My favorite cheese - Mimolette

So, for a couple of months now I've been working on learning cheese. I've read a couple of books (more on that in later posts), but more importantly I've started buying and eating good cheese and paying close attention to how it really tastes, and what I like. Now I'm starting a blog as a way, more than anything else, to keep track of these experiences. The idea, more or less, is to become a cheese "snob". (Is it bad to be a snob? Not necessarily, I don't think.) For this first post I'm going to talk about what is pretty quickly becoming my favorite cheese, Mimolette: I really like this cheese. When I go somewhere like Wegman's, the only grocery store remotely near me where I can buy top end cheeses, to buy cheeses new to me, I end up getting a little piece of this too. It is very firm, being a pressed and aged cheese, with a slightly sweet, deep, nutty, and richly flavored paste. ('Paste' is the cheese term for the inner of a cheese, the part you actually eat, to be distinguished from the 'rind' which you can eat, though most people don't.) It is made from pasteurized cow's milk and comes in a largish round ball, from which your local cheese purveyor will cut a wedge. It is French. The piece you see here is the third piece I've bought and eaten. The first piece was from Wegman's in Syracuse, the second was from a little shop near Notting Hill in London, and the third was from Wegman's in Ithaca(that's the one you see here, bought yesterday). The first and third pieces were a very deep orange, but the second was paler and not nearly as tasty. So I am assuming that it gets darker and richer with age, like so many good cheeses. If you want to know a little more about Mimolette, go here.