TASTES: Holiday Edition- The More the Merrier

By Erica

'Tis the season-- sparkly lights, fragrant trees, gift-wrapped presents, and, most importantly, lots of dinner parties. Dinner parties mean appetizers, and appetizers mean cheese. Usually, the spread includes a orange and white striped wedge of cheddar, some kind of blue cheese, and maybe a Brie. Sometimes, though, there's something new. Last night, for instance, my family brought three cheeses to a friend's house. If it were last year, I would have shoveled lots of cheese and bread into my mouth (politely, of course), noted that they all tasted pretty good, and moved on. This year, however, as co-author of this cheese blog, I decided to do some research on the wheels and wedges that we enjoyed.

1) Saint Faron
This cheese, a wheel with a diameter of about five inches and a height of about four, is a cow's milk triple crème from France. Triple crèmes are cheeses to which cream is added to increase the butterfat content of the solid ingredients to 75% (overall, the fat content is about 40%). Other triple crèmes include mascarpone and St. André. As you can imagine, this cheese was very smooth. Like the Camembert we tasted earlier, it essentially melted in my mouth (I didn't lick this cheese as we did the Camembert because I was in public). It is an incredibly lush, full cheese. This lushness seemed to overwhelm any subtle notes that may have existed, which isn't a bad thing. To me, triple crèmes are about richness. In a country that despises and avoids fat like the plague (when, in fact, fat is a crucial ingredient to many of the most tasty foods), it is very pleasing to eat a cheese for which the fattiness is the point of it all.

2) Mousseron Jurassian
A harder, but still sliceable, wedge, this is a Jura Mountain cheese like Gruyère or Comté. The Jura Mountains are a part of the Alps that span Germany, Switzerland, and France. Because of the dense vegetation in this area, many its cheeses have an earthy taste. Mousseron Jurassian is made from raw cow's milk. I liked the cheese's even texture, and it is more mild than many of the cheeses that Kara and I have tasted thus far. M.J. is a very pleasant cheese, but not a stand out. If stronger cheeses are like the flashy, colorful Christmas decorations that wow the neighbors, M.J. is like a string of those white, tasteful lights that make a quiet and comforting holiday statement.

3) Hoch Ybring
Named after the area in Switzerland from where it comes, this is also a raw cow milk cheese. The Hoch Ybrig region famous for its skiing and hiking. The Hoch Ybrig cheese (pictured above) is famous for the white wine brine that it is washed in while it ages. This cheese was a favorite among the dinner guests. It has a strong earthy taste, a rough texture, and the grassy, mushroomy notes linger on one's tongue. This, in my opinion, is a perfect appetizer cheese. It is not overly pungent, but has enough flavor to be interesting.

And so, my first cheeses of the holiday season were delicious. I hope your Christmas season is as cheesy as mine!