This post originally started as looking at the various cheeses of Charles Martell (the cheesemaker, not Charles Martel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel as in “Charles the Hammer, Duke of the Franks”, but my mind ran astray after listening to an NPR interview with him. In the interview he talked about his reaction to having his cheese featured in a Wallace and Gromitclaymation movie. The cheese, Stinking Bishop, is a washed rind cheese that has been ripened with “Perry,” a pear liquor. To me, its taste is somewhere between the sweet, fruity taste of Affidélice (but not as salty) and Hooligan’s robust, intense profile (but not as firm—Stinking Bishop is runny even at cooler temperatures).
Anyway, in the Wallace and Gromit movie, the smell of Stinking Bishop is used as an alarm clock to wake Wallace up, as a motorized hand springs out of the clock and waves the cheese beneath his nose. Rabid Wallace and Gromit fans, already fired up in a cheese frenzy over Wenslydale (the characters’ favorite cheese), exited the theater and descended upon Charles Martell’s farm in a dairy frenzy, resulting in the brutalizing of 15 of his Gloucester cows.
Well, that last part isn’t true. But in the interview, he said that he just can’t keep up with the demand the movie has placed on his dairy. He enjoys the care and quality he can maintain with his small dairy and doesn’t want to expand into a giant cheese producing factory with goals of covering the earth in Stinking Bishop. It’s a great interview, and you can listen to the NPR interview here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4950563
But as people become more interested in great cheeses (and gourmet food in general), it puts more and more demand on artisan producers. This increasing education about gourmet food isn’t a bad thing, but it does make supplies of small-batch foods harder to come by. Which made me think that perhaps this can also be associated with the rise of “localism,” a turn of phrase that has seen quite a bit of press in the last year.
It’s an interesting concept; when the cave-aged pecorino from Sardinia isn’t available, try a locally-made goat or sheep’s milk cheese from a neighboring farm. What I like about this is that it creates new traditions and makes people appreciate their own resources. Will the cheese made in your backyard ever taste exactly the same as an AOC Camembert de Normandie? No, but then it will taste unique in its own right; tasting better, however, is more of a personal preference. And this isn’t the only reason for localism’s rise, but I wonder just how much of a part it does play.
So while people may not rise to the challenge of making their own Stinking Bishops with the Bartlett pears hanging from their orchard trees, it should at least bring some new cheese creations to the market, even if that market is restricted to a 30 mile radius of their house.
Nick B.
