from but also a sign that cheese in these areas needed to last the distance during the long and unfriendly winter months. They are one of the first signs that show not only a desire but also a necessity for men to work together.

Take a 40kg wheel of Comte for example and have a guess at how much milk you need to make it? Well, not sure how close you got but the fact is, it takes around 35 cows and 2 milkings in a day –a vat of approximately 450l of milk is the very beginning of a Comte’s life!

‘Numbers makes strength’ as we say in French, and local farmers decided to gather their resources well over 700 years ago, creating the first collectivities.

As you can probably guess yourself, milk is also changing from season to season due to mammals feeding on different type of food. Therefore, a winter cheese will inherit different qualities from a summer one. Up to you to decide which one you prefer.

Australia might not have as much history as the old Europe in terms of dairy industry but that does not mean that we do not have good terroir.

And for that reason, it seems to me that the biggest mistake is to try and copy what the Europeans have been doing for centuries. We can copy a style of course, as long as we use the incredibly rich resources we do have here in Australia.

A good example of this is one of my favourite Australian washed-rinds, 1792, by Nick Haddow in Bruny Island – Tasmania. Nick has created a very beautiful French style washed-rind, which he regularly hand-washes in brine before letting it mature on Huon pine. A perfect Tasmanian twist on a French love affair!

New York State of Mind

Some folks like to get away

Take a holiday from the neighbourhood...

Well last month, I did not hop on a greyhound on the Hudson River line, nevertheless landed in New York City, with a my mind full of excitement and a fair amount of expectations! Usually a pretty good recipe for disaster, but definitely not this time!

That I love New York is an understatement... I could truly live there tomorrow. It's fun, it's vibrant, it's clean and safe, with mostly friendly people everywhere. I walked Manhattan from the Upper West Side to Battery Park, Tribeca to Little Italy, from Brooklyn to the Queens... I was in over-feed mode, stopping at every possible food and cheese shops! And that could keep you busy for quite a while!

But let's start at the beginning...

If you are in the cheese business and in NYC, Murray's cheese shop has to be pretty high on your priority's list. So off to Greenwich Village I go!

Murray Greenberg was a Jewish Spanish civil war veteran who opened a wholesale butter, cheese and egg shop in 1940. The shop since was sold to an old Italian family in the 70s before being acquired by Rob Kaufelt in 1985.

The oldest cheese shop in town has now another establishment in Grand Central Terminal.

But back to Bleeker street and thanks to the taste-anything policy, I am very quickly introduced to two of the special cheeses of the day: Winnimere from Jasper Hill and Pawlet from Consider Bardwell Farm (both from Vermont).

Developed by Matteo Kehler, Winnimere is a unique seasonal cheese, made from row Ayshire cow's milk and washed with a lambic-style beer, brewed from the farm's own wild yeasts. Wrapped with a strip of spruce bark cut from the farm's own trees, Winnimere can be 'compared' to Vacherin Mont d'Or, and certainly has similar smooth and sweet milky flavours with a hint of woodsy aromatic depth combined with an extra yeasty component... purely divine!

Pawlet is a delectable aged Jersey cow's milk cheese, both tangy and buttery with hints of toasted hazelnuts aroma. It is the Vermont answer to Italian Fontina,

but with more of that Yankee 'je ne sais quoi'... if you know what I mean?

That will do me very well for my first cheese-meal

back in my hotel room...

Later on, I will return to Murray's for one of their

famous cheese class with a little detour through 'heaven': four underground maturing rooms situated underneath their shop!

Developed with the help of renowned French affineur, Herve Mons, the underground cellars are home to so many interesting types of North American and European cheeses. They look good, exude some exquisite aromas (not to everybody's taste, I know) and I feel like if they could speak they would say "try me! Budding affineur Brian Ralph is obviously doing a good job!

Lately though, Rob Kaufelt took a huge step and little Murray's has joined forces with the giant supermarket chain Kroger. Somehow, I am pretty sure I am not the only one to question what the end result might be? Happy to be proven wrong!

Next stop, the Flatiron District... Beecher's!

With a first shop opened in Seattle in 2003, Kurt Beecher Dammeier was able to put his passion for artisan cheese into action and became the only artisanal cheesemaker in Seattle.

Eight years later, he took his award-winning cheeses on the road, opening a new cheese kitchen, cafe and restaurant in New York City's Flatiron's District.

It is an impressive shop with welcoming staff at the door greeting you with a sample of their 15 month old flagship signature cheese. In front of you and behind a huge window, cheese makers are working hard, moving continuously their finely cut curd. They are making cheese on site!

With their own restaurant underneath the facility, Beecher's has obviously created a new benchmark for cheese shops. It looks so good, it is impossible not to want to stay a bit longer and try a bit more cheeses. Before long, you exit the shop with a bag full of goodies and a sense of great satisfaction!

Let's move on...

In the lower east side, the Essex street Market is an old institution. Originally populated by jewish and Italian immigrants, this ever changing and growing neighbourhood is now home to a younger and slightly more affluent population.

This is where Anne Saxelby and Benoit Breal decided to open a shop in 2006, becoming very quickly an institution themselves. Anne, who used to work at Murray's, offers a premium selection of American farmstead cheese, with a focus on cheeses produced in the Northeastern United States. Lately, she joined forces with Herve Mons and, with Laure Dubouloz help and talent, is now also presenting a very interesting range of fine French cheeses. It seems that her resources and expertise are more and more sought after in the NYC food scene.

The likes of Daniel Boulud, French Chef and owner of several award-winning's restaurants (I went to one of them: Daniel, a three Michelin star Relais & Chateaux on 60 east 65th Street... deliciously attractive and so yum), entrusted her to look after his cheese selection for his Epicerie Boulud on Broadway.

Anne Saxelby is becoming 'royalty' in the cheese business!

Next, Brooklyn...

Brooklynites are famously proud of their nick of the woods!

And so they should. It's spacious, green with trees and parks, without forgetting a very beautiful bridge!

In 2003, the Bedford Cheese Shop opened at the corner of Bedford avenue and North 4th Street. It is said that this shop was one of the businesses that inspired others to make Williamsburgh the foodie destination it became.

The staff are enthusiastic and helpful without being too 'pushy'. There is a lot of cheese there, that is if you can see them behind their heavily covered info tags!

Now, I could not end this post without mentioning the exciting event that prompted the visit of more Australians in the Big Cheese... I mean Apple!

On the 8th of July 2011, the 2nd Cheesemonger Invitational, organised and hosted by Adam Moskovitz, took place in Long Island City. Fourty cheesemongers from all over the world fought their way through 4 different challenges. It was wild, it was loud, it was unbelievably exciting. The ultimate cheese party for cheese fanatics. Somehow, I felt at home!

The presence of three Australian talented cheesemongers made that night ever more so special: Alison Brien (Cheese Boardroom), Claudia Bowman (McIntosh & Bowman) and Anthony Femia (Richmond Hill Cafe) put on a great fight. We are very proud of you guys!

Let's try again next year!

Anne Saxelby was also one of the contestants and did very well too, finishing first in the first three challenges. In round four, both Anne and Anthony presented to the judges an amazing cheese plate paired with two of their 'magic' personal ingredients. Steve Jones from the Cheese Bar in Portland, Oregon, won the 2011 edition.

Such an amazing night!

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York!

Ageing gracefully

Let's set the record straight... I could probably live without chocolate or cakes, but I would not survive in a cheeseless world!

A world with no cheese is like a summer without any mangoes or an autumn with no mushrooms... or as the French Philosopher Brillat-Savarin put it in 1855, "... a beauty with only one eye", I am sure you get the idea!

In Adelaide (South Australia), we are very lucky to have access to hundreds of cheeses, both from Australia and all over the world.

So very often, instead of taking a walk in the parks or around the beach (both wonderful here too), I go and wander through the cheese stalls in the Adelaide Central Market.

I am doubly lucky, since I also have access to the first maturing cave of its genre in Australia, which is only one street away from the market... and believe me, entering this room has the same effect on me as a lolly shop would have on a child!

Undoubtedly, it had to be the topic of one of my first posts!

Although I am very aware of the fact that nothing can replace the sensorial impact of opening the heavy door that protects around 7 tonnes of precious cheese, I will do my best to recreate some of its very attractive qualities and features for you!

First and foremost, this room is the result of years of travelling the world and countless meetings with passionate 'affineurs' (cheese refiners/maturers). Back home, it was just a matter of recreating as best as we could the natural

environment cheeses are crying our for.

Ideally, we would have liked to find a real and natural cave, but realistically we knew our chances were poor.

So we had to deal with our own limitations and transcend them... Thanks to affineurs such as Herve Mons, Denis Provent and Carlo Fiori, and also thanks to our local Victorian affineur, Richard Thomas; with their years of experience and wisdom, our special room became operational in the middle of 2009. Since then, we are learning more and more everyday, and our excitement has not diminished one bit!

The cheese is happy in our special room. You know how we know this? As soon as we open the famous heavy door, we are instantly greeted with the most amazing odours. A mixture of earth and ammonia, spice and dust, it is vibrant and energising... it is truly alive!

The cheeses there look strikingly beautiful in their variety of shapes and texture. We are dealing mainly with semi-hard and hard cheeses. The kind that have what it takes to resist a 52 day trip across the ocean from Europe to Australia. The sort of cheeses with rinds that protect them from potential external aggressions. Sometimes, long and rough trips may affect their integrity, and our room is then turned into an Intensive Care Unit with immediate 'TLC' provided by our sensational 'budding' affineur Sam!

Sam plays a vital role in that room. Everyday of its working week, he visits it with a loving eye and a caring hand, armed with a bucket filled with a brine solution or one of his secret mixture and a brush. He will be in contact with each and every cheese once a week! Sometimes, just caressing them and turning them over so that the moisture content is evenly dispersed and the wood underneath is freed of any surplus. Sometimes, making sure the rind looks healthy and in full protection mode.

It's definitely a work of love and that's what you're getting when you are lucky enough to be at the end of this delicate and uncompromised chain.

So if like me, you'd rather wander through a maze of various colours and smells, do not hesitate to drop me a line on this blog. Who knows, I might take you with me next time you are near by.

Cheese

Valerie