Confessions of a cheesemonger

Cheesemonger Virginnia Thomas is a queso connoisseur. But take a look in her refrigerator and you’ll always find a slab of tasty and sometimes a block of colby, she admits.

“As much of a cheese snob as I am, there’s certainly times where actually that’s really comforting and it’s what you want to eat. You don’t always want to have something really challenging on your plate,” she explains.

Judging by the customers in her Nelson shop, Cook’s Corner, Kiwis are more adventurous than you might think when it comes to cheese. Well travelled, and with their own epicurean tendencies, we have increasingly discerning palates – returning with food memories we’re keen to revive.

In the eponymous store of the Kiwi gourmet food purveyor, a cheesemonger presented her with a piece of gorgonzola picante topped with truffle honey.

“He described it as angels crying on your tongue. And I was like, hallelujah. This is what I want to do. So we packed up our lives and we moved to Australia.”

A job opening as a cheesemonger came up in that very shop. Thomas flew over for the interview, but didn’t get the job.

“Simon said to me, ‘what are you going to do? Like I’m not offering you the job. We’ve promoted somebody from within. What are you going to do now?’ And I said, ‘I will work for you. Watch me’. And about three months later, he rang, and he said, ‘there’s a position.’”

Working her way up, Thomas ended up managing nine of his stores around Australia.

In 2012 she was recognised by the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers in France for her work with French cheese and in 2017 she successfully gained the American Speciality Cheese Society’s Certified Cheese Professional qualification after a three hour exam, and was the first person in Australasia to do so.

She also holds an Advanced Diploma in Nutritional Medicine and the NZ Cheesemaster qualification and is working towards a Master of Cheese with the British Cheese Academy.

As to places to watch out for upcoming cheese, Thomas looks to America. While we might think of mass produced slabs of “awful bright orange”, or, even worse, cheese in cans or squeezy tubes, US artisanal cheeses are “phenomenal”.

Not many make it to our shores, but Thomas is hoping that will change.

Here in Aotearoa, cheesemakers are upping the ante themselves, despite the toughness of the industry.

Some, like Waikato-based gouda specialists Meyer Cheese, are injecting our native flora such as kawakawa and horopito into their creations. Others are innovating in other ways – by using deer milk, or washing the rinds in gin, or grape marc, the skins and seeds left over after pressings, imparting a fruity musky flavour.

With a plethora of options available, there are some things Kiwi cheese lovers could do better, she advises – such as simply taking your fromage out of the fridge so it can reach room temperature before serving.

“Just like taking the cork out of a bottle of wine to allow flavours to develop, anything straight from the fridge is never going to be as tasty as if you let it warm up.”

She also suggests buying little and often: “because there’s nothing more heartbreaking than going to get out a piece of cheese and it’s dried out or it’s gone mouldy”.

Cheeseboards, too, are something we could easily take to the next level. Rather than “five or six tiddly little pieces” that don’t give anyone much of a chance to sample, “three nice pieces of exceptional cheese” would be much better.

And when it comes to what to drink with cheese, she urges epicureans to look beyond wine and instead think about pairing with spirits such as whisky and gin.

“For any sort of fermented distilled product, there will be a cheese that matches beautifully,” she says.

While most people would be familiar with fruit pastes such as quince as accompaniments, chocolate “actually pairs phenomenally well with cheese, particularly harder cheeses, or cheeses with those lovely salt crystals, because salty and sweet go really well together”.

The purveyor of some 80 types of cheese, she has an encyclopedic knowledge – from American cheddar to queso manchego.

Asked the difference between brie and camembert, Thomas says brie was around about a thousand years before camembert, and launches into a story of a monk who was escaping the carnage of the French Revolution.

Seeking refuge with a farmer’s wife called Marie Harel, to thank her for her kindness, the monk taught her the secrets of the white, fluffy mould on the outside of what he was making, which was brie from the region of Meaux, and camembert was born.

“It’s probably an urban myth, but it’s a lovely story,” she says, “the cheese world is full of amazing stories like that.”

She urges cheese shoppers to try before they buy.

“Even if you think that you know the cheese, cheese is a living, breathing changing thing, and so you should always, if you’ve got time, have a wee nibble.”

While in the store I confess that I am not a fan of anything blue veined or particularly pungent, but I am open to trying new things and expanding my palate.

Thomas passes me a piece of Little River Estate Tasman Blue that she describes as a “gateway-ish”.

“It’s cheddery and salty and it’s not a particularly blue tasting blue.” As I eat it, I picture myself literally standing at a portal, a gate of the gastronome, a tangy creaminess melting into my tongue.

“Cheese is magic,” Thomas said earlier in the interview. I’m inclined to agree.

ByWarren Gamble, Nelson Mail