We citizens of the Deep South are not supposed to be world-class cheesemakers. Blame it on the heat. Or the humidity. Traditionally, we’ve been better at churning buttermilk than the curds-and-whey thing.
When we talk cheese we have been more likely to talk pimento cheese. (Note to outlanders: Go for homemade p.c. and avoid the stuff in grocery store tubs, the goo that Reynolds Price once likened to “congealed insecticide.”)
But that was then. This is now. Now that the great god Freon has smote the heat and humidity beasts, there’s great cheese being made in the South. Sweetgrass Dairy, in Georgia, down near the Florida line, sells their cow and sheep goods to southern champions like Bacchanalia in Atlanta. But they also show up on the cheese trolley at Per Se and the Modern in NYC. My favorite is their Holly Springs, an aged raw goat’s-milk stunner.
John Folse’s Bittersweet Plantation, in Gonzales, Louisiana, also goes both ways. But I like their way with cow’s milk better. This week, my wife and I have been cutting away at a fez of Fleur-de-Teche, a bloomy-rind triple-creamer, strafed with vegetable ash. It’s crazy-good stuff, buttery as all-get-out but balanced, with a spine of sharpness, a bite, that lesser cheeses lack. The name references a nearby body of water, formed—according to Native American belief—as a giant snake sank into the soft swamp mud. When water ran through the resulting depression, Bayou Teche was formed. According to Folse, a line of vegetable ash “snakes” through the cheese. Thus the name.
I don’t know if I buy Folse’s etymology. But I’ll buy the cheese. Again and again.
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