To Brie or Not to Brie...Part 1

To Brie Or Not To Brie…Part 1

Reprinted from Relationships in the City, July 2007

Since last month’s Relationships in the City article on “How to Give a Wine and Cheese Party” got you all excited about cheese, I thought it apropos that this month the wine and cheese reviewer should say a little something about cheese. Often, when invited to a get together, even a game night at my friends’ house, I know the hostess will have a bottle of something, and I feel the need to contribute to the party. More often than not, some cheese and a French baguette or seeded flatbread is what I choose.

Frequently the cheese choice we all make when called upon to produce in this fashion is a creamy wedge of brie. But do we buy it because we don’t know what else to bring? We want to be sophisticated, but we want to like what we bring. Brie seems an obvious choice.

Whichever supermarket you frequent, from Smith’s to Costco, Wild Oats to Liberty Heights Fresh, it will have a wedge of brie, and it will most likely cost between $5.99 and $13.99 a pound. Costco describes its basic selection on its website this way: “Margaux de Brie is a 60% double cream soft-ripened cheese.” I wonder how many of us really know what that means. Read on and you will be one of the few.

Reading a cheese label is a little like reading a wine label, especially if the cheese is French. Cheeses in France are regionally regulated like wines, and their labels usually tell where they are made, the official variety name, and what kind of animal their milk derives from (I often find a little picture of a cow, sheep, or goat does the trick for them). When sold in the US, labels also feature an ingredient list consisting of the type of milk used in the making, along with rennet (which curds the milk), cultures (which grow the rind and keep the cheese aging properly), salt and occasionally color.

While this all seems straightforward to us label readers here in the US, the fact that most of us aren’t familiar with French cheese regions, and that nearly all cheese is made with the same four ingredients, makes these labels somewhat unhelpful when it comes to knowing what a cheese will taste like…so you will just have to taste and remember.

A standard double cream (or double crème) brie is a cheese made from whole cow’s milk with enough cream added to bring the butterfat content by dry weight (if you dehydrated it) to 60%. Rather than trying to figure out something rational about this number, the best way to know what 60% butterfat by dry weight feels like in your mouth is to taste some, and remember it. It should feel creamy with a tiny bit of a pungent and earthy flavors. Double crème brie hosts a classic balance of buttery richness and mild flavors; hence its ubiquitous appeal.

A single crème brie, most often Brie de Meaux in the US, is a more flavorful, sophisticated variety of soft-ripened cheese. All brie is soft-ripened--that means the cheese not only has cultures added to the mix when it is curded, but it has a culture patted onto its disk-shaped outside as well. As the bloom (the white, fluffy stuff on the rind) grows, the interior of the cheese becomes softer and more flavorful. Brie de Meaux will taste enough like what you and your friends will expect, but with a little less richness and a little more flavor or grass, straw and mushrooms. At 52% butterfat by dry weight, its lighter texture is more springy than your run-of-the-mill double crème, such as the ever present President or Costco’s Margaux. And because it is made in smaller, artisan production, it costs closer to $15 a pound than a double crème.

If you linger in Costco, or make it to Liberty Height’s Fresh, Wild Oats or another cheesy establishment, you will most likely find a “triple crème brie.” This is an outstanding choice if you know your friends like rich, sultry, buttery, and full flavored cheeses. Triple crèmes have enough added cream to bring their butterfat content to 72 or even 75%. The extra fat makes the cheese ripen to a much softer, even runny consistency.

The bloom on this cheese should be even more fluffy and fresh looking than on other bries. I say this because the fat content of the paste conducts the strong flavors of the rind much more thoroughly than regular brie. St. Andre, Pierre Robert, Brillat Savarin, and Explorateur regularly develop a very strong, even spicy flavor as they age. A tiny bit of ammonia on the rind (which naturally develops in all brie and marks its age as passing) becomes prominent in a triple crème when it gets a little too old.

Belletoille, although a real triple crème, hardly develops differently than a double crème, so I don’t like to waste the fat calories on it. However, it usually sells for about $12 a pound, while the other varieties I named run between $18 and $24. The one cherished cheese secret I’ve learned recently is that Costco carries a Delice de Borgogne triple crème for about $10 a pound…and it’s wonderful.

So next time you go for a piece of brie to take to that wine and cheese party you were invited to, know what you are reaching for. And tune in next month when I’ll write about some even more tantalizing, alternative selections that will knock your friends’ sock off. Until then, eat well.

Jennifer Large Seagrave worked in the gourmet food industry for ten years, including several years as a cheese buyer and consultant at such California establishments as Mrs. Gooch’s, Whole Foods Market, Wally’s Liquor, and The Pasta Shop. She is now pursuing a PhD in literature at the University of Utah.