How to Taste Cheese
Last night I attended The Cheese School of San Francisco‘s Basic Cheese Primer course (part of their “Cheese 101″ curriculum). We got to taste a dozen different cheeses, one from each taste family, but the most important lesson I took from the class is how to properly taste cheese.
A cheese tasting must be a multi-sensory experience. Take advantage of most of your senses in order to solidify the experience in your mind. The four-step process is as follows:
1 – Look
What color is it? Does it have a rind? If so, is it edible? What kind of color variation is there between the cheese close to the rind versus that in the middle (hint: generally, the darker the cheese near the rind in comparison to that in the middle, the more the cheese is aged).
2 – Feel
How does the cheese feel? Temperature-wise, it should be served as room temperature. This generally takes about two hours and has a profound effect on the taste and smell of the cheese. Is the cheese hard? soft? crumbly? grainy? Cheeses generally get harder and (sometimes) grittier as it ages.
3 – Smell
Smell is often referred to as the most important sense because it is the most closely associated with memory. Spend extra time getting a great smell of the cheese you’re eating because you’ll be able to to call up a memory of the cheese at any time. But the cheese that’s been exposed to the air will have lost as much as 50% of it’s smell, so it is best to break the cheese and smell the portion that is most recently exposed to the air.
4 – Taste
Finally, set a piece of the cheese on your tongue and allow it to warm up to the temperature of the inside of your mouth. Chew the cheese and let it spread around the inside of your mouth, making note of where the flavor lingers (compare that to the flavor areas of the tongue). Once you’ve savored the flavor, repeat and continue to enjoy.