So, I just started a job at a fancy food distributor (yes, fancy, I said it) and we have so much cheese. So, so much cheese. All the cheese. And while I've had my hands on a lot of cheese in the last few years (the food not the currency), I don't always get the opportunity to sample the goods. As it's officially my job to get the word out about our products, we have a fridge full of samples that are generously thrust upon us and I have the memory of an overactive puppy, I thought I'd start to catalog my tasting adventures! Be prepared for new words I learn, descriptions of cheese in metaphor, and a lot of exclamation points!
Cypress Grove Chevre Humbolt Grove Mini, Arcata/Humbolt County, CA
First up, possibly one of my favorite creations, the Humbolt Fog. Oh, Humbolt Fog. Oh, oh, oh. This is a soft-ripened chevre with a layer of edible vegetable ash on the outside and through the middle (that bluish line? Yea you eat it. Well, I recommend you eat all of it, because it's delicious). What does that mean? Well, chevre means it's made from goat's milk in the French style (a creamy, fresh fresh fresh spreadable type) and soft-ripened basically means it's gonna get soft and gooey, y'all. Most soft-ripened cheeses (think Brie or Camembert) are coated with a white mold* to form the rind (also known as bloomy rind, usually penicillium camemberti, yes like penicillin!) to protect the cheese from nastiness as it ages (or ripen)--the older the cheese gets, the softer it'll get.
You're getting photos from their website because I basically inhaled it after waiting for it to come to room temperature. Cypress Grove was created by Mary Keehn after she got into breeding goats. The story goes, she was looking for a source of milk for her children and the adjacent farmer said that if she could catch the two on his farm, she could have them. It's not an uncommon story as far as cheesemakers go--farmer meets pastoral animal, pastoral animal makes all this milk, cheese happens. Just your typical farmer meet animal story. LUCKY FOR US. We had a Cypress Grove tasting a week ago, so our fridge is full of samples (quelle horreur). The tasting was excellent and I highly recommend any of their cheeses--they do a super fresh chevre that's your typical spreadable, rindless deal with different additives like fennel pollen or herbs de provence (Keehn's a hippie, shocker, so they're named things like PsycheDillic and Purple Haze), a couple soft-ripened (Truffle Tremor, be still my heart), and a couple Gouda-style goat milk cheeses which are just downright delightful.
So Humbolt Fog comes in two sizes now--that big guy on the bottom and the little buddy sitting on top. The taste of the chevre itself is pretty much the bee's knees--creamy, slightly tangy, rich. The smaller one ages faster so it's a bit drier, a touch tangier, and you get more rind, which in this case is fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I like me my bloomy cheeses, but sometimes the rind gets downright nasty. There's just something about sticky, pasty rind getting stuck in my pearly whites that just does me wrong. Just Me? Maybe? The rind on Humbolt is lovely, though--soft and toothsome without getting all caught up in your grill. It adds texture and that distinct sharp fragrance to the salty buttermilk like center.
And then there's the proteolysis, which is a sciencey world for the most aged part of the cheese (or where the bacteria in the cheese has broken down the most milk proteins). See that darkish line between the chevre and the dark ash line around the outside of the cheese? P*R*O*T*E*O*L*Y*S*I*S. The consistency is somewhere around condensed milk and it's the strongest tasting part of the cheese itself. It just makes Humbolt Fog a texture fiesta!
OH AND THE ASH. The ash is super fun! It's very subtle tasting and doesn't really add any smokiness or odd texture, but a kind of minerality and coolness that's nice against the tangy goodness that is goat's milk cheese. Keehn said she dreamed about creating Humbolt Fog, which resembles the fog line that settles on the treeline in northern California when she was on the plane home from France. That works for me as this cheese is more than dreamy.
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*mold you can't be serious. To that I reply YES, AMERICANS. MOLD. This side note will be for the Yanks and anyone who gets all uppity about such things. Look, my fellow Americans (and others), I know you hear that word and freak out. You'll also freak out at bacteria and raw milk. And sometimes you should! But much to the chagrin of the FDA and our Lysol way of life, all mold or bacteria or yeast is not out to kill us. I obviously have some strong feels about this, so future post for sure. Just know that humans have been using molds and bacterias to prevent the nasty kind that make us sick for almost as long as we've been cultivating the land. It's gonna be ok.
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