Jack's Latest
Cheese Find!

Bachtelstein
(or Bachtelstei)

Bachtelstein is a cow’s milk cheese made in Girenbad, near Zurich in Switzerland at the Brook Thal Cheese Factory.

Bachtelstein is cheesemaker Paul Bieri’s award-winning semi-hard cheese. It is arectangular brick shape with a textured brown rind, the pate is golden almost brownish towards the edges but smooth with a taste of grass, nuts, and wild flowers. It’s named after the Bachtel mountains.

Almost 20 years ago Paul Bieri and his brother Fredi took over the Bachthal Cheese Factory from their father. At first they produced only Emmentaler cheese, as the cheese factory was obligated. Paul started experimenting making other cheeses. In 1995 he created a Cheese Collective in the Zurich mountain area with other Cheesemakers from the area. They decided to market their cheeses under the label "Naturli US de Region inhabitant of zurich mountain area."

Joanne's Two Latest
Goat Cheese Finds!
(Scroll down for Montrachet)

Persille de Tignes

Persille de Tignes is a hand crafted semi-hard raw goat's milk cheese from the Pyrenees (Savoie/Rhone-Alps) region of France.

It is a tall, cylindrical, straw-colored cheese that has a powdery, crusty moldy and almost crumbly rind which gets a yellow brown mustardy color as it ages (I gather this has something to do with the high sulfur content in the region’s soil). This farmhouse cheese is produced in small quantities and has a crumbly, tangy texture that becomes creamier as it ages. It occasionally develops a natural blue flavor. The technique by which it's made involves hearting the curd and crushing it, thereby allowing blue mold to appear (or not) in a haphazard way.

The word Persille literally means parsleyed or spotted and the cheese has a marblely, almost spotted coloring and is very flakey when aged well. It's flavor has hints of lemon, yeast, grass and damp musty goat. It is a country style rustic cheese - rough, dry and slightly salty. It is made from April to November, and some seem to think that the cheese from summer months is best.

Look for cheese selected by affineur Denis Provent of La Laiterie des Halles in Chambery.

Similar cheeses: Bleu de Tignes, Tignard, Persille de Tarentaise and Persille de Sainte-Foy.

Wine Suggestions: Beaujolais, Mondeuse, Chenin Blanc (for a younger version) or Chinon (Cabernet Franc).

Montrachet
(To clear up any confusion, Montrachet is also
the name for an industrial goat cheese –
that’s not the one we're describing here.)

This Montrachet is made by hand in Burgundy. It is made from raw goat milk and aged for 2 to 4 weeks. A cylindrical mold rinded cheese which wrapped with a chestnut leaf (green or brown) and tied with raffia. It has good acids, with a clean flavor and hint of earth – generally clean and bright and not at all goaty. The rind is soft with mottled blue and white molds. The cheese is soft and will almost run around the edges but the center is denser with almost a chalky white color.

Wine Suggestion: White Burgundy, in particular, Meursault.