Michael Cranmer goes all Sherlock Holmes to find a mystery cheese he fell in love with in the Auvergne...
It began ten years ago, on Friday 15 February, 2008, to be precise, in a small hotel, in a small town called Le Mont-Dore in the Auvergne. I'd stopped for the night en-route to the Alps. After my long drive I just wanted a meal and then bed. The food was decent, the elderly waiter attentive. Clearing my plate he asked if I would like any cheese. I don’t suffer ‘cheese-dreams’, so said “yes”, little knowing that the memory would haunt me for the next decade.
He brought a selection. In the centre was a small volcano, its pale lovely crust covered in a dusting of ash. How extraordinary! (...but perhaps not, as the Auvergne is dotted with dormant volcanoes).
Intrigued, I cut a slice. An eruption of pleasure filled my mouth. I smiled. The waiter smiled, “Vous aimez ça?” Oh, yes, I like it very much. Intensely creamy, slightly pungent; I closed my eyes in ecstasy as the flavour held me. Finally, I asked the name…and promptly forgot it. That was a BIG MISTAKE, and one that was to haunt me for the next ten years. If only I’d written it down. If only my memory was not like a perforated plastic bag. If only…
But for then I went to bed a happy man, savouring the aftertaste of my little slice of delectation. Somehow, as I slept, the volcanic remembrance embedded itself in my subconscious, to surface intermittently and worry at me like the equivalent of a snatch of a song...
I knew I loved THAT cheese, and I wanted more. But how to get it? An early start meant no chance to enquire in the town.
Time passed, the taste nagged at me: I would gaze wistfully in fromageries hoping for a glimpse of my lost love (which was definitely féminin in my mind, not masculin). I trawled the internet, always looking. On a visit to Paris, enquiries in the best cheese shops yielded only shrugs.
But I never gave up. Always searching, always hoping, always longing.
Then, nine years after that first and only assignation, whilst in London I bumped
The long lost love Cheese of the Auvergne