Cheese is Cheese. Except It Really Isn't.

A customer came into the deli this morning.

“I've lived in this town for years, and I've never been in here.”

That's something we hear surprisingly often.

Then came the usual first encounter with our cheese counter. A look along the shelves. A little surprise at just how many cheeses there are. A few moments spent looking at names they'd never seen before.

And then came the comment.

“Cheese is cheese.”

Well...

Yes.

And absolutely not.

If Cheese is Cheese, Wine is Wine

At its simplest, cheese isn't particularly complicated. Milk, cultures, perhaps rennet and salt, followed by varying amounts of time and human intervention.

So perhaps cheese is cheese.

But by the same logic,

• wine is wine.
• Coffee is coffee.
• Bread is bread.
• Beer is beer.
• A suit is a suit.
• And a car is a car.

They're all perfectly accurate statements. They're also almost completely meaningless.

Because the interesting bit isn't what category something belongs to. It's what somebody does within that category.

Start With the Milk

Before the cheesemaker has really done anything, we already have differences.

Cow's milk doesn't taste the same as ewe's milk. Ewe's milk doesn't behave like goat's milk. The breed of animal matters. What it eats matters. Where it grazes matters. The season matters.

Even milk from the same herd isn't necessarily identical throughout the year.

And then somebody decides what to do with it.

That's where things really start getting interesting.

What Would You Like Your Milk to Become?

The cheesemaker starts making decisions.

• Which cultures?
• How much rennet?
• At what temperature?
• How long should the curds form?
• How should those curds be cut?
• Should they be stirred?
• Cooked?
• Washed?
• Pressed?
• How much moisture should remain?
• How much salt?
• Should the cheese develop a rind naturally? Should something be added to encourage one? Should it be washed during maturation?

And then there is time.

• Days?
• Weeks?
• Months?
• Years?

Change any one of those decisions, and you can change the resulting cheese.

Change several, and you can end up with something almost unrecognisable from another cheese that began life with essentially the same raw material.

Which Is Why This Is All “Cheese”

Walk along our counter, and you might find a soft, bloomy cheese that almost collapses when ripe.

A hard cheese with a dense, crystalline texture.

A blue cheese shot through with veins of mould.

A washed-rind cheese whose aroma reaches you before the cheese does.

Something young, fresh and lactic.

Something buttery.

Something earthy.

Something nutty.

Something sweet.

Something savoury.

Something so gentle that almost anyone could enjoy it.

And something that requires a little more commitment.

They're all cheese.

But saying that makes about as much sense as walking into a wine merchant, looking at Champagne, Burgundy, Rioja and Port and declaring:

“Well, it's all fermented grapes.”

Technically, you have a point.

But you're missing rather a lot.

Then There Are the People

This is possibly the bit we find most interesting.

Cheese doesn't simply happen.

Someone has decided what they want to make.

Take the small cheesemakers we work with across Norfolk and East Anglia. They aren't all producing interchangeable blocks of something called “cheese”.

They're creating individual products.

One cheesemaker might want something soft, delicate and fleeting. Another wants something that can mature for months and develop deeper, nuttier flavours. Someone else deliberately introduces blue mould. Another washes a rind to encourage an entirely different collection of bacteria to flourish.

Some follow traditions that are centuries old.

Others experiment.

Some do both.

The result is something we've talked about before at The Norfolk Deli: food producers are really food designers.

Milk is their material.

The finished cheese is their design.

And Then You Get to Taste It

This is the part that a supermarket shelf can sometimes make difficult to appreciate.

If your experience of cheese is largely Cheddar, Brie, Stilton and perhaps something labelled “continental cheese selection” at Christmas, then “cheese is cheese” isn't an entirely unreasonable conclusion.

But stand in front of a proper cheese counter and start tasting and the idea becomes much harder to sustain.

Try a young cheese beside a mature one.

Cow beside ewe.

A bloomy rind beside a washed rind.

A mass-produced Brie beside a small-batch British soft cheese.

A supermarket Cheddar beside a traditionally made clothbound Cheddar that has spent months developing.

You don't need to be a cheese expert.

You don't need the vocabulary.

You don't even need to know what you're “supposed” to be tasting.

You just need to decide:

Do I like this one?

That's where discovering cheese starts.

Perhaps Cheese Is Cheese

So our customer this morning wasn't entirely wrong.

Cheese is cheese.

In the same way that wine is wine, beer is beer, coffee is coffee and bread is bread.

The word tells you what it is.

It doesn't tell you anything about how good it might be, who made it, where it came from, how it was made or what it's going to taste like.

And that's why, after more than twelve years standing behind a cheese counter, we can still discover cheeses that surprise us.

There is always:

• Another milk.
• Another maker.
• Another method.
• Another season.
• Another idea.
• Another cheese.

So perhaps the next time somebody tells us “cheese is cheese”, there's really only one sensible response.

“Would you like to taste a few?

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Cheese

Why do different cheeses taste so different?
The flavour of a cheese is influenced by the milk, starter cultures, cheesemaking method, salt, moisture, rind development, maturation conditions and length of ageing. Small changes at any of these stages can produce significant differences in flavour, aroma and texture.

Does the type of milk affect the flavour of cheese?
Yes. Cow's, goat's and ewe's milk have different compositions and characteristics, which influence the flavour and texture of the finished cheese. Breed, diet, season and farming conditions can also affect the milk available to the cheesemaker.

What does ageing do to cheese?
As cheese matures, enzymes and microorganisms gradually change its proteins and fats, developing flavour and altering texture. Depending on the cheese, ageing can make it firmer, softer, stronger, nuttier, more savoury or more complex. Some cheeses are designed to be eaten young, while others can mature for many months or even years.

Why do cheeses have different types of rind?
The rind is partly determined by how the cheesemaker makes and matures the cheese. Some develop naturally, some are encouraged to grow particular moulds, while washed-rind cheeses are regularly washed during maturation to encourage different microorganisms. The rind can strongly influence a cheese's aroma, flavour, and texture.

What is the difference between artisan cheese and mass-produced cheese?
Artisan cheese is generally produced on a smaller scale, with the cheesemaker more involved in individual batches and maturation. Larger-scale production usually places greater emphasis on consistency and volume. Neither description alone determines whether a cheese is good, but small-scale cheesemaking can allow makers to create distinctive cheeses that reflect their milk, methods and location.

Do I need to understand cheese to appreciate artisan cheese?
Not at all. You don't need to know about cultures, rinds or maturation to discover good cheese. Taste different styles and decide what you enjoy. A good cheesemonger can then use those preferences — perhaps mild, strong, creamy, crumbly, blue or washed-rind — to introduce you to other cheeses you might like.