Introduction, The Cheese Chronicles
My point is, something about cheese speaks to people, the way it spoke to me when I was trying to get out of my fluorescent cubicle in midtown Manhattan. At the end of the day, at the end of the year, I know I’m not ready to leave my job because I still love all those cheeses. When I take the time to look at them, lined up in the shiny glass case, they’re like little people. There are the fat, runny ones and I worry that no one will take them home and eat them in time. There are the austere, intellectual cheeses that require patient consideration to “get” and appreciate. There are the loud, flashy ones, like the Bentleys of cheese, that everyone, every time, is impressed by, and even the people who don’t care about cars acknowledge the solid engineering.
They all look different, and down in the caves at Murray’s each wheel contributes its mold spores and earthen reek to the walls and air, slowly seasoning the damp wood shelving. In the goat cave, dozens of small rounds and pyramids slowly grow fur, evolving into something minerally and hay-ey, with a milky creamline under their tri-color rinds. It’s like watching the grass grow, only you can, because every day the cheeses change.
It’s like that at the cheesemakers’ as well. One room devoted to a single cheese, or maybe a handful of cheeses, each wheel struggling to become something really memorable. The young wheels are all white and crumbly, naked, with the beginnings of grey mold or red bacteria that look like some invasive virus taking over. Further down the aisle are the teenagers, mature enough to play dress-up, but tasting wobbly and shallow, with no depth or character. In the evening in any cheese cave, when the floors have been swept and the shelves scrubbed down, you can walk through and see the orderly rows, all labeled and resting on their racks, like children put to bed.
