Petit Nuage is a bright summer sheep’s milk cheese being featured at Via Umbria this month. (Photo via Landmark Creamery website)
What: Landmark Creamery’s Petit Nuage
Where: Via Umbria
This may come as a surprise, but cheese is actually seasonal, and, yes, there is a difference in flavor between “winter” and “summer” cheese. “So many people are shocked to find out that cheese is a seasonal product,” says Alice Bergen Phillips, cheesemonger at Via Umbria (1525 Wisconsin Avenue NW), an Italian market in Georgetown. Having just been a finalist in the Cheesemonger Invitational last week, Phillips knows her stuff, and she’s taking the opportunity this summer to begin educating her customers about the differences in flavor. Currently, Phillips is highlighting Petit Nuage from Landmark Creamery in Wisconsin, a fresh sheep’s milk cheese with a tangy brightness which, as she says, “tastes just like summer.”
If you’re wondering how a cheese tastes like a season, the answer is that it’s all about the milk. During winter months, cows, sheep, and goats are fed mostly on dried hay, resulting in cheese that can have less complex flavors and a higher fat content. And in the summer (their natural lactating season), these same animals feast on fresh grass, wildflowers, herbs, and wild onions to produce milk laden with all kinds of fresh, herbaceous flavors. Phillips wanted to use Petit Nuage as a gateway to summer cheese instead of a more familiar goat’s milk chèvre, saying, “It’s airy, but with a bracing acidity — bright notes of tart lemon zest, but with that lovely, fatty, nutty sheep’s milk to round it out and keep it from getting too pucker-y.”
The tiny buttons of Petit Nuage pack a creamy punch, a soft bite that pairs well with classic summer flavors like Provencal rosé, beefsteak tomatoes fresh off the farm, and spread on crostini with a sprinkling of fresh lemon zest and a drizzle of honey. “Imagine sitting by a pool, nibbling on Petit Nuage and drinking rosé,” muses Phillips. “How perfect would that be? This cheese would also be great with bubbles – something toasty and brioche-y like a classic champagne or a brut rosé would do the trick for me.”
If you’re interested in learning more about the intricacies of seasonal cheese, you can visit Phillips at the store Tuesdays through Sundays, where she’ll happily share both knowledge and cheese. Via Umbria’s Cheese of the Month Club offers even more opportunities; the $100 subscription includes half a pound of seasonal cheese every month for 6 months (hand-selected by Phillips) and cheese pick-up events on the first Wednesday of each month when you can learn about how to pair the featured cheese with beverages and condiments (non-subscribers can still attend for $25). Petit Nuage is July’s featured cheese and is a pretty tasty place for wannabe turophiles to start getting an education.
Small Bites:
Pearl Dive Picnics To Go
Who needs Colonel Sanders when Pearl Dive Oyster Palace (1612 14th Street NW) has fried chicken buckets available to-go for Fourth of July picnics? $35 garners six pieces of dark meat fried chicken, three jalapeño corn muffins, potato salad, cole slaw, blueberry hand pies, and red, white, and blue cookies, with a tablecloth and disposable flatware included. You’ve got to preorder online by Saturday, July 2nd for pick-up on July 3rd or 4th.
Midnite BBQ at Union Market
Using the tagline “No Burgers. No Hotdogs.”, the Midnite BBQ aims to bring food diversity to the traditional barbecue, hosting a variety of food trucks, including Nu Vegan Cafe, Lobstatonian, The Big Cheese, and Roaming Rooster on July 3rd starting at 8 p.m. at Union Market (1399 5th St NE). Look for plenty of DJ action, including NOLA’s own Mannie Fresh, and tasty falooda from Toli Moli. Get tickets here.
Riding the Whiskey Trail
If you secretly played The Oregon Trail game for hours when you were 10 years old (okay, maybe you were 15), then this might be the perfect event for your grown-up self, in no small part because you’ll actually be interacting with human beings: The Whisk(e)y Library’s Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a three-part series starting at Bourbon (2321 18th Street NW) on July 7th. Tickets are available for all three evenings (July 7th, July 21st, and August 4th) for $75 or individually for $30 each; the kickoff event on July 7th will focus on whiskey from Louisville, Kentucky, with Evan Williams Single Barrel, the brand new Bullet Barrel Strength, and sampling the Jim Beam Signature Craft Series.
