In the delicious but often bewildering world of artisan cheese, a knowledgeable guide can make all the difference. “The first rule is to befriend your cheesemonger,” says Eric Paul, who is a cheesemonger and the owner of the Cheese Traveler fine-foods shop in Albany. Paul is quoting a list of rules from a venerable cheese shop in Philadelphia, but while perusing the 100-plus cheeses at the Traveler–hard and soft, domestic and imported, fresh and aged, natural rind and washed rind, and most with names that are far from household words–it’s a good rule to keep in mind.
“We’re here to help,” says Paul, whose epicurean knowledge of all things cheese is part what makes his cheese shop a very different experience than, say, ordering provolone from the deli counter, or even picking up a camembert from a gourmet store. His advice to new customers who may be overwhelmed by the unfamiliar bounty is for them to know that almost everybody else approaching the counter is just as intimidated. And that is what a cheesemonger is for. “We are the link between the cheesemakers and the customers,” he says.
The Cheese Traveler, photo by Ann Morrow
At the Cheese Traveler, selecting a cheese is a conversation, with descriptions, suggestions, samplings, and recommendations for pairings. “We try to take the sale out of it,” says Paul, who especially enjoys the interaction with customers. “Our only real agenda is to bring in a small-scale cheese that tastes great, and to help customers find ways to enjoy it, whether it’s for entertaining, or for a meal, or to snack on.”
Paul was a once a neophyte, too (though his hometown of Hardwick, Mass., is the site of two prestige creameries). His entry into artisan cheeses came while working at the Honest Weight Food Co-op, where he was behind the cheese case part-time. “I started seeing all these cheeses that I didn’t know anything about, and I wanted to expand into them, because no one around me knew anything about them,” he says.
Paul’s identical-twin brother lives in Vermont, and when Paul visited him, he would explore every co-op he could and find out about their cheeses, and where they were from and how they were crafted. He also made contact with a regional company of small producers. “So I started bringing them in and sharing them with people,” he recalls.
Paul eventually became manager of the cheese counter. “The co-op had 25 cheeses when I first started, mostly Monterey jacks, colbys, cheddars, and by the time I left, they had about 125 cheeses, and it was the fastest-growing department in the store.”
Paul left the Honest Weight after four and a half years to finish his degree in classical philology at University of Albany. He also continued his education in cheese, by seeking out “exceptional producers of small-batch cheeses,” mostly for his own enjoyment. “I love cheese,” he says simply.
While visiting cheese shops in Boston and New York City, however, he noticed things were done differently. “The European cheeses were of a different quality, the cheeses were smaller scale, more obscure” (the smallest scale, he explains, is Farmstead–cheese that comes from a single farm and its herd). Smaller scale means more sophisticated flavors and textures.
“Those cheeses were traditional cheeses, that were made for centuries, and they carried a story, about the cultural conditions around them,” he says. “That resonated for me, as well as the full flavors.” After graduation, he worked for a year at Formaggio Kitchen, an esteemed cheese shop in Boston known for having its own aging caves.
In Albany (where he lives with his wife and three children), Paul ventured out on his own with a booth at farmer’s markets, including the Delmar Farmer’s Market. Doing the markets, he says, was a way to introduce people to small-scale cheeses from a 50-mile radius. And while doing so, he built a customer base.
Since opening his Delaware Avenue shop in 2012, with 75 cheeses, bare shelves, and himself as the only employee, Paul has expanded into more than 100 selections (plus 25 more for the holiday season) and a wide variety of accompaniments, from specialty olive oils to charcuterie to honey and jams, and chocolates, and grass-fed heritage-breed organic beef from Tilldale Farm in Hoosick. He now has three employees.
What’s different about the Cheese Traveler, he says, is that it’s a European-style, cut-to-order shop. And that cut-to-order part is important: for one thing, pre-cutting and packaging cheese in plastic can impair the flavor. At the Traveler, cheeses are wrapped in breathable, two-ply cheese paper.
Now, about those cheeses . . . “We carry cheeses that are representative of all different styles, it’s about the quality of the cheese, and the tradition,” he says. “We want to have a least one cheese of each style, and we want to have a cross-section of cheeses. Our local and domestic cheeses all have European ancestors, so we try to create a link.”
He gives as an example a cloth-bound cheddar from Missouri that he carries, along with its British predecessors, cloth-bound cheddars from Somerset, the county where cheddar originally was made. “Both are raw milk, they have similar characteristics but they taste different,” he says. The shop also carries block-style cheddar, and what Paul likes to do with interested customers is to recommend a cheese similar but slightly different than the cheese they are familiar with. “Now we have customers who just say, ‘Put together a selection for me.’ They trust us,” he says.
The shop also likes to build appreciation for limited-batch cheeses. “We have a blue cheese from Oregon where they harvest grape leaves and soak them in pear brandy for a couple of months, and they wrap the blue cheese in the leaves and age for it for a year. It’s only released in the fall,” he continues, “and we only get three or so wheels of it. It’s highly prized, people look for it every year.”
For holiday meals, Paul recommends the softer cheeses. “We have some beautiful soft cheeses, some beautiful French cheeses,” he enthuses. For cheeses to be served before the meal he suggests pairings with olives and perhaps an antipasto-type cured meat. “You can get your cheese, and then an accompaniment or two, maybe 10 slices of salami for an extra $2,” he says. For after the meal, he recommends a cheese that pairs with fruit or jam.
“We encourage people to balance texture, style, and milks,” he adds. And for a piéce de rèsistance cheese, how about a raw-milk cheese wrapped in spruce bark and washed in beer, from a single batch that is made only at Thanksgiving? “It’s almost the texture of pudding, you just shmear it on a baguette,” Paul says. But he also emphasizes that for him and his staff, “It’s not about the cheeses we like, it’s about finding the cheeses that you like.”
As of last year, the Cheese Traveler started carrying hearth breads and serving a light menu, with various grilled-cheese combos as the star attraction. “It was a natural thing, to make grilled cheese,” Paul says. “We just play with food all day.” That a lunch business sprung up has confirmed his choice of Delaware Avenue for a location that could be both a neighborhood shop and a convenient stop for people driving in from out of town.
“It’s a fun little corridor,” he says of the Delaware Avenue business community. “People seem to be excited about the small-shops feel.”
Ryan Skrabalak, one of the Traveler’s cheesemongers, says that what he likes most about selling cheese, aside from “making people happy with food,” is that it’s very basic, but also very cultural, “There’s a lot to it.”
“Cheese is a simple agricultural product, but each cheese is a story about place: where it comes from, the soil, the weather, the traditions that were honed over time,” elaborates Paul. “And those conditions have brought about the great variety of cheeses we enjoy today.”
And maybe it’s this recognition of cheese as an edible cultural repository that makes a cheesemonger a special kind of food purveyor. As Paul lightheartedly notes, “A carrot doesn’t have a story.”
