A tasting from Country Cheeses

Strolling around Topsham in Devon earlier today in the late autumn sunshine we passed a cheese shop that looked a bit out of the ordinary and turned out to be something of an Aladdin's cave.

Gary Jungheim the proprietor not only sells cheese, or 'real cheese' as he describes it, but gets involved in making it as a result of which his firm Country Cheeses stocks a whole lot of West Country cheeses I'd never even heard of before.

I'm on a quest to find cheeses that work with red wine at the moment (you may be surprised to hear that many don't) and here's how they fared:

Pennard Ridge
A hard Caerphilly-like goats cheese from Phil Rainbow of the Somerset Cheese Company. Attractively firm and crumbly in texture (firm to cut, light and fresh in the mouth) but with a full, tangy, nutty flavour. 7/10 with our red (a 2006 Domaine Gauby Les Calcinaires Côtes du Roussillon Villages). A more than creditable showing but a Sauvignon Blanc or Loire red like Bourgeuil or Saumur Champigny would have respected the cheese's integrity better.

Tamaracott Boyton
A tangy Pecorino-like sheeps cheese made by Terri Rasmussen in North Devon. Sheeps cheese is always pretty good with red wine and this was no exception. 8/10

No Name*
A delicious washed rind cows milk cheese with an unctuous creamy texture. Not nearly as pungent as most French washed rind cheeses but with plenty of rich, full flavour. Just about survived our red but would be considerably happier with a white such as an Alsace Pinot Gris. 5/10
* In fact the cheese is normally named Morn Dew and comes from one of my favourite local producers Pete Humphries of White Lake Cheeses of Somerset.

We also tasted a sample of the Beenleigh Blue from Ticklemore Cheese in Totnes they were selling, a ewes' cheese I had tasted before. It's deceptively mild looking without much veining but packs a similar punch to a Roquefort so is better suited to a sweet wine such as Sauternes. Not good with red anyway - 3/10

The problem with strong and blue cheeses is they tend to strip the fruit out of reds leaving you with a slightly bitter taste in your mouth. More on this subject, if you're interested, on my website Matching Food & Wine.

Anyway Country Cheeses is a gem and I'm glad to have discovered them. They also have branches in Tavistock and Totnes.

Two unsung cheese heroes

About the last place you expect to find real experts on cheese is behind a supermarket cheese counter but I was amazed to find not only one but two such paragons in my local branch of Waitrose in the Henleaze neighbourhood of Bristol.

First there was Hilary Margolan (in the rather fuzzy picture above) who knowledgeably discussed the fat content of different curd cheeses, compared two different red-wine washed cheeses (the fact that Waitrose stocks two is pretty remarkable in itself) and discussed which goats cheese would be best for crumbling over a pasta

Then she was joined by her boss Richard Perry who turns out to give talks on cheese to local groups as diverse as the girl guides and the local twinning committee.

Neither is - how shall I put this tactfully - a spring chicken (Hilary told me she was a nurse for 40 years) but both have a real passion for their subject you'd be lucky to come across in a specialist cheese shop. Clever Waitrose and lucky me.

What do chefs know about cheese?

Not a lot if the results of a survey recently published in Restaurant magazine are anything to go by. Of their top ten cheeses (which the magazine rather overexcitedly dubs the 'world's best') eight were from France and two from England. None from those great cheese producing countries Italy or Spain (Hello! What about parmesan and Gorgonzola?) let alone Portugal or Greece. Could it be because the survey was commissioned by the French cheese promotional body Frencheese which is currently running a feature on the poll on their website? Perish the thought!

The fairly predictable list included Montgomery's Cheddar, Brie de Meaux, Colston Bassett Stilton, Camembert de Normandie, Roquefort Cartes, Comté, Mont d’Or, Beaufort, Chaource and Ossau Iraty from Fromagerie Agour (did the chefs actually specify the producer, unprompted? Unlikely. I wouldn't have done.)

I wasn’t over-impressed either with the dishes cited in the piece as examples of what ‘modern cooks’ are doing with cheese. Pork and Brie Gateau, onion soup with fried Camembert and (yuk) Brie and Mussel Stew. I love Brie and I love mussels but please, not in the same dish.

Frencheese had arranged for journalists to go and taste the cheeses at what many consider the best cheese shop in London, Patricia Michelson’s La Fromagerie in Moxon Street. She obviously considered the selection slightly unbalanced and sneaked in an ash-coated goats’ cheese and an Epoisses. All were superb, as you’d expect, especially the Beaufort, one of my own favourite cheeses. And I discovered an interesting wine match for Brie (always a tough cheese to pair) with a crisp dry Hirondelle Bianco Greco from Puglia that Michelson stocks in her shop and café.

She also served a small bowl of Fontainebleau, a delicious mixture of fromage blanc and whipped cream topped with a few wild strawberries. Now that’s a creative use of cheese!

Maybe a few more chefs should hang out in her shop ;-)