Cheese Overdose at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills

Tuesday night I attended cheese seminar at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Founded in 1967, The Cheese Store is one of the oldest cheese stores in the nation and our guide and cheese expert, Norbert, boasts the most well-stocked cheese store in the world. His reasoning - if you were to visit a cheese shop in France, Italy, etc., you could well be surrounded by hundreds of types of cheeses. However, all of those cheeses would be from that respective nation.

Cheese is very nationalistic.

The Cheese Store stocks a variety of cheeses from all over the world and supplies cheese to some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles.

During the evening we sampled 18 different cheeses. Cheese is categorized by type of milk (cow, goat, sheep), country or region of origin, and texture (soft, semi-soft, hard). We began our cheese tour exploring cow's milk cheeses. The first cheese was a fresh mozzarella burrata. A burrata is a very soft mozzarella that has either cream or ricotta in the center. Norbert served the burrata with an olive salad (usually found on muffuletta sandwiches), and bread.

The burrata was very creamy and sweet from the fresh cream inside. A burrata doesn't have a long shelf-life, about 3 days. So if you're planning on serving it, it's best to get them the day of your event.

Next we went onto some soft-ripening cheeses. Soft-ripening cheeses are made by covering the cheese with a mold. This mold prohibits the evaporation of moisture from the cheese. The moisture goes back into the cheese and that's how it gets its soft, creamy texture.

We sampled two soft-ripening cheeses, a brie and a camembert. Both cheeses are made the same way; the only difference is where each is made. A brie is made in the region of France right outside of Paris. Camembert, on the other hand, is made in Normandy. The brie we sampled was a Brie de Meaux and had a subtle nutty taste to it. The camembert was very buttery, which Norbert attributed to the Normandy region and its reputation for its rich butter. I wonder what those Norman cows are eating?

We got to try another soft cow's milk cheese, the infamous triple-crème. This cheese has the highest butterfat content at 75%, so of course the cheese tasted just like butter. It even looks like butter in the photo.

Our next cheeses were an Alpine (Swiss) cave-aged gruyère and a gouda from Holland. Norbert calls gruyere the most versatile cheese. Gruyere happens to be one of my favorite cheeses because of its subtle nutty flavor and the slightly crunchy texture that comes from the salt crystals in the cheese. The gouda was sweet compared to the salty gruyere. The orange color of the gouda isn't natural and came from a food dye.

Somewhere between the soft-ripening cheeses and the gruyere, we tasted a trappist cheese. Trappist cheeses are some of the very first cheeses ever made, produced by monks hundreds of years ago. We tried a Saint-Nectaire from France. The cheese had a powerful aroma, almost like ammonia one person said. It was not one of my favorites. I didn't even take a photo of it, that's how much I disliked it.

We've gone through the soft to the very hardest of the cow cheeses - parmesan. Parmesan is an Italian cheese from the region of Emilia-Romagna. To be considered a real parmesan or Parmigiano-Reggiano this cheese (actually a grana type cheese) must be made in this area of Italy. Parmesan is aged for 18 months and it takes 2000lbs of milk to make 100lbs wheel of parmesan. Obviously, that means a lot of the whey, the liquid that separates from the cheese curd, is left. This liquid is often used to make ricotta cheese or fed to pigs which results in those heavenly thin slices of prosciutto. And this is how we were served the shavings of parmesan at the seminar, with sliced prosciutto.

Done with the cow's milk cheeses, we moved onto goat's milk. Our first sample was the Saint Maure, a soft cheese from France. It was served with a sun-dried tomato. The cheese had a similar taste to brie, but with the sourness that can be found in goat's milk cheeses.

This was followed by a French hard goat cheese (I didn't write down the name) which was served these terrific Italian green olives. Even though considered a hard cheese, it tasted exactly like cream cheese. The olives were very soft and not too salty or bitter as most olives tend to be.

Our final goat cheese was a mi-chevre, a cheese made of half goat's milk, half cow's milk. The result - a cheese with the sweetness of a cow's milk cheese, and the tang of a goat's milk cheese. Norbert suggested a mi-chevre when introducing someone to a goat cheese for the first time.

And now onto some sheep's milk cheeses. We first sampled a manchego from La Mancha in Spain. The manchego we tried had a very peppery taste. A slice of fig cake was served along with the cheese as contrast.

The next sheep's milk cheese was a raw milk cheese from France called Abbaye de Belloc. I always thought raw milk cheeses were illegal in the States (shaking my fist FDA), however raw milk cheeses are legal if the cheese has been aged for 60 days. This cheese had a sweet, milky taste.

Our last sheep's milk cheese was a hard Italian pecorino that was served with Japanese honey. This particular pecorino was aged underground. Since the pecorino is so dry, the honey gave the cheese a little moisture. Unfortunately, the honey overpowered the cheese, so I can't really describe how it tasted.

So, by this time I'm really full. I've been sampling cheese for over an hour and drinking wine, nibbling on bread, as well as partaking in the other snacks: the prosciutto, salami (served with the nasty trappist cheese), olives, pate and cornichons (served with the brie and camembert). But there are more cheeses to try! We haven't tried any blue cheeses yet.

We were served a blue cheese, I think from France, with a bit of Normandy butter on top. Talk about rich. The blue cheese was rather pungent with a strong aftertaste. Not for amateurs.

Finally we had a white Stilton from England. This particular cheese had candied lemon in it and it tasted exactly like a lemon cheesecake. This cheese would be considered a dessert cheese. It was delicious and one of my favorites of the night. Our official cheese tour has come to an end, but Norbert let us sample their oldest, edible cheese in the shop - a 12 year old cheddar from Wisconsin. The oldest cheese in the store is 37 years and has lost all its cheese quality; it would taste like sawdust. The cheddar was of a medium sharpness and melted in the mouth. Very tasty.