Harvest Moon is a star from Colorado

Janet Fletcher, San Francisco Chronicle

Thursday, March 31, 2005

After a few months of failed experiments and another couple of years of tweaking, Tom Johnson says he believes he has finally mastered his washed- rind cheese Harvest Moon. Based on the delicious wedge I purchased recently, the best sample of this Colorado cheese I've had yet, I'd say he's right to feel confident.

Johnson, with his wife, Kristi, operates the Bingham Hill Cheese Co. in Fort Collins, a 5-year-old business that made a splash with its first cheese, the award-winning Rustic Blue. To create Harvest Moon, Johnson looked to old recipes for some of France's best-known washed-rind cheeses: Pont l'Eveque, Livarot and Munster.

"Because we're so small and unsophisticated technically, I find that I can learn more from hundred-year-old books than from modern ones," says Johnson. The older works train you to rely on intuition and observation, he says. Today's manuals focus on measurements that Johnson doesn't have the equipment to gather, such as protein and fat content in each batch of milk. A large cheese producer might standardize each milk delivery, skimming fat or adding dry milk protein to reach a target ratio, while a boutique cheesemaker has to adapt to seasonal changes in the milk.

In shape and style, Harvest Moon is probably closest to an Alsatian Munster, although it definitely has its own flavor profile. Made with pasteurized cow's milk and vegetarian rennet, the whole wheels weigh a little over 2 pounds and have the sticky orange rind characteristic of this type of cheese. The tacky surface comes from repeatedly washing the wheels with brine inoculated with a bacterial culture. The bacteria colonize the surface, ripen the paste and produce the big, garlicky fragrance that we washed-rind enthusiasts love.

Harvest Moon's aroma alone makes my mouth water. It is hugely savory, like the smell of roast beef. The ivory paste is semisoft to soft, moist and supple, with a robust, long-lasting flavor. If you eat the rind, which I would encourage, you get that delightful contrasting crunch of salt. I've tasted some wheels of Harvest Moon that were borderline too salty, but the wheel I tried recently was not.

Many washed-rind cheeses present a challenge for wine because they are so earthy and pungent. Harvest Moon is no exception, and beer is probably its best companion. But wine lovers may want to try either a spicy Alsatian white wine to match the cheese in intensity or a high-acid Austrian Gruner Veltliner to cut the cheese's creamy richness. Both the 2000 Trimbach Pinot Gris Reserve and the 1999 Nigl Gruner Veltliner Kremser Freiheit worked for me.