Mimolette Cheese 12 Months Old (1 pound)

Mimolette is a French gourmet cheese that looks like a cantaloupe, and tastes even better. This mature version from Normandy is a pressed, cooked cheese that is aged for 12 months. Mimolette has a distinctive flavor of butterscotch and caramel. It could be compared to familiar cheddar, but is much more fascinating. The cheese is pleasantly chewy and salty savory. The rind is fairly smooth in the young cheese but, as it ages, it becomes thick and deeply pitted. Cheese mites proliferate in these pits to give the characteristic powdery appearance of the older cheese. The paste is dyed to a deep orange color which darkens toward the rind. The texture is hard-firm and breaks rather like fudge. This is one of those cheeses that should be experienced at least once, if not much more often.