12.3.08 highbrow cheese

Not so many days ago I was writing about Neal's Yard Dairy and my adventures in cheese there. I think I know my cheeses well enough at this point to say with a fair measure of confidence that the cheese I enjoyed tonight was my favorite Stilton, the Colston Bassett. As a glass is to wine, so is the setting to cheese. When I try this one at Neal's Yard, whilst drinking in the heady smells of farmyard and stone floors and great wheels of all manner of cheese, it is bold and a real fighter, the flavors making sure they win my attention. Tonight, at the Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art, the surrounds consisted of floor to ceiling books and well-scrubbed fellow alumni from my Ivy League graduate school across the pond. Swishy. Posh. Refined. The cheese had a completely different attitude, more haughty than competitive; more blue blood than farm hand. Instead of asking me to slather it on a torn piece of crusty rustic bread, it suggested, knowingly, that a bit would go nicely on that wholemeal biscuit, thanks ever so much. I would just like to say to the CB Stilton: you can take the cheese out of the country, but the country - I picture broad pastures of the greenest grass and earth you can smell with the windows rolled up - will never leave the cheese. I knew you when, CB, and I love you still.