The individual identity and personality of a cheese is determined by a number of facts of nature.
The climate
The climate and landscape, including the minerals in the soil, affect what flora grows, and therefore what a milk-producing animal eats, thereby influencing the subtle flavors of the milk. Even the most unobservant cannot fail to see and smell the difference between fresh grass, wild clover, and meadow flowers compared with compacted feed, silage, or turnips. Minerals also affect the speed of ripening, the texture, and flavor of the cheese.
The animal and its grazing habits
The animal and its grazing habits add another dimension. The comfort-loving cow is largely found on rich plains, lush valleys, and sunny mountain pastures. Goats, unlike cows and sheep, are browsers, tearing sparse but aromatic flora from hedges, craggy peaks, rock-strewn valleys or, when the opportunity arises, from the farmers’ carefully manicured garden. The resulting milk is herbaceous, like a crisp, white wine infused with herbs, becoming like marzipan or ground almonds with age.
The sweet, almost caramel, taste of ewe’s milk has been valued in Europe and the Middle East for thousands of years. The numerous breeds adapt to almost any climate, some surviving on seemingly nothing, yielding but a few liters of milk a day imbued with the essence of the wild, aromatic herbs, grasses, and flora that form their diet.
The breed of animal can also be a factor. Compared with the high volume yield of the Friesian, for example, milk from Jersey or Guernsey cows has large fat globules that produce a richer, smoother deep Monet-yellow cheese, and the sweet, mellifluous milk of the Montbéliarde cow is renowned throughout the Savoy region of France.
The microclimate
The microclimate of both the milk and the cheese room provide the finishing touch. Tiny colorful, wind-born molds and yeasts treat each new batch of protein-rich curd as a canvas on which to create their daily masterpiece, while a multitude of naturally occurring bacteria prefer the seclusion and warmth of the interior to work their magic. These convert the sweet milk sugars, or lactose, into lactic acid and so begins the fermentation process.
Once an accident of nature, most have been harnessed by cheesemakers to ensure the end result is more predictable. These microflora, along with the subtleties inherent in milk, are lost when the milk is pasteurized and must be re-introduced in the form of a cocktail of bacteria known as a starter culture. Regrettably, these laboratoryproduced cultures cannot emulate the complexity provided by Mother Nature.