By PATRICIA UNTERMAN
At some point in the taste journey of people who love cheese, there comes the epiphany that the most complex and delicious specimens are rare, almost fragile, and that it's important to seek them out because you may never find their like again.
Lord knows I'm not talking about factory-made cheeses, which represent 95% of even French cheeses. Though good, they taste alike and predictable, batch after batch, unlike handmade cheeses produced by the people who raise the animals that gave the milk.
Only a person who knows every mouthful of food his animals eat, who milks the animals twice a day through all the seasons and then makes cheese from just that milk, can produce a brilliant cheese, full of character and place.
But it was not until I trekked up into the Pyrenees with a small group of food lovers that I understood how rare a treasure is a humble mountain cheese.
We met in Bordeaux and bused it to a trailhead not far from the Spanish border. For four hours we hiked uphill, starting at about 3,000 feet in the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. For the first part of the walk the weather smiled on us. It was sunny, not too hot, the sky crystal clear. Each turn of the path revealed a breathtaking new view, wild orchids growing in mossy grottoes by a stream, and finally an exquisite green carpet of grass dotted with tiny wild flowers above the tree line.
Outcroppings of boulders and sharp towers of stone popped out of the carpet, reminders that the Heidi-esque landscape could be threatening. And of course, the weather changed. Mountain mists poured in through the valley as we rose, the sun disappeared and the temperature dropped 20 degrees.
Next page: The most delicious meal of my life
Photographs by Barbara Mendelsohn
