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A Brie Primer

The name is used widely to describe cheeses that have little to do with the French AOC Bries. Learn what to look for, what to avoid and the best cheesemakers to seek out when you are choosing for your cheese counter.

Dining at a fashionable restaurant in Paris several years ago, I asked the waiter about the cheese course. I expected him to wheel over a cart groaning with obscure farmstead delicacies. Instead, he announced with no little drama that he had a véritable Brie de Meaux. He pronounced véritable slowly, each syllable distinct, as if to emphasize that genuine Brie de Meaux doesn’t come one’s way every day.

In the United States, it doesn’t come our way at all. Made with raw milk and matured fewer than 60 days, Brie de Meaux AOC (appellation d’origine controllée, or name controlled) doesn’t meet the food-safety standards of the FDA. The best we can do here is Fromage de Meaux, a pasteurized-milk rendition of France’s best-known cheese.

That Parisian Brie de Meaux was sublime and the memory of it remains my gold standard. Although American retailers may have to look elsewhere to meet the public’s demand for Brie, surely no cheese counter can afford to be without one or more.

What Makes a Cheese a Brie?

Producers around the world have appropriated the name Brie for cheeses that bear little resemblance to Brie de Meaux or Brie de Melun, France’s other AOC Brie. Can it be made from goat’s or sheep’s milk? Can it be the size and shape of a Camembert? As you consider the Brie options for your own cheese counter, you can devise your own definition. But to keep this overview manageable, I’m excluding triple crèmes (after all, AOC Brie contains only 45 percent fat in dry matter) and restricting my focus to cheeses made with cow’s milk only, cloaked with a bloomy rind, devoid of blue veins, and at least roughly the shape and size of a véritable French Brie, which ranges from 4 pounds and 11 inches in diameter to 6 pounds and 14 inches in diameter.

What to Look For…and What to Avoid

The velvety, snow-white rind that develops on Brie comes from cultured molds added to the milk or sprayed on the young wheels. The mold blooms within days, coating the wheel with downy white. As the cheese ripens, brownish splotches may appear. Ideally, a Brie rind should be evenly thin with no cracks or sinking at the edges.

“I’m looking for some brown mottling,” says Liz Thorpe, vice president for Murray’s Cheese, the New York City retailer. “When I see a perfect white rind, I know I’m looking at something industrial.”

Although Brie can smell ammoniated when you first open the wrapper because of trapped gas, that aroma should dissipate quickly. Brie with a strong ammonia smell should go back to the supplier; the cheese is declining.

Those surface molds ripen Brie progressively from the outside in by breaking down milk proteins. To many enthusiasts, a perfectly ripe specimen will be supple under the rind but with a firm core, or heart, and with aromas that suggest garlic, broccoli or the forest floor. “It should be plump and pristine and smelling a little like mushrooms,” says Colette Hatch, cheese buyer for the three Oliver’s Markets in Northern California. The paste, or interior, should not pull away from the rind.

Brie that has a uniform texture throughout has probably been made with stabilizers that extend shelf life. You can leave a wheel on the counter for days and it hardly changes. These cheeses “look like plastic inside,” says Hatch, “and as they get older, sometimes they get harder. The flavors are so boring I don’t know how anyone can get pleasure out of that.”

Cheesemongers’ Favorites

Several leading retailers cite the Fromage de Meaux from Robert Rouzaire as the Brie with the most authentic flavor. “That’s the only one I’ll actually use the word Brie for,” says Cesar Olivares, cheese buyer for the three Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine stores in Chicago. Brie de Nangis, another Rouzaire product, gets high marks from some cheesemongers for its resemblance to AOC French Brie. Hatch finds it uneven but exciting when it’s right; Thorpe prefers the taste of the Fromage de Meaux. Nonetheless, Murray’s sells the Nangis at its retail counter because the larger Meaux is harder to handle. “You wrap it in plastic and its sides bulge out,” says Thorpe. “It’s got a narrow window of opportunity.”

Hatch guides sophisticated shoppers to Le Chatelain Brie from France. “You might think you’re in France when you taste it,” says the cheesemonger, who is French. “I can never cut it without tasting it.”

But the novice cheese shopper who expects Brie to be buttery and mild can be taken aback by the mushroomy boldness of Fromage de Meaux or Le Chatelain. At Murray’s, that inexperienced customer is usually steered to the Mon Sire, a lush, double-cream French Brie with less challenging flavors. Other retailers point cheese newcomers to Fromager d’Affinois, another double-cream French cheese made in a traditional Brie format. Thanks to an industrial process known as ultrafiltration, Fromager d’Affinois ripens more quickly than a conventional Brie and develops a silky texture with wide consumer appeal. At Murray’s, Fromager d’Affinois is an “upsell” for the customer ready to graduate from Mon Sire.

When it comes to Brie in the traditional format, America’s specialty cheesemakers appear to have ceded the niche to the French. Neither Thorpe nor Jeffrey Roberts, author of The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese (Chelsea Green, 2007), could think of a single American producer of artisan Brie, although many are making small-format, bloomy-rind cheeses resembling Camembert.

Domestic cheesemakers “can’t meet the price point” of the French Bries, says Roberts. They lack the centuries of expertise, the government subsidies and the low cost structure of France’s industrial plants. “Why would you take that on as an artisan producer?” asks Thorpe.

Even if you wanted to, argues Mateo Kehler, partner in Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, you couldn’t obtain the necessary cheese cultures. According to Kehler, who makes the acclaimed bloomy-rind Constant Bliss, some of the starter cultures the French use to produce Brie’s signature aromas are not approved by the FDA. So if we have to return to France occasionally to remind ourselves what genuine Brie tastes like, well, how bad is that? |SFM|

Janet Fletcher is the weekly cheese columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing and Enjoying.

HANDLING TIPS

Store Brie in its paper wrap in the box it came in, says Colette Hatch of Oliver’s Markets, and buy only what you can sell in one week. Most retailers pre-cut some quantity of Brie to keep up with demand, but try to cut no more than you can turn in one day. “You have to be mindful of your sales level because it’s compromised quickly in plastic wrap,” says Liz Thorpe of Murray’s Cheese. “It’s the cheese we have to manage production on most closely.”