This little French beauty has a charming name and a touching back story. But more important, it’s delightful and just right for warm-weather cheese boards. Add a leafy green salad with lots of chopped fresh chives, a baguette and a bottle of Sancerre. Acclaimed affineur Hervé Mons had a hand in this cheese’s creation, so you know it’s sublime.

In France, fresh and lightly aged goat cheeses like this one are especially prized in spring and summer. Goat milk production plummets in winter but resumes in early spring, when goat moms start having babies. By early April, which is likely when the cheese pictured above was made, the kids are foraging outdoors, and their mothers’ milk is going to the cheesemaker.

Mons specializes in maturing and marketing cheeses from all over France, a business that requires great skill and deep pockets. The firm buys the cheeses young—often just days old—then guides them to maturity, like a nanny. This petite cylinder, about 5 ounces, spent about 17 days in the natural caves at Mons, developing its wrinkled rind, then a month in route to the U.S. by boat. Getting it to far-flung customers in good condition may be the hardest part.

The Mons firm has a strong relationship with Whole Foods and provides the chain with exclusive items from time to time. Such is the case here. Known in France as chabi cendré—ashed goat cheese—this little guy is coated with food-grade vegetable ash to neutralize the acidic exterior and encourage the bloomy rind. In France, cheeses of this shape are sometimes called a bonde — the word for the plug that seals a wine cask—and some producers still make their bondes with raw milk. Alas, we’ll have to go to France for that.

Whole Foods chose to put its own name on this cheese and settled on Mary dans les Étoiles (loosely, “Mary in the Heavens”), in memory of Mary Booth, a long-time employee who was influential in the company’s early days. What a meaningful tribute.

I’ve tried this cheese only once, but it was a great first date. Take it out of its little crate, put a bowl over it and bring it completely to room temperature; two or three hours is not too long. It will be creamy under the rind and firm but not chalky in the center. Mine smelled faintly of mushroom, with no hint of ammonia and none of the gamy goat scent that turns people off. The rind was tender and entirely edible, and the salting was spot on. We’ve all had goat cheeses in this style that are super tangy and finish with bitterness; I found this chèvre to be so gentle it was almost sweet.

Mary dans les Étoiles debuted in the U.S. in late 2019 so it’s just now getting traction. Look for it at Whole Foods. The Mons sales rep in the U.S. says that the larger stores almost always have it.