After sniffing my way through a tea shop, a rose emporium, a spice shop and a few glasses of wine, naturally I thought it was time to smell some cheese. I know, I know — I can hear you giggling. But let’s get the jokes about sweaty socks and “cutting the cheese” out of the way right up front, because when it comes to aroma, cheese has much more to offer than stink.
“Every cheese — and there are thousands — has a different smell,” says John Antonelli, the owner (with his wife Kendall) of Antonelli’s Cheese Shop, who was kind enough to answer my questions about how scent is important to his work as a cheesemonger. “And it's not different as in a variation within the same spectrum, it's different as in night and day. I mean, there are cheeses that smell like roses, there are cheeses that smell like steak, there are cheeses that smell like smoke.”
In fact, when it comes to aroma, cheese is so complex that when Antonelli trains his staff to use their noses, the first thing he tells them is to go home and “start smelling everything as often as they can.” What they need, he says, is to fill their heads with a reference library of aromas from the world around them.
The same kind of cheese can smell markedly different from maker to maker or season to season. The Comté Cheese Aroma Wheel pictured below lists 83 different aromas in six different categories ranging from the generally familiar (“plum,” “coffee,” “tobacco”) to the startlingly specific (“brioche bread crust,” “stable at milking time,” “young grass,” “cheese ring trimming”).
Antonelli described a washed rind cheese — cheeses like Brie and Camembert that feature a velvety exterior and a ripe, runny interior pungent cheeses such as Epoisses and Taleggio — that filled the shop with a smoky fragrance the first time they ordered it. They wrote up a description featuring smoke as a flavor. But for the next five months the same cheese was smokeless — until the most recent batch.
Those kind of shifts in flavor and scent reflect the artisan cheese equivalent of what winemakers call terroir, aromas and flavors that reflect the place where the cheese was produced.
“You have to start with the animal and what they bring to the table, and what their environment is like and what their feed brings to the table,” says Antonelli. “If they ate a lot of onions, you’re going to smell onions. If they got into a garlic patch, you’ll smell garlic. I went to visit a cheese maker a few weeks ago, and I picked up some grass and ate it, just to see what the animals were consuming.”
Really? How did it taste?
“Delicious,” he said, with tremendous relish. “It was crisp and it was green. The scent was sweet on the exterior, and then when I chewed it, it had a little more vegetal earthiness. There are a lot of herbs growing in the area.”
“That's extreme,” Antonelli admitted, “but if you start with that you can build your vocabulary of smell from the raw milk. With goat’s milk, you can pick out an acid, a bright aroma, even before you even taste it, and if it’s warm right out of the udder it smells sweet and musky at the same time, which is magnificent. And then sheep's milk smells rich, and grounding. Cow's milk changes constantly — it can go from super-bright, zippy and refreshing all the way to creamy sweetness.”
As we sniffed and tasted our way through a dozen or so cheeses it was easy to see why aroma was so important to Antonelli. Once I started paying attention, it was clear that what I could taste as the fats and proteins of the cheese broke down in my mouth was only half of the experience. The first cheese we tasted, a creamy goats’ milk, had an obvious citrus aroma, and the clean tang of sourdough starter. As it melted on my tongue, vanilla resonated in the back of my throat. The goat gouda that followed smelled of a fresh baguette and tasted of salt and, yes, of grass. A tiny spoonful of washed rind cheese gave off aromas of red wine, dark chocolate and hazelnut that exploded into funky richness of earth and hay in my mouth. But another washed rind cheese smelled of salami and barnyard, then resolved into a fine floral leather when I tasted it.
But for both cheesemongers and cheesemakers, aroma is more than an indicator of taste, it’s a measure of cheese as a living, changing thing. Both rely on their noses to tell them if something has gone wrong with their cheese — aromas of sour milk and ammonia are primary indicators. And when I asked Antonelli to name the scent that made him understand how important aroma was for understanding cheese, what he described was the smell of cheesemaking itself.
“It was a combination of smells. First, that lactic acid smell that comes off the milk when the acid's being broken down. It's probably repulsive to some people, but I think it’s magnificent. There's a sourness to it, and at the same time that there's a grounding musk, like an animal is in there. So you're balancing this really sweet milk with those smells in the heat — cheesemaker's rooms are always really hot.
And then you go from there to the cheese caves. When I was in France, each different kind of cheese had it's own little room. So the washed rind cheeses, they were in their own little box, and there were these strong barnyard smells, and the smell of must. And then you would go into the room where the Comté and the Alpine cheeses were — these giant rounds of cheese with ambient molds on them. And in that room you could smell soil, earth, worms — things that remind you of what’s underneath the grass. And then in the goat's milk cheese room there was this powerful biting smell. The mold type is usually a kind that goes airborne much more easily and you get this kind of biting attack on your nose which is magnificent.
And then, when you're enjoying cheeses and you're tasting — even if they're made in the same batch, they can be night and day from one wheel to the next. That is what’s really so exciting. Seeing that change.”
Note: top image is Delicious Cheese [cropped] by cwbuecheler at flickr; some rights reserved.
Omg, this post is incredibly interesting! Especially that aroma wheel. Thanks a lot Alyssa! 🙂 Never thought scent had such an important role in cheesemaking…
Thank you, Timothy! To be honest, I knew there would be interesting things to smell, but I had no idea how important it was either until I talked to John and saw that wheel.
Indeed, I always found it interesting to smell the different aromas of cheeses, but I never expected a whole theory behind it.
Anyway, I know one thing: I’ll be smelling and tasting cheese in a completely different way after reading your post.
Fantastic interview, Alyssa! I have a question though – were these cheeses made from raw or pasteurized milk? I’ve eaten only raw milk cheese for several years now, and I find a huge difference in taste, texture and smell. Luckily, we have some wonderful local cheese artisans in my area (central Ky.) The same limestone base that makes the grass so healthy for raising racehorses, is evidently beneficial to dairy animals as well.
I’m not sure, Rapp. My guess would be they were a mix. That’s very interesting about the limestone. I don’t know why we don’t hear more about cheese terroir, it seems so obviously present, much more so than in the wines I’ve tasted!
Hey, Rapp, don’t know if you’ll be back to see this, but in the interest of archival reading, I heard from Kendall Antonelli who tells me:
“Yes, you tasted a mix of raw and pasteurized cheeses. Just fyi that all cheeses under 60 days must be pasteurized to be sold in the United States. Those aged over 60 days can be either.”
Great post I buy cheeses from the Antonellis regularly, so it’s fun to see John contributing here.
We are both lucky, then!
Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou Alyssa for doing this one! I LOVE cheese, and it really hasn’t gotten enough attention here in IA as (well, I think that) it should! Having been to a gourmet grocery here in DSM lately and had the cheesemonger react like I asked him to stomp some kittens to death when I asked to smell a particular cheese, I have to say it’s nice to hear about a shop where you’re encouraged to smell!
(As an aside, there’s now a spice shop in town carrying long pepper!)
That’s so funny about your anti-smell cheesemonger. John and Kendall have boards up in the shop that encourage the patrons to sniff before they taste and that list some of the aromas they should be looking for–totally different!
I’m very glad to hear about the long pepper.
Fantastic article, Alyssa!!! My mouth was watering as I read it..I’ve always loved the smell of cheese- so I promise, I didn’t giggle..:)
Comte is one of my favorite cheeses- but I’ve only ever tasted one kind- That is so interesting that there is a Comte Aroma Wheel..
Loved this article- and I feel like re-reading and savoring each word. I love the idea of the aroma of the cheese coming from the cow/goat and what they eat (rather than coming from added flavors- so those are yummy too)- almost like honey.
Thanks Alyssa!
You can believe I went home with some Comte that day–mine tasted very fruity and nutty. And yes, I love how connected it is to the animal, too. I’m sure that freaks some people out, but I like to feel connected to my food. 😉
Great article! I adore smelly cheese – the smellier the better, unfortunately I became lactose intolerant some 15 years ago and since then have only been able to eat goat cheese, which doesn’t quite satisfy my desire for strong *and* varied aromas/flavours and textures. You’ve made my mouth water so much… 🙂
Awww, sorry Bela! I’m glad that you can still eat goat cheese at least. We have some local goat cheese makers who have been experimenting with making stronger Camembert and Blue type cheeses. So far the results are pretty fantastic. I hope you find something that satisfies!
Thank you. 🙂
Terrifically interesting article — it made me so happy to come to NST and see a post about my other abiding passion.
This is neither here nor there, but I think “The Ambient Molds” would be a great name for a rock group.
Ha, ha! I totally agree! And given the number of bands in Austin I’m sure someone out there is saying the same thing right now… What genre do you think? Maybe a punkish version of something like Explosions in the Sky?
Or… they could play chamber music on period instruments. 😉
Something punk was my first thought, but maybe chamber-punk could work? With a harpsichord and a viola da gamba?
Do you know the band Tosca? Violin, cello, accordion, many tattoos, goth sensibility. I’m thinking their punk alter-egos now.
Accordion? Do they have a website, I have a friend that would…well, she might very well hate it, but with the accordion she’d never admit it…
Kate–it turns out they’ve split into two groups. The original was led by composer and accordion player Glover Gil, a really amazing guy, and they played tango:
http://www.glovertango.com/home.html
If your friend likes accordion, she probably already knows about Gil. But if she doesn’t, she’s GOT to look him up. Whoah.
The ladies on the strings have their own quintent. They play with and without Glover.
http://www.toscastrings.com/about.html
She and her husband dance, so she’d definately know. Sounds like something she probably has already then, but thanks for the info!
What I love is the smell of a really good cheese counter, where a symphony of cheese smells arises to greet the nose. I can still remember the heavenly aroma of the cheese section in Galeries Lafayette Berlin a decade ago…mmmmm!
Also very fond of the aroma of a freshly opened packet of Italian prosciutto or salami. It’s like perfume!
I think I know the smell you mean, Noz. I get the same thing when I first walk in the door at Antonelli’s, and even more so at Murray’s Cheese Shop in New York–the fresh, salty, latic acid kind of smell…
I love cheese, and I love honeys for the same reasons. You can often tell by smell and flavor exactly what kind of flowers the bees were harvesting. Eucalyptus honey in a cup of tea for that winter, scratchy throat is amazing.
I too am honey obsessed! (In perfume, too.) I’ve never tried eucalyptus honey. I’ll have to seek it out.
If ypu”re going to look for it, look for the good stuff, the dark, Australian one!
And never forget, raw honey with the tailings in can beef up almost any honey that’s not got quite the oomph you’re after. (yummy easy dessert…fast too…a good vanilla or simple sweetened cream ice cream, about a tsp for each serving of mixed nutmeg, clove, cinnamon and cayenne (1t nutmeg, 1T cinnamon, 1/8 to 1/4t each clove and cayenne depending on your preference, shake throroughly. BTW, Use the hottest Vietnamese cassia cinnamon you can find) drizzle a goodly amount of dark or medium honey (rose honey is my favorite, with a chestnut honey I have yet to find again coming in close second), add a cookie for crunch, I like those little rolled wafery thingies.
If you want to be really evil, shave a little white chocolate over the top.
Holy Mackerel, Kate. *scribbles notes to self*
Thank you for a really interesting and informative article…..pity tho…i don’t like the smell cheese…except for a very bland gouda or edam
Perhaps you just haven’t smelled the right one yet. 😉 Seriously, though, I was very surprised at the amount of variety among the cheeses I sniffed. Many of them not at all what I expected.
Yup, it is pretty amazing! Such a vast range!
Interesting. I love cheese that is has always been a staple on my dining table. I put it on practically anything I eat. Thanks for this article, Alyssa.
So glad you enjoyed it!
“It’s cheese, Gromit!”
Oh, I do share Wallace’s delight. Which of course simply adds a layer of delight to the reading of this article.
I agree, the cheese wheel is a Very Cool Thing. And it reminds me of a comment I made to a Stinky Cheese Person who was amused by my thing with perfume, when I said I was learning to appreciate complex cheeses, even stinky cheeses…and felt that my descent into perfume helped pave the way for opening my mind to greater varieties of cheese.
I think both allowed me to really appreciate good fresh butter, too. I actually exclaimed “Grass! I taste grass!” — and realized that I sounded like one of Those People. But didn’t care. Because an old(ish? er? not puppy?) dog was learning new tricks.
But I digress. Loved this article, and thank you for taking the time to do the legwork and share your learnings with us.
Oh, and shoot–the whole reason for opening with Wallace and Gromit was to point out that I think part of Nick Park’s genius is to put the cheese in there as a running subtext. We know how deeply Wallace likes to explore things, and to tinker; there is of course the hearkening to the veddy British theme of cheese, but there is also that amateur passion thing…putting the “amos” (love) in the “amateur.” Which to me totally translates to what so many of us do with perfume or cheese or foody-ism or whatnot.
::wanders off to spray a test patch of something just for the fun of it::
Thanks for these lovely comments, SS!
Alyssa, thank you for the fascinating piece! I love it when you do these fragrant food articles.
I love writing them, thank you!