Finer Flavored Cheeses

Award-winning options and strong sales are changing the trade’s view of offerings made with herbs and spices—and even hay and coffee.

By Janet Fletcher

Consumers have rarely needed urging to try cheeses laced with herbs, chilies, spices, mushrooms or dried fruits. They like them.

It’s the cheesemongers who have often felt that these manipulated cheeses compromised the image of their store or cheese case. But in recent years, importers and domestic producers have introduced some higher-end selections that even carriage-trade cheesemongers are proud to sell. No longer relegated to low-budget party trays, flavored cheeses from fine cheesemakers are earning retailers’ respect.

“I’m a purist,” admits Ruth Taggart, specialty cheese merchandiser for Oregon’s seven Market of Choice stores. “But I want to buy for my customer and not for myself.”

Truffles Lead the Charge

One of the innovators in this category was—and continues to be—truffled cheeses and the strong showing has raised the profile of other flavored cheeses. Merchants say that such truffled cheeses sell year-round now, although interest peaks at the fourth-quarter holidays. Truffled Brillat-Savarin from France, truffled pecorino from Tuscany, truffled goat cheeses from Piemonte like Caprino Tartufo and the truffled cow’s-milk Sottocenere from the Veneto are among the flavored European cheeses that have become staples in specialty shops. Cypress Grove’s Truffle Tremor, a soft-ripened goat’s milk cheese that finished first in its category at the 2009 American Cheese Society (ACS) competition, and was a Gold winner in the Outstanding Cheese & Dairy Product category in the 2009 sofiTM Awards Competition, has been a hit since its debut in 2007.

Herbs, Peppers and Other Spices

Specialty merchants who might decline to stock Pepper Jack because the neighboring supermarket sells it are showing enthusiasm for other cheeses laced with peppercorns, such as Bellwether Farms Pepato (an aged sheep’s milk cheese with black peppercorns), Beecher’s Marco Polo (Cheddar style with peppercorns) and Pecorino Pepato from Italy.

Rich Rogers, proprietor of Scardello Artisan Cheese in Dallas, satisfies his customers’ taste for peppered and chile-laced cheeses with Cowgirl Creamery Devil’s Gulch, a bloomy-rind cow’s milk cheese with sweet and hot peppers, and Texas Twister, a garlicky goat cheese from On Pure Ground with jalapeño and roasted red pepper.

Holland has a long tradition of flavoring its Goudas, says Dutch-born cheesemaker Marieke Penterman of Wisconsin’s Penterman Farm. Adding spices like clove, caraway, fenugreek and cumin was a way of expanding the narrow range of Dutch cheese. Penterman’s raw-milk fenugreek Gouda is in such demand that she can’t manage to age it longer than the required 60 days.

Flavored cheeses now represent 27 percent of the competition entries at ACS, according to David Grotenstein, judging chairman. “Peppers were always popular, but now we’re seeing some more imaginative flavors,” says Grotenstein, who mentions flowers, citrus, blueberries, cranberries, onions and wasabi among the ingredients turning up in competition entries. “We’re seeing more people using herbs from their own farm, or [using] something that’s local to them.”

American cheesemakers aren’t the only ones with vivid imaginations. Paul Kemp, online retailer iGourmet.com’s director of product development, reports that English Cheddar producers are experimenting with flavors that may be unprecedented in cheese, such as harissa.

“For me, the most unusual—and, I’ll be honest, I was sitting firmly on the sides until I tasted it—was Somerdale’s Thai Curry Cheddar,” says Kemp. “We got an incredible response to it.”

External Rubs and Flavorings

Joshua Kaplan, the head cheesemonger at Di Bruno Brothers in Philadelphia and a self-described “cheese snoot,” probably won’t be carrying the Thai Curry Cheddar. 
Kaplan admits to a strong prejudice against “cheese with stuff in it,” although wheels with external flavorings don’t offend him.

“Herb-covered cheese has always been good,” says Kaplan, who admires the Corsican Brin d’Amour, a sheep’s milk cheese coated with dried local herbs; the Swiss Le Maréchal, an herb-coated cow’s milk mountain cheese similar to a small-format Gruyère; and the Spanish Oveja al Romero, a sheep’s milk cheese coated with lamb suet and rosemary.

Kemp says he has noted a trend toward flavoring wheels with external rubs, citing Il Forteto’s Basilio, a Tuscan pecorino coated with basil; and the same dairy’s Pecorino Affienato rubbed with honey and hay. Utah’s Beehive Cheese Company, a five-year-old creamery, has made a splash with Barely Buzzed, a Cheddar-style cheese rubbed with coffee grounds and lavender.

“Nobody cares about another plain white Cheddar,” says Pat Ford, one of Beehive’s proprietors. “They care about something that’s crazy and unique.” Barely Buzzed now accounts for 30 percent of sales at Beehive, although it is only one of ten cheeses the creamery makes.

“When I heard about it, my first thought was ‘gimmick,’” says Emiliano Lee, cheese and charcuterie manager for Liberty Heights Fresh in Salt Lake City, Utah. “But if you taste it, the idea of it being gimmicky fades away. It’s just a good cheese and the flavoring is integral.”

In evaluating flavored cheeses, ACS judges look for a balance between body and flavoring, says Grotenstein. As Lee recognized in assessing Barely Buzzed, the underlying cheese has to be good. Rogers, who carries no other flavored Cheddars in his two-year-old Dallas shop, makes an exception for Barely Buzzed. “I love that you can still taste the milk,” says the merchant.

Fruit-Flavored Cheeses

Perhaps the most controversial flavored cheeses are those incorporating sweet or fruity elements, ingredients more often associated with dessert. Rogers, for example, carries a goat cheese mixed with dried figs and honey from a Texas producer, but won’t stock any of England’s fruited Stiltons, the so-called “white Stiltons” that have no blue veining. Others, like iGourmet, have no such qualms.

“The mango-ginger [Stilton] is overwhelmingly popular for us,” says Kemp, who also loves Westfield Farm’s Chocolate Capri, a Massachusetts goat cheese.

Savvy cheese merchants, whatever their prejudices, will stock at least a few flavored cheeses, says Taggart. To think you can get away without them is a mistake. “You’re going to lose a customer base,” she warns. Evaluate them carefully to find the exceptional ones. And don’t assume that carrying flavored cheeses will alienate shoppers with more sophisticated tastes.

“The same customer can buy Jasper Hill cheese and the best blues and also want a bacon-smoked Gouda to put on a hamburger,” says Taggart. “But you have to be careful because you can easily lose the case to [flavored cheese]. You have to decide, ‘What kind of shop am I?’” |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.

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