Wine & Spirits - Fall 2017 - 51

The Tree
of Cheese
by Bronwen and Francis Percival

No cheese is an island. Just as with wine, it is tempting to explain every
aspect of a cheese's character in terms of the mysterious and unknowable stamp of its terroir. Cheese flavors have even been attributed to
the influence of leprechauns dancing in an Irish glade. However, it
is possible to account for the influence of place and the diversity of
cheese flavors without resorting to mysticism. Cheesemakers make
decisions in the context of their unique circumstances; sensitive decisions result in a cheese of place.

If you never drink
spoofulated wine,
you shouldn't
be eating
spoofulated
cheese.

The structural relationships in this cheese family tree
will guide you, not only as you select the cheeses most
likely to bring you pleasure, but to an understanding
of why things look, feel, taste and smell like they do.
This same elementary knowledge also gives you the
tools to ask tough questions of your cheesemonger.
If you never drink spoofulated wine, you shouldn't
be eating spoofulated cheese.
Our cheese tree is derived from the cheesemaking process itself. Where winemaking combines
extraction of flavorful compounds from grapes with
an alcoholic fermentation, cheesemaking combines
the removal of moisture from the curd (or "drainage") with another type of fermentation, this time of
lactose into lactic acid by bacteria. The final stage of
the process-the third tier of the tree-is ripening,
during which enzymes break the curd down into flavorful volatile molecules. The top two tiers-drainage and fermentation-reflect decisions made by the
cheesemaker, while ripening allows the microbes that
occur naturally in each environment to express their
unique flavor potential.
In theory, at least, any type of cheese can be made
from any milk and in any place. After all, it is the
cheesemaker's decisions that fundamentally determine the type of cheese. However, there is a reason
why different styles evolved in different places. More

than anything else, cheesemaking is an exercise in
practical microbial ecology. Where flavor is created
by microbes and their enzymes, which microbes
and enzymes are present is dictated by the physical
and chemical characteristics of the curd. Drainage
and acidification together build this house for the
microbes to call their home.
The choice of what kind of house to build is no less
reliant on the environment. Whether the cheesemaking process is drawn out over a whole day or is done
in less than an hour depends on the farming system
in which it is made. Different things make sense in
different places: Just as you wouldn't build a skyscraper on a remote mountaintop, a wooden chalet
would never warrant 9,000 square feet of Manhattan
real estate. And as with building houses, insensitive
builders can construct a cookie-cutter McMansion
anywhere, severing the link between flavor and raw
materials.
Differences between individual sites, farming
systems and between raw and pasteurized milk are
accentuated as the cheese ripens: The different communities of microbes selected by the conditions over
the course of the cheesemaking process give rise to
different enzymes and different flavors. Unsurprisingly, cheeses with a greater microbial diversity have
a more complex flavor.

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