Let's Begin with Durrus

Durrus, the cheese that endures.

From www.cellartours.com

I don’t know why this is my first post, perhaps it is because it is the first cheese that dumbfounded me. A person I perfectly respected loved it and I wanted to continue respecting him. Me, I tasted it… boring, tried it upside down, dull, tried it tipsy, missed it. Three years on, I realise that boring is like calling the sky boring. Does it need to pour sun and storm down in order to declare that it is there? Watch the clouds, enjoy shades of blue, or see gradations of light as the sun sets.  Durrus is subtle.

I recall a young Parisian visitor coming to Ireland. We took him to the National Gallery and he noted, "We have the Louvre", we went to the Cliffs of Moher and he said, "We have more Cliff in the South of France", Dublin, "eh…Paris". We finally won ground with a battered sausage and frites avec du sel et du vinaigre from George’s Street Arcade.

Durrus is not a big cheese but then neither is Ireland. When ripe, Durrus is buttery, sweet and the taste rolls on if you stay with it. It is fresh. When terrific Durrus is quietly nutty, creamy and there are hints of oven-baked fruits. Dumbfounded. Give it time, wait for a good one and try it again and again.

from www.IrishFarmsteadCheese.com

What to look for: A good round of Durrus will have an apricot orange rind, the paste will be a buttery yellow (indicative of the flavour) and sprayed with small holes throughout. Honeycomb comes to mind but this cheese will bounce back like loamy soil when pressed. If the rind is dark and the cheese is not yet open – wait! It is still young and needs to ripen.

For this post we will not include recipes or pairing. Eating it is straight up is a good place to begin….and I need something for future posts, no?

The Basics:

Durrus is a washed rind soft cheese from the Beara Peninsula in Co. Cork, it is one of the three cheese coming from the Durrus farmhouse and the hands of Jeffa Gill and her assistants. The smaller Durrus round has a more buoyant texture than cheese from the larger round.

http://www.durruscheese.com