A few months ago, I taught a Dessert Wine Class with a Cheese Tasting. It was so much fun, and everyone was very interested in how to put together a cheese plate and conduct a tasting. So, I thought I would share this tasting sheet from one of my sister's parties. This was the prelude to a delicious dinner. I love the inclusion of the sonnet! Doesn't the tasting look like fun? Feel free to borrow the sheet and conduct your own Beautiful Blue Tasting.
LA DéGUSTATION RECHERCHéE DES FROMAGES BLEUS
Sonnet To A Stilton Cheese
G.K. Chesterton
There … I got a Stilton cheese. I was so much moved by my memories that I wrote a sonnet to the cheese.
Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I—
She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading “Household Worlds”,
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.
LA DéGUSTATION RECHERCHéE DES FROMAGES BLEUS
1. CRATER LAKE BLUE
Rogue Creamery, Central Point, Oregon, U.S.A.
Raw cow’s milk (Holsteins and Brown Swiss): cheese is called firm, moist, complex, robust, sweet: aged 3+ months: fromagerie opened by Italian immigrants in 1935.
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2. POINT REYES ORIGIINAL BLUE
Farmstead Cheese, Point Reyes, Tomales Bay, California, U.S.A.
Raw cow’s milk (Holsteins): flavors in the cheese – sea salt and lemongrass – said to reflect California coastal fog and salty Pacific breezes: aged 6+ months: farm established by immigrant Italian dairymen, who began to make cheese in 1999.
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3. MAYTAG BLUE
Maytag Dairy Farms, Newton, Iowa, U.S.A.
Raw cow’s milk (Holsteins): characterized by its moist crumbly texture and lemony finish: Cheese originated by two Iowa State Universitymicrobiologists in the 1930s, from 1941 until today cheese is made on Maytag farm by the Maytag family.
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4. STILTON
Derbyshire, Leicestershire, or Nottinghamshire, England, U.K.
Pasteurized cow’s milk: eight dairies licensed to make Stilton cheese which has been granted the status of protected designation of origin by the EC: first made soon after 1730 by Cooper Thornhill, owner of the Bell Inn on the Great North Road in the village of Stilton: flavor called “honeyed” and “cheddary”: the British Cheese Board reported in 2005, that 75%of men and 85% of women experienced bizarre and vivid dreams after eating the cheese half an hour before going to sleep.
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5. ROQUEFORT
Les Departments de Aveyron, Aude, Lozère, Gard, Hérault and Tarn, Mid Pyrenees, France
Raw ewe’s milk (Lacaune, Manech, and Basco-Bérnaise): seven Roquefort producers who are required by law to age their cheese in the caves of Mont Combalou in Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, and to cut, package, and refrigerate their cheese solely and completely in the commune of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, share the protected designation of origin “Roquefort”: after Comté, Roquefort is France’s second most popular cheese (18,830 tons made in 2005): Roquefort or something like it is mentioned in literature by Pliny the Elder in AD79: in 1411, Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of the blue cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon: in 1925, the cheese received France’s first Appellation d’Origine Controlée.
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