Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best [Hardcover]

I love a good piece of stinky cheese. I enjoy taking it out of the fridge and letting its nasty old stank peel the paint off my walls, knockout my cat, and make the local children cry. It's how you know you gots yerself sum quality cheese right there.

Unfortuneatly, I must admit, my cheese knowledge is limited to about, oh, whatever I might have picked up from a cookbook or Food Network. Thank heavens for Max McCalman, may chiors sing his spoiled milk praises! For those who don't really know this guy, he is the man and fromager (cheese brainiac) who pretty much single handedly spearheaded the idea of presenting true artisinal cheeses, cheese courses, and giving cheese the kind of credit we give to wine here in America. He has become well known for his work in the New York restaurants Picholine and Artisinal, and luckilly for those of us not living shibby in New York, has gone out of his way to create a wonderful guide to the best of the best in his second book, Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best.

While McCalman's first book, The Cheese Plate, co-authored by David Gibbons, was a chic everyperson's guide to wine and cheese pairings, Cheese simply gives us 200 of the world's best cheeses. Listed in alphabetical order, each cheese is described beautifully and concisely noting where it is produced, how it is produced, how best to enjoy it, and the underlying flavors you should expect when experiencing it. I use the word experience, because after trying some of these selections, it really is the only appropriate word that the English language can offer me. McCalman also goes ahead to offer with each cheese a variety of different wines (red, white, and blush) and even some sparkling wines that should help you wow your party guests' palates.

McCalman, also understanding our blind kitten approach to cheese, also guides you through various aspects of cheese. Early chapters deal with how to select, store, prepare, serve various kinds of cheese. Later on we are given a thurough lesson on how to pair cheese with various breads, fruits, and nuts, or how to simply lay back and enjoy a piece unmolested by any other food. Basics for how to create and serve a cheese course or a cheese tasting party will inspire you to host your own (I know I plan to have a truly stinky one shortly!). Lastly, of course, an extensive, though maybe a bit too much so, course on how to pair wine and cheese. The watchful and caring teacher, he does this in a simple, plainspoken manner, allowing any reader to understand not only how to preform each task, but the why behind it as well.

I have to say, I would not have discovered my love of Lancaster, my passion for Prattigauer, my desire for Doddington, and how I give resounding praise to Roaring 40's Blue!

Overall, I give Cheese a 5 out of 5. This book is a wonderful addition to any food lover's bookshelf. It's susinct, informative, and covers a wide variety of cheeses you can find from California to Italy.

This newest addition to Mccalman's offerings is by far the best and most comprehensive, timely reference to the cheeses of the world. It is the new "bible" as far as I'm concerned. He elaborates and builds upon his first book in a way that is illuminating and interesting, and , if even a bit constrained with his list of great cheeses , manages to present his picks in an assessible way. His chapter on wine parings is the best I've read. Truly this is a must have for anyone that has a passion for spoiled milk of the world.

UPDATE -- I strongly urge those considering this book to take a look at McCalman's newest work, "Mastering Cheese." It is far more comprehensive and informative. It does not utilize the "100 point" rating scale that I found such an unnecessary distraction in this volume. In short, "Mastering Cheese" is truly McCalman's magnum opus and a book I recommend without any reservation. Granted, this "Connoisseur's Guide" is an attractive book in some ways. For cheese lovers, its close up color photos of the featured cheeses will verge on soft core dairy porn.

But if you are going to buy just one reference work on cheese, the "Connoisseur's Guide" would not be it. I urge you to look instead at McCalman's "Mastering Cheese" -- which is his masterwork.

The "Connoisseur's Guide" reviewed here is a useful, albeit somewhat limited reference guide, as it highlights only a handful of the many cheeses of the world -- McCalman's hand picked selection of "The World's Best." There is reasonably good introductory advice about cheese selection, caring for your cheese purchases, ideas for matching with wine and combining for a cheese plate.

However, where McCalman runs off the rails is his seemingly unnecessary and certainly inappropriate use of the dreaded "100 point rating scale." This is a silly exercise when applied to wine -- it is even more ludicrous when applied to cheese. On what basis is Laguiole a "91 point quality" cheese; Rogue River blue a 93 pointer; Humboldt Fog a 75 pointer; Pecorino Toscano 81 points; Soumaintrain an 80 pointer; Selles sur Cher an 89. To begin with, every one of these cheeses will vary wildly. A particular piece of Soumaintrain may be fabulous or fabulously boring -- and ditto any other cheese. Spend ten days in France, for example, and after the dinner cheese cart has come and gone ten times you will have learned, if nothing else, that every cheese will be different from restaurant to restaurant and from one night of the week to the next.

Furthermore, these "quality ratings" seem to reflect nothing more or less than McCalman's personal preferences or a particularly wonderful example of cheese X he may have stumbled across at some point. How else would Gouda, a wildly variable cheese that appears in a wide range from dull uninspired commercial to mature and complex farmhouse forms, merit a "96" without further elaboration, while Brin d'Amour, potentially fabulous stuff, pulls an 80, Chaource a 74? A good piece of Sbrinz is a smash with old Bordeaux -- but is it really a "99 point cheese"? I have no idea what the basis for these "quality scores" might be -- and unless I missed it, the book doesn't explain the scoring method either. Even if it did, that would not make the practice any more justifiable.

I can see it now. Just as there are those who fill their wine cellars strictly by the numbers, who will buy nothing but WS or WA "90 point and up" wines and refuse to look at anything at 89 and points south, there will be folks who will not touch any cheese rated under 90 -- and who will also put anything on a platter that scores 90 or over, no matter how terrific or abysmal the reality of the cheese in front of them may be. Rather than develop their own sense and sensibility about cheese (or anything else), they will color by numbers, encouraged by the likes of Robert Parker and now Max McCalman. "Parker gave the wine a 92 and McCalman says this cheese is a 96" -- "the wine" being some flaccid oak chipped, micro-oxygenated, acid and alcohol adjusted Australian shiraz and "this cheese" being a low fat, underripe, spongy and bland Gouda bought in a plastic vacuum pack at the corner Jiffy Mart.

The 100 point scoring thing is utter stuff and nonsense -- a holdover from grade school. While McCalman has done much to get Americans to start paying attention to cheese -- the endpapers call him "the unofficial spokesperson for fine cheese in the United States" -- his use of the 100 point scale here does a terrible disservice to the cause of fine cheese and to the readers of this book.

Buy the book, IGNORE THE SCORES.