Cheese Alert: Tomme de Savoie

I spent tonight slowly imbibing an undistinguished but nicely cherryish Pinot Noir from 2006. But the highlight was its pairing with an equally modest and yet delicious cheese, a Tomme de Savoie with the usual gritty grey-brown rind.

Tomme de Savoie means something like 'a Savoy cheese wheel'. It is made from raw cow's milk, packed and allowed to age nicely. In the process, it picks up little angular bubbles in its matrix, not the distended voids found in cheeses like Emmental. It has a smooth slightly creamy texture, but cuts well without any crumbling or smearing.

The flavour is vegetal, slightly nutty but more like autumn grass; it is an honest, straightforward cheese. It is nice to the tongue, it gives no offence to the nose. You could probably ferment it into something more formidable, but Tomme de Savoie is quite happy to be a minimalist accompaniment to other things. It leaves little lingering or cloying aftertaste, and even as it complements a moderate red wine, it smiles and disappears – just like a Cheshire cat, and not at all like a Cheshire cheese.