Hervé Mons Camembert

After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government responded in many ways that bore no rational relation to terrorist threats: invading Iraq, making it harder for Chinese nationals to get or renew student visas, X-raying our shoes at airport security checks. Perhaps the most absurdly tangential of these was the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, which did zip to prevent terrorists from smuggling in bioweapons, but effectively removed raw-milk cheeses aged less than 60 days from the American market.

Such cheeses had technically been banned for years, but, since the rules were laxly enforced, determined shoppers could sometimes track them down. Raw-milk Camembert de Normandie, Reblochon, and Crème Fraiche d'Isigny, for example, were often available in the Bay Area's better cheese shops. After the Bioterrorism Act went into effect in 2003, they disappeared. If you're familiar with the raw-milk versions of those cheeses, their pasteurized counterparts (which can't legally be sold in France, at least not under those AOC-controlled names) are a poor substitute.

Last fall, I read in Janet Fletcher's SF Chronicle cheese column that Hervé Mons of Mons Fromager Affineur (Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, France), a company that buys, ages, and distributes artisanal French cheese, spent more than a year working on an importable Camembert with a flavor closer to the real thing. Whole Foods' cheese buyers were so impressed that they contracted to buy Mons' entire production.

It was several months after reading Fletcher's article before I finally happened into a Whole Foods when the cheese was in stock ($9.99). The first round I tried was about four weeks from the "best before" date stamped on the box; it was underripe, chalky in the middle, and bland. I went back to the store and found one that was right at its date: it was overripe, with an ammonia odor and aftertaste.

I bought yet another round, from the same batch as the first, and kept it in the refrigerator until two weeks before the pull date. The third time was the charm. The texture was just right, completely creamy, no chalk, with a few bubbles. The center bulged out at the cut, but it wasn't so ripe as to be runny. It had a sweaty, truffle-like aroma and buttery, grassy flavor reminiscent of the raw-milk version. The cheese wasn't quite as good as the real thing, but I've had worse Camembert in France.