Stinky Cheese: Sablé du Boulonnais

Sablé du Boulonnais cheese from Beillevaire cheese shop in Paris
(http://www.fromagerie-beillevaire.com/boutique/1-fromage/114-sable-du-boulonnais.html)

When it's relentlessly grey and cold outside, and when you have to huddle by the heater to keep your fingers warm enough to type, then you know it's time for some stinky cheese therapy. Julie M. organized a great trip to the Bellevaire Fromagerie in Belleville, where we got to taste several cheeses, including this one, a pungent Sablé du Boulonnais from Boulogne-sur-Mer on France's northern coast. It's a raw cow's milk, washed rind cheese, which automatically means smelly, and this one has been washed with "bière blanche de Wissant," or "Wissant white beer." This is a beer made with unmalted wheat, spiced with coriander and orange peel.  Imagine a month of being rubbed down regularly with this spicy beer, and then being rolled in fine bread crumbs at the very end to trap all those enticingly fetid aromas. Perhaps the farmers around Boulogne-sur-Mer have a view of the nearby white sand beaches as they milk their cows and dream about the next batch of cheese?

The taste is unexpectedly sweet and mild compared to its smell. French descriptions of the cheese often include the words "sensual" and "feminine." Only the French could associate sex and beautiful women with stinky cheese! Jerôme, the cheesemonger, told us that the Sablé's cheese maker was originally an engineer. In his mid-40's, in the throes of a full-blown mid-life crisis, he decided to learn cheesemaking from scratch. He quit his job, spent a year bicycling around France, visiting cheesemakers throughout the country and learning the profession, and then took over his grandparents' ruined farm near Boulogne-sur-Mer. Many, many years of hard work later, we all get to enjoy his Sablé du Boulonnais.