In this episode I talk to Perry Wakeman, Britain’s first Affineur of the Year, and Head of Cheese at Cambridge-based affinage house Rennet & Rind, to answer everyone’s first question: What the heck is an affineur?
Perry answers that and a whole lot more — from the wackiest happenings he’s encountered in a cheese cave to some of the most moving moments in his life in artisan cheese.
(Re)sources
Aging Gracefully – a brief overview of what affinage is and why it’s done, with some notes about the use of natural caves
Affinage 101 – another overview that complements both Aging Gracefully and Perry’s British take on affinage with comments from a US affineur
I have a real dislike of the phrase “aged like milk” when used to indicate something aged poorly. Because aging milk is what produces interesting, complex cheese. Not all cheeses are aged, of course, and there’s something to be said for cheeses that showcase the sweet creaminess of fresh milk and pasture. But as a means of storing complete proteins for use in times of year when fresh foods are less available, it’s hard to grow wrong with cheese.
How the cheese is stored makes all the difference in the ultimate flavor of the cheese, and even its texture. Here are several cheeses, all of the same type, from the same dairy, which were sent out to several different aging facilities.
The grey/brown things in front of the cheeses are the bandage wrappings that they aged in. As you can see, in different spaces, they grew different types of molds — and some have more mold, others less.
You can read about the variations in flavor and texture between these separated-at-birth twins in this Twitter thread.
Leaving aside the cheeses that are essentially desiccated and kept away from moisture–common in the more arid regions in the world–aging a cheese is an ongoing dance of managing the microbial environment in which the cheese lives and breathes on its way to maturity. Different cheese types require different environments: some like things slightly warmer, others a bit cooler. Sometimes a cheese will spend a few weeks in a warmer space to develop certain yeasts and molds, and then move to a cooler one to allow the interior to ripen slowly. Surface-ripened cheeses such as bloomies and washed rinds tend to want more humid environments–95% humidity is common–while natural rinds do better at ~85% humidity. Temperature and humidity are two key variables that affect which microbes, yeasts and molds will be thriving in the air in the aging space, how effectively they may colonize the surface of the cheese, and even which ones will be able to develop within the curd itself.
The other part of affinage–that’s the art and science of aging cheese to perfection–is hands-on human intervention. Cheeses breathe. The younger they are, the more moisture they exude. Here, for example, is a box in which a brand-new cheese had been sitting overnight, lid slightly ajar. Guess where the cheese was sitting within the box?
In this week’s Episode 15 (out on Friday), affineur Perry Wakeman talks a lot about turning cheeses, because flipping large English-type cheeses–anywhere between 10-50 pounds–is hard work. And as you can see, the side that’s facing up gives off a lot of moisture. The bottom side tries to as well, but doesn’t have the airflow that the top does–so depending on what sort of shelving it’s sitting on, the bottom side can get moldy or slimy if left too long in one place. So cheeses need to be turned regularly to ensure even moisture throughout the cheese, and an even rind. There’s quite a lot of attention paid to the rind and managing what’s growing on it, as well.
The aging space is most often referred to in European-style cheesemaking as “the cave”, because the sedentary peoples in western Eurasia have long made use of natural caves for storing and slowly aging a variety of foods: cheese, wine, olive oil, cured meats, etc. (No big surprise that these foods tend to all show up together in the cuisines of people who make them.) Natural caves offer cool, relatively consistent temperatures and high humidity, which turn out to be just the sort of conditions cheese cultures like best. Of course, there are only so many caves available, and in some regions there are more than others. And they can be homes to a variety of other non-microbial beasts as well, which tends to give modern food regulators pause. So thanks to modern refrigeration technology, plenty of affinage is done in purpose-built warehouses today.
When a cheese ages, the cultures that are in the milk are always interacting with those in the surrounding air, so that surrounding microbiome is critical. A human-built cave is somewhat easier to clean than a natural one: perhaps too easy–if you clean your cave too thoroughly, you lose the microbiome that has been built up in the cave by successive generations of the cheese that have inhabited it. But even in built caves, as Perry describes, some surprising things can happen.
The microbiome of natural caves can be exponentially more complex. I was completely sold on the natural cave effect when we visited the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England several years back: they usefully provide very clear-cut A/B testing. =) Cheesemaking had actually died out in the gorge in the mid 20th century, but a new creamery opened there in 2003. The gorge is pockmarked with numerous natural caves. In fact, this is the site of Gough’s Cave, where the mesolithic Cheddar Man, as well as some earlier humans, were buried, 9-14,000 years ago. (They all lived before domesticated ruminants arrived in England–no cheese for them.) When we visited in 2007, the creamery had just gotten permission to age cheese in Gough’s Cave a few months prior. And WOW. I’m not generally a huge fan of cheddar; I don’t like it sharp for the sake of sharpness, and often find it rather “one note”. But! The cave-aged cheddar is nothing like even the same creamery’s “modern-aged” cheeses, even with all other inputs being the same. It’s slightly crumbly, but still creamy, with a huge variety of flavors and just a slight sharpness at the end to cleanse the palate. There’s a nice video that shows the whole cheesemaking process they use, including what the cave-aged cheeses look like in comparison with the standard version. You see the beginning of the affinage process at 4:45, and then at 6:04 you’ll see the texture difference between the cave-aged and the “vintage” storeroom-aged versions.
In fact, two caves in the same valley or hillside can have notably different microbiomes. Here’s an excerpt from great article about the mix of natural and artificial caves used in the production of Saint-Nectaire, a washed rind cheese from south-central France:
Another article about a cave in Transylvania (complete with a greedy count!) talks about the particular strains of B Linens native to that cave which are responsible for the particular flavors of Năsal cheese.
One of the things Perry and I got into a bit is the evolving nature of the business of affinage. Traditionally, cheese producers aged their own goods in caves or cellars they owned. This was true of small farmstead producers, as well as the large estates and abbeys who produced cheeses in large quantities. Urban cheesemongers would have appropriately cool and humid storage facilities, but expected to receive nearly finished cheeses, banking on fast turnover in order to keep their stock levels manageable. Now, affineurs are becoming important middleman businesses, both aging cheeses that they receive shortly after their production in specially optimized facilities, and acting as distributors for those cheeses.
There’s lots more to learn about affinage in Episode 15. Perry’s love of his craft is incredibly infectious, and his answer to my final question was very moving. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Leaves of edible plants are used to wrap foods in many different cultures. In warm regions, from Central America, to SE Asia and southern India, corn husks and banana leaves wrap tamales and other meat-starch fillings and sometimes serves as plates. Slightly further north, the Chinese fill lotus leaves with sticky rice and little bits of meat & quail eggs. Further north again, variations on stuffed cabbage are common across northern Eurasia.
Western Europe is kind of an anomaly when it comes to leaves: there aren’t many dishes that use them as wrappings…except for cheese!
Since we’re entering Spring and trees are leafing out again, it seemed a good time to look at the use of leaves in cheesemaking.
Small, soft cheeses are perhaps the cheeses most commonly aged in leaf wrappings, especially in the Mediterranean countries. Common leaf choices include chestnut, grape and fig, which are all readily available in those regions. Chestnuts are often associated with cold weather and Christmastime in English-speaking countries, and indeed they grow in a fairly wide range of climates, but they used to be everywhere in southern Europe–especially in the hills and other marginal land where goats and sheep also thrive. In early medieval Italy, some landlords even provided incentives to tenants to grow the trees, which provided a (nutritionally limited) flour alternative for those who couldn’t grow wheat, as well as bark that could be used in tanning hides. No surprise that their leaves would be a common choice for local herders.
Now, one of the reasons fig, grape and chestnut leaves are popular, besides their ubiquity in the Mediterranean, is their size: just big enough to wrap a hockey puck in one leaf. Hockey puck-sized cheeses are common in southern Europe, especially Provence, because the dry, often hilly terrain is best suited to raising goats and sheep, which give relatively small volumes of milk compared to cattle. So if you’re a small farmer without enormous herds–especially in the days before refrigeration, when you pretty much had to make cheese shortly after milking your animals each day–smaller cheeses make a lot of sense. Of course, you can also use smaller types of leaves, in which case you’ll just use several to enclose the entirety of the cheese.
One can use leaves from any type of non-toxic plant. Lemon and orange leaves are lovely. Maple is a current favorite of several New England cheesemakers. (Temperate North America was once rich in chestnut trees as well, until a blight in the early 1900s nearly wiped them out. Gastropod has a great episode on the American chestnut.) Down in the southwestern US, hoja santa (aka Mexican pepper) leaf is becoming a trendy choice. I’ve also used cherry and blackberry leaves.
Smaller cheeses will dry out faster than larger ones, which is why many are eaten young, around 2-3 weeks old. With a small cheese, you obviously don’t want to wind up with more rind than paste, so aging it means balancing just enough time to develop flavor while avoiding dryness or mold development. That’s where the leaves come in: they help keep the cheese in its own moist little bubble as it ages, so no rind forms. And since the leaves are usually soaked in alcohol, molds don’t have hospitable surfaces to grow on.
Larger, longer-aged cheeses often have natural rinds, but there are also larger cheeses that are wrapped in several larger leaves, like the award-winning Rogue River Blue (grape leaves), its Spanish counterpart Valdeon (maple or chestnut), and Cornish Yarg, coated in nettles (more on nettles in a minute).
The way you use the leaves is to steam or blanche them a bit, then plunge them into ice water. This softens the more rigid fibers in the leaf, making it easier to fold, and also kills yeasts and other unwanted things that would affect the cheese in unwanted ways.
Then you let them air dry and macerate them in some kind of eau de vie to preserve them, so they don’t start rotting while you’re aging your cheese. Brandy is a common choice, but any high-proof liquor will work.
Fresh goat milk has a slightly lemony flavor, so I’m rather fond of using lemon leaves for wrappers. I soak a few lemons in a pint of vodka for a week or two, and then soak the lemon leaves in the lemon vodka.
Young, moist cheeses such as banons absorb the flavors of the leaves rather well, though some leaf types (ahem, blackberry) impart a much stronger flavor than others (whispers, cherry). If the cheese is left to age for a while, the character of the fruit flavor will also undergo aging: a young goat cheese wrapped in fig leaves will have a faintly sweet, floral flavor, but nothing that screams “Figs!”. But give it a couple of months, and it begins tasting specifically of dried figs.
Some leaves have another use in cheesemaking: as a source of plant rennet. Some plant rennets come from flowers, such as thistle rennet (discussed a lot in Ep 6). Fig sap has been used as a coagulant in the Mediterranean since ancient times. Lady’s bedstraw, a plant with bright yellow flowers, can be used as rennet by crushing the stalks, flowers and/or leaves. It also turns things yellow, so was used to enhance the color of both butter and cheese in medieval northwestern Europe (now annatto, a dye made from the seeds of a Mesoamerican plant, is used instead). There’s nettle leaf rennet. And in West Africa, a few different types of leaves are used for rennet as well.
Episode 13 talked a lot about Cheddar and its classic milled cousins. We left the story just hinting at the ongoing renaissance in British cheesemaking. In this episode, I interview passionate cheese nerd Mike Nistor (Instagram | Twitter) about how British cheeses are evolving–and some of his favorites and where to find them.
In Ep 13 on Cheddar, I mentioned bandage wrapping a few times in passing, but I found out from Twitter discussions that there are plenty of folks who are unfamiliar with the technique, since it’s something one only very rarely sees on package labels, and even then, there’s nothing resembling a “bandage” in evidence when you buy that piece of cheese.
With bandage-wrapping, you sort of make a mummy of your cheese: smear a layer of fat on the rind–originally whey butter, then later suet, now some folks use vegetarian options like palm or even Crisco. I like to use bacon grease, as it’s something we always have a lot of and it adds a wonderful, subtle, smoky flavor to the cheese. Then add a layer of cheesecloth and press it into the fat. Repeat two to three times more.
If you’re familiar with confit, you’re probably aware that fat can be used to seal off meat from oxygen and unwanted microbes that might otherwise grow on the surface of the meat. It’s the same principle here. The layers of cheesecloth make it easier to apply additional layers of fat since that’s harder to apply thickly on a freestanding thing like a cheese, vs meat that’s placed in a crock and surrounded w/liquid fat. The cloth is breathable, so it allows for some passage of air & moisture (waxed cheeses get much less), but cloth & fat combo greatly limits the exchange. That in turn limits how thick the rind of the cheese gets, which is important in a cheese that will age for a long time: you get more edible cheese if you don’t have a thick, dry rind. At the same time, it slows the surface aging, while allowing the interior to ripen slowly.
You don’t get as thick and dry a rind because less moisture is able to evaporate through all that coating. And that’s important in regions where the climate is relatively dry–especially if it’s also warm–because it prevents the rind from cracking. Cracks in your rind let in molds and sometimes also insects, if you’re an 18th or 19th century cheesemaker aging your cheeses in a barn or cellar. And those are bad news.
Cracking is less likely to happen if the cheese is almost evenly dry all the way through–think of the really hard cheeses from warm, dry climates like Parmesan or Pecorino. But Cheddar was designed to be a softer, moister, more toothsome cheese–and it was originally designed for shipping in the cool, damp climate of the North Atlantic. But New England gets hotter and drier in summer and colder and drier in winter than Britain–and already in the 1700s New England cheesemakers were shipping their wares to the much hotter climes of the mainland southern colonies as well as the British colonies of the Caribbean. So protecting the rind was critically important.
By contrast, you don’t get cracking if the cheese is kept in a cool, humid place–but you do get mold growth. And this is the other big attraction of bandage-wrapping: it limits mold growth on the rind of the cheese. So bandage wrapping has advantages no matter what sort of climate your cheese finds itself in.
Many types of cheese make a virtue of mold, with cheesemakers encouraging certain types of molds and erasing others. The yeasts and molds on a rind get their sustenance from the cheese itself, and as they process those cheese nutrients, they also contribute to the slow breakdown of fat and protein in the cheese, which changes the texture, and also produces various esters and ketones that provide more complex flavors and odors to the cheese.
A skilled affineur, or cheese ager, knows how to develop and maintain a certain mold profile on a consistent basis. But still, these are wild, living organisms; the composition of the milk and therefore the organisms’ diet changes through the seasons; and there’s always subtle variation due to a variety of factors.
Subtle variation is the mark of a well-made artisan cheese. Wild, not-well-controlled variability is a manufacturing problem. And because skilled affineurs and just-right aging environments are somewhat rare and expensive, not having to carefully tend a rind is a big advantage in making an affordable product at scale–which was the primary goal of cheddarmakers almost from the very beginning.
This picture is courtesy of the head affineur at Rennet and Rind, a British affinage house. It’s a fantastic closeup of a bandage-wrapped cheese. But all that grotty-looking mold on the bandages…pretty much stays on the bandages. When you peel them off at the end of aging, you’ll have little to no mold on the thin rind, and a very clean-looking cheese.
Cheddar is one of the most widely sold cheeses in the world. It’s made in every hemisphere, and is a central ingredient in countless casseroles and other cheesy dishes throughout the Anglosphere.
Its signature tang and unusual size and shape are all products of a quest for the perfect balance between a crowd-pleasing, snackable texture and durability.
Its history encompasses trade wars, conquest and empire, and the birth of industrial-scale food production, as well as international cooperation in the development of dairy science.
Dive in with the first episode of Season 2, and don’t miss the continuation of the story in Episode 14!
I’ve been reminded that today is my 10th anniversary of cheesemaking. Twitter figures into this story–as it does into the origin of the podcast–so let me see if I can tell this story in the right way…
Kid1’s birthday is just a few days after Christmas, so it’s always tough to come up with 2 events’ worth of presents all in one fell swoop. I was feeling a bit stumped.
I had 2 friends, one in Kentucky and one in Tennesse, who used to argue back and forth about whose state was the most redneck (each claiming the crown for their own state). One day one of them tweeted this:
Hmm….parent & child cheesemaking class?
Kid1 had loved cheeses of all kinds since he was a baby. Everything from brie to blue, since before he could talk.
I wondered if I might find such a thing in my area..and thanks to the power of Lord Google, I discovered that YES, there was a parent & child cheesemaking class scheduled for Jan 6, just a week after his birthday, at the San Francisco Cheese School. It was taught by one Louella Hill.
We made creme fraiche, ricotta, and stretched some pre-made mozzarella curd. I had never before had such ricotta! In between, we tasted a couple of cheeses, burrata and a goat cheddar (with wine for the parents, sparkling cider for the kids)…
Then we got a 20-minute overview of cheesemaking science. Kid1 is a great fan of science and was an enthusiastic audience for that portion especially.
A couple of years later I took a Pecorino class from her. She kinda thought she recognized me when I walked in, so I showed her the picture of Kid1 stretching curd. Her whole face lit up and she exclaimed, “Oh, I remember him! He was SOOO excited about it all!”
When she signed the copy of her book that we bought, she addressed it to Kid1, telling him he’d be a great cheesemaker some day. In point of fact, he has demonstrated no further interest in making cheese, but he is quite happy to have a mom who makes it for him.
So here we are, 10 years later, several cheeses always in the cave, a podcast, and who knows where this will all go next. All thanks to Kid1 and his fondness for cheese. And a bit of inspiration from Twitter friends.
There’s an old tale going around a lot this week, in which shepherds abiding in fields keep watch over their flocks by night. Very old tale: humans have been doing that for some 11-13,000 yrs, first for meat, then wool, then milk. The only animals w/whom we have an older domestic relationship are dogs.
You know where this is going…cheese. Yogurt is part of this thread too, since it’s what inspired a lovely article (to follow) which explores dairy in Eastern Turkey–the westernmost part of the Fertile Crescent region where domesticated sheep were developed. It’s about the hometown of Hamdi Ulukaya, the rags-to-riches founder of Chobani yogurt. In his hometown, of course, yogurt is made from whole sheep milk. so ~8% milk fat. Rather different from what’s Chobani makes in the US.
You really should read the whole article, if only to travel to someplace you may never go, and read about things that may soon disappear: notably the local cheese, which has been made pretty much the same way for millennia. But there are a few passages I wanted to highlight.
First, the fact that milk is actually a seasonal product, just like cherries & tomatoes. I’ve highlighted that in each of the Cheeses of the Seasons episodes, but it’s quite easy to forget for urban dwellers for whom milk is always just there, seemingly always the same. The authors of the article were unaware of that before visiting the town. =)
Cows lactation cycle is quite long, typically ~300 days, and modern domesticated cows are not strongly seasonal breeders, with both reproduction and milk production being a matter of nutrition–this is partly why in cow-centric countries, milk seems eternally available. Sheep and goats are much more strongly seasonal, like their wild counterparts, and while modern science has made it possible to manipulate these cycles somewhat, their lactation cycles usually run 6-8 months for dairy breeds, less for non-dairy breeds.
Natural reproduction cycles for sheep and goats align very closely to natural feed availability. If you or your partner have ever nursed a baby, you know that milk output is minimal for the first 2-3 months, then kicks into high gear and mom is ravenous. Same for dairy animals. Babies are born in early spring; early milk production is powered primarily from mom’s own fat stores, augmented w/dried fodder and the first fresh grass. Just as babies start getting really hungry, pastures are full of mature grass. In the fall, as grasses dry and die, herds are traditionally culled, babies weaned and everyone goes on dry fodder again. Moms’ teats get a rest, and the cycle starts again. This brings us to a traditional method of cheese production: cheeses are made in-pasture, right after milking. In Europe, this in-pasture style of cheesemaking is called “alpage”, a designation you’ll see on some gruyere & other alpine cheeses.
The milk is heated a bit during the cheesemaking process, but only some are heated to high enough temps to be counted as pasteurized. Most are raw milk. And here we come to conflicts between traditions and modern regulations.
You’ll notice, in the above quote, another common element of dairying: gendered tasks. In western Eurasia, it’s common for men to look after live animals and for women to process the milk. So much so that cheesemaking and witchcraft–another heavily gendered activity–have long been linked in western folklore…
About that goatskin in the previous quote: the local cheese, “tulum”, was traditionally aged not in caves but in animal-skin bags, which are much handier when you’re doing alpage cheeses while moving about in the mountains. Like any skin, they’re somewhat porous, allowing excess moisture to escape the curds and a regular flow of air to reach them. No doubt the authorities will have problems w/that too, even if the pasteurization issue gets resolved.
But there’s one more problem: that part about watching over their flocks by night:
Sheep have changed a lot in the millennia since humans started rounding up mountain sheep–their shape, their size, how much wool and milk they produce. But their natural cycles–and those of their predators–have not. And our natural biorhythms haven’t either. In an era when there are many ways to earn a living that don’t involve staying up all night outside in the cold, human preferences tend to win. Back 2000+ yrs ago, when animals meant livelihood, even wealth, the sacrifice of a lamb to unseen powers was significant. It’s why it was embedded in rituals of many West Asian religions.
We’ve now mostly given up that form of sacrifice in the West, but you can still appreciate the work of all those shepherds, ancient and modern: if you’re thinking in terms of lambs this week consider partaking of some of their cheese. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
When I first arrived in France in my youth and was presented with a wedge of brie after dinner, I did what most Americans do: I cut off the tip. And was promptly admonished. You’re supposed to cut along the side, getting a very thin wedge for yourself so that everyone else partaking of the cheese can do same, everyone getting an equal amount of rind & paste. At the time, it was explained to me as politesse.
I was reminded of that moment when this popped up in my Twitter feed the other day:
There it was, my long-ago crime, compounded many times over by many different people and splashed across the internet. (I did, in fact, confess to my own commission of this crime on Twitter a couple of years ago.)
Let’s dissect this particular crime scene for a moment: the board contains 3 types of cheese, a white bloomy rind, a semi-firm cheese (the one cut into sticks that look like French fries if you’re not looking closely), and a blue cheese. This is a common number and the usual assortment of cheese types.
Two of these cheeses, the bloomy and the blue, are mold-ripened cheeses. The bloomy ripens from the outside in (cf Ep 7); the blue, at least as far as the blueing is concerned, from the inside out (Ep 8). So if you cut off the tip, you’ll get either the most (for the blue) or the least (for the bloomy) ripe part of the cheese, while everyone after you gets progressively riper or less blue portions and more rind . And the rind itself contributes flavor & texture, so ideally you want to experience it in a consistent ratio to the interior. Thus the desire to have everyone cut themselves a small slice from the side, allowing equal portions of interior (the paste) and the rind for everyone.
In general, you won’t go wrong doing that with any kind of cheese. But then why is the other cheese pre-cut in matchsticks? This was a catered event, not a private gathering, and you don’t want everyone who comes along wrestling to cut from a large, hard wheel of cheese. It breaks the flow of the food line. So you might as well pre-cut a hard cheese that won’t stick to the board at room temperature (unlike a well-made bloomy), especially since food waste is calculated into the catering budget. The cut pieces will dry out slightly, having been cut in advance, but harder cheeses are basically pretty stable at room temperature for long periods of time. This particular cheese is in matchsticks because the source wheel is fairly large and tall. So the prep staff cut out thin wedges, and cut each wedge across (just a little bit of rind on each end for everyone), and discarded the very thin end and the thick outer edge in the back.
Once you understand the basic principle here — complete, balanced taste and texture for yourself with each piece of cheese, and the same for everyone else — any other seemingly arbitrary rules about cutting cheese should start to make sense.
That said, there’s an excellent video by the late Anne Saxelby that delves a bit further into the different cheese types, and does a great job of explaining the nuances and reasons for cutting a cheese one way vs another. It’s also a very soothing way to while away a bit of a lazy weekend afternoon or evening. If you’re short on time, though, skip down below the video for a few words about knives.
Just as it’s possible to lay out 8 different kinds of forks, 3 knives, and a multiplicity of spoons at a fancy meal, each with its own specified function, it is possible to put out multiple kinds of cheese knives. The reality is, if you’re putting out a board for your guests to serve themselves…well, unless everyone you know is a great cheese enthusiast, virtually no one will know one from the next and everyone will use whichever knife comes to hand to cut whichever cheeses they want.
My pragmatic recommendation is to keep a paring knife at the soft-cheese end of your board, and a larger, sturdier knife at the hard cheese end. It cuts down on the number of times you get brie (and the mold spores it contains) smeared across your pecorino. You might also choose to keep a blue on a separate board with its own knife, as blue molds are even more aggressive. Of the knives in the graphic below, the one that I’ve found that is genuinely better for its purported function than the general-purpose knives one normally has in the kitchen is the Soft Cheese Knife. Because there’s less surface area for the sticky paste to cling to, it slices in and out neatly and doesn’t tear up the little wedge you’re trying to cut in the process.
And be sure to listen to Episode 12 for suggestions on what to put on your holiday cheese board. Just make sure there’s room left on the board to cut the cheese! Happy holidays.
Into The Curdverse 