I was shopping for cheeses recently for a sparkling wine tasting and hoping to find a few selections my guests wouldn’t know. This bloomy-rind beauty caught my eye because even I didn’t know it. A gentle probe of the exterior told me it was ripe. But was it tasty?
“The name says it all,” the cheesemonger told me, handing me a sliver to sample. Bingo. A wheel went into my cart and onto guests’ plates a day or two later. How buttery can cheese get? Well, this one is certainly raising the bar. And although it wasn’t the audience favorite that night (this cheese was), it made many new friends, including me.
Briar Rose Creamery’s Butterbloom owes its plushness to extra-rich Guernsey milk, which has half again as much fat as milk from Holsteins. “It’s also really sweet,” says Briar Rose owner and cheesemaker Sarah Marcus. “It’s like eating melted ice cream.”
Briar Rose owner and cheesemaker Sarah Marcus
Guernsey cows are scarce, so Marcus was thrilled to locate a herd near her Dundee, Oregon, creamery. The Livestock Conservancy has put this English breed on a watch list because its numbers have declined dramatically in the U.S. Dairy farmers who value quantity over quality don’t care that Guernsey milk is super-high in carotene, yielding naturally golden butter and cheese. The Butterbloom pictured above is probably as pale as this cheese gets because it was made in winter, when the pasture is too muddy for grazing. In spring, the interior “just glows,” says Marcus.
Butterbloom may resemble a pudgy Brie or Camembert, but Marcus’s recipe diverges from those classics, relying on a different culture and more stirring. The curds are hand ladled into their forms and some employees are more generous, so wheels vary in heft. When it’s time for their external salting, this variation matters. Each wheel must be weighed to determine the precise salt dose, a degree of hand labor that I’ve never heard any other cheesemaker describe.
Butterbloom leaves the creamery at about three weeks but will improve for at least two more months, becoming more supple and complex. I don’t know the age of the wheel I bought but, as you can see, it was oozy. It smelled like mushrooms and spread like buttercream frosting. The rind was not as delicate as I might have liked so perhaps I would have preferred the cheese a couple of weeks younger, but there was plenty to admire here. Mumm Napa’s Brut Reserve made an enjoyable match, but I can imagine this “butter bomb” (Marcus’s description) with a lush Chardonnay or Viognier.
Butterbloom is now Briar Rose’s top-selling cheese and demand is growing. But for now, it’s largely a West Coast item. If you don’t mind paying shipping, online merchant igourmet stocks it. It’s also at The Cheese Shop in Carrboro, NC; Shea Cheese in Phoenix; and Forward Foods in Norman, OK. It should be easy to find at good cheese counters in the Pacific Northwest. In California, look for it here.