THE EIGHT BASIC STYLES OF CHEESE

Buying cheese is one of the most exhilarating yet often most intimidating food-buying experiences imaginable. It doesn't have to be. All you have to do is learn the Eight Basic Styles of Cheese and you'll be on your way to a worry-free cheese-buying experience.

The Eight Basic Styles of Cheese consist of fresh, semi-soft, soft ripened, surface-ripened, semi-hard, aged, washed rind, and blue cheeses. If you understand what each of these terms means, and how that translates to the flavor profile of each style of cheese, you will automatically have a window into the flavors of many cheeses without ever having tasted them. That makes buying cheese a cinch. Here is a brief description of each type of cheese along with their primary characteristics.

Fresh cheeses

Fresh cheeses retain fresh milk flavors, which is their key characteristic.

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Semi-soft cheeses

Semi-soft cheeses have pliable textures and retain their fresh milk flavors. They may also have a bit of pungency or sharpness depending on the cheese. For example, smear-ripened cheeses such as brick cheese or most washed-rind cheeses are quite flavorful yet their texture is semi-soft.

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Soft-ripened cheeses

While you often see soft-ripened cheeses categorized as semi-soft cheeses, I like put soft-ripened cheeses in their own category because of their distinct flavors and texture. A soft-ripened cheese is one that has a white, so-called bloomy rind on the outside, which occurs because of the unique beneficial mold that is added to the milk or sprayed onto the cheese during ripening. The most well-known cheese in this category is brie.

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Surface-ripened cheeses

Although a broad term to represent any cheese that is ripened by surface molds and yeasts, surface-ripened cheeses in this context include those cheeses that have a wrinkly rind, such as many French and American goat cheeses, or whose rinds are thin and barely contain the runny cheese within.

Surface-ripened cheeses tend to fall into two sub-categories: firm, chalky, and maybe a little dry and flaky, or runny. The dry ones are most often goat cheeses, while the runny ones could be any one of the three milks or a combination of milks.

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Semi-hard cheeses

As the name of this category of cheeses implies, these are cheeses that tend to be firmer, sometimes a little crumbly, and usually good melting cheeses. Their flavor characteristics vary, but in general, I find this category of cheeses to have the greatest complexity and balance (if made well). What do I mean? I mean that these cheeses typically have a nice balance of earthiness, a little sweetness, a good but not overwhelming amount of salt, and sometimes buttery and nutty flavors too.

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Hard (aged) cheeses

As you can probably guess, hard cheeses are ones that are hard and are therefore often best when used for grating. Usually, hard cheeses are saltier than their softer counterparts. That said, the longer certain cheeses are aged, the more they develop a sweet or caramel-like note. This is especially true of gouda.

Another key characteristic of hard cheeses is that they are crumbly. Also, they might be pungent because of an enzyme that is sometimes added during the cheesemaking process or because that enzyme develops naturally over time.

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Blue cheeses

Blue cheese is, of course, somewhat of a misnomer since the cheese usually isn't blue. Blue-veined cheese describes it better, although depending on how much veining exists and the type of milk used to make it, the cheese can take on various hues from grey, to golden, to white. Even the vein colors vary, depending on what types of molds are used. They can range from blue, to green, to blue-green, to purple and even black.

As for flavor, blue cheeses have a variety of characteristics. In addition to being salty, they can be buttery, musty, and yeasty; they can have hints of caramel, chocolate, hazelnuts, almonds, and anise; and they can be tangy or somewhat sweet.

Although we talk about blue cheese as if it were one cheese, in fact, it is really a family of cheeses. Blue cheeses range from soft and creamy to hard and crumbly; they can be made from cows', sheep, or goats' milk, and, as we've already discussed, can have all kinds of different veining. It all depends what type of cheese the cheesemaker is trying to make.

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Washed Rind Cheeses

To be perfectly blunt, washed rind cheeses are stinky. It is that characteristic that is so beloved by aficionados and reviled by others. The particular way washed rind cheeses are made and aged lends them their characteristic creaminess (usually), tacky surface, and pinkish or orange-colored rind.

One thing to know about washed rind cheeses is that they very often smell much stronger than they taste, especially if you don't eat the rind. If you're not a fan of these cheeses, then your cheese-buying is that much easier as you can avoid the entire category. The opposite approach works equally as well.