Beaufort. I put a piece in our fridge and I am actually amazed it’s still there. Respect perhaps. Beaufort is probably the best alpine cheese there is, so you don’t grab it from the fridge just like that. Not a bad word about other French alpine cheeses, or Swiss or Italian for that sake, they’re all good, but Beaufort is special.
Finn, strange name for a cheese? Could be, but I found it at Paxton and Whitfield, nicely wrapped. Unknown for me as it was, I could of course not resist it. I was allowed a taste, which applied to all the cheeses I shopped there. As it is, Finn is a small English cheese in a Camembert tradition. In short that means; cow’s milk, bloomy rind. Raw milk of course.
Our son has been to Munich with his school class and one of the activities while there was a visit to a bio dynamic, all purpose farm. On site there also was a farmers’ market, so he naturally went over to see if there was any cheese gems (OstePerler) for dad. He landed on a Belgian bloomy rind cheese called Le Léger de Lathuy. An exciting choice since I have no “relation” to Belgian cheese other than those coming from the area around the town of Herve. Stinkers as they are, not everyone find them as attractive as I do. Even though we’re talking about quite a different style of cheese this Le Léger de Lathuy may also be regarded as, if not special, very odd.
Most countries have some indigenous cheeses, in Britain they are called territorials and they probably represent the style of cheese you associate with Britain in general and England specifically. They have gained the term “territorial” because they are named after the area they come from, or in some instances the area they originally came from. Firm, crumbly with a certain acidity and excellent for making cheese toasts. Some of them quite pale, as Brits in general, no offense, while others have annatto added to liven them up a bit. They are generally underestimated, specially by me for the last forty years, during which I have hardly tasted them. There is a story behind that. But now, British territorials re-tasted.