Absurd Intellectual

Sometimes, you see something awesome and you just have to buy it. Like look at that dude on the cheese cover. Check out his moustache and beard and his incredible hat. He’s a chevalier — a musketeer, with all the ‘one for all and all for one’ code of honour that comes with it.

But he’s also dressed in a very incongruous green, lending him a wee bit o’ leprechaun flair.

So I knew that this would be a “must-buy, must-try” kind of cheese.

But it wasn’t just the packaging, you know. I’m a bit of a sucker for bries, and double-crème at that! Plus, the “fine herbs” probably meant it was interesting, and unusual, and it would make for a good blog entry. Any way you looked at it, this cheese was a winner.

So one recent morning, I plopped it on a plate with some grapes and some oranges, then brought it upstairs to Amy as part of a complete breakfast. I won’t lie; I was excited.

Mmmm, look at that, nice and close up (these pictures were taken on my cell phone, by the way, since Amy’s camera didn’t make the trek to my house that morning).

This cheese smelled divine. Although I’m not really great at discerning individual spices, as a whole, the flavour was very “Provence” and I’m sure it was primarily thyme and basil, with some other stuff mixed in to make it unique.

Although I had brought the cheese up directly from the fridge, and hadn’t allowed it to come up to room temperature very well, my cheese cleaver sliced through the brie extremely smoothly. I was impressed.

Also, as you might be able to see from the picture above (or below) there were herbs infused into the cheese itself, not just padded onto the outer bloom. That impressed me, right from the start.

Firm yet yielding, this brie was a cheese I could plausibly describe as supple. Although it was probably over-chilled, it was still really soft, and it had a very smooth texture on the tongue. Uh, except for all those gritty herbs all over it.

You see, that was the only problem with this cheese — the herbs.

The brie itself was great — double-creams usually are, even when they’re spelled “crème” — but the herbs infused throughout added very little in the way of flavour. The herbs that composed a near-solid outer layer, though, not only didn’t add much flavour (they did smell great, but it didn’t translate to the tongue) they actually detracted from my enjoyment of the rest of the cheese.

The got caught in my teeth, they roughed up my tongue, they kind of spilled everywhere. They just weren’t appropriate.

If you’ve got a prig of thyme, and you want to garnish a nice brie-based appetizer, go for it. But there’s no need to go as crazy as this cheese’s manufacturers have.

Great cheese, but the herbs add almost nothing.