Setting out to find a new cheese to add to your life is a great way to



spend a weekend afternoon. There are some great spots in just about

every city to explore new tastes. Once you find your new cheese, having

it loose its flavor or dry out before you can share it with others is a

sad moment. So let's talk about caring for the cheese.

As a rule, you shouldn't slice up your hunk of cheese before you are

ready to use it. Unpasteurized cheese will begin to loose subtlety and

aroma once it is sliced and more area is exposed to the oxygen in the

air. So keep them in hunks as long as you can.

Find out from your cheese vendor, or from searching the Internet, what

conditions were used to mature your new found cheese. Storing your

cheese in the same conditions is often the best way to keep it

flavorful. For hard, semi-hard and semi-soft cheeses the normal storing

temperature is about 8-13 C (about 46 degrees Fahrenheit) for example.

Cheese stored in the refrigerator should be removed about an hour and a

half before serving, letting the cheese warm up allows the flavor and

aroma to develop.

Keeping your cheese wrapped in waxed paper is much better than a plastic

wrap or plastic container. Waxed paper, inside a loose-fitting storing

bag will not lose humidity and will maintain air circulation. Plastic

will often condense air and trap moisture. One exception to this would

be blue cheese. Mould spores from blue cheese spread quickly and easily.

If they stayed on the cheese that would be fine, but they don't, and

quickly spread to anything close to them. Cheeses contain living

organisms that must not be cut off from air, yet it is important not to

let a cheese dry out.

Most cheese are like sponges for other strong smelling odors, so you

don't want to store cheese next to the garlic dip, or anything that

might damage the cheese's flavors.

So what cheese should we be looking for? Really it depends a great deal

on what we might be serving with the cheese. If wine is on the list,

then that may make it a bit easier to narrow down a good new cheese to

bring home.

The rule of thumb for finding cheese to serve with wine is: the whiter

and fresher the cheese the crisper and fruitier the wine. White wines

normally go better with more cheeses than reds wines do, but a dry fresh

red wine goes very well with soft cheeses, especially goat milk types.

Light fruity red wines are often the best matches for other cheeses, but

the heavier reds are a hard match with cheese. Sweet wines a great with

the cheeses that have a high acidity, the contrast in tastes is often

very enjoyable. Dry champagnes a great choice with bloomy white rinds.

The matching of cheese and wine is such an old culinary tradition that

when you are first starting out on the matching exploration of these

two, try combinations which include cheese and wine from the same

geographical regions. There are probably good reasons they make the

cheese and wine they do.

Personal enjoyment is the last and final line of judgment. So enjoy

yourself and have a great time exploring new tastes.