This is the 12-month aged Mimolette from Isigny Sainte-Mère in Normandy, France, a pasteurized cow's milk cheese with a deep orange paste and a famously pitted natural rind. The color is annatto, a natural dye, and the cratered rind comes from cheese mites doing their work during the long aging in the cellar. At twelve months the paste has tightened into something dense and flaky, with a slight crystalline crunch when you break a piece off the wedge. On the palate it leads with toasted hazelnut and brown butter, then pulls into a long caramel and butterscotch finish that hangs on well past the swallow. There's a savory pull underneath the sweetness that keeps it from ever reading as one-note, and a clean, dry texture that makes it just as happy on a board as it is shaved over a salad or grated into a gratin. Mimolette was famously Charles de Gaulle's favorite cheese, and Isigny is the benchmark producer for the style. Twelve months sits right in the sweet spot, aged enough to develop real depth and crystal crunch, but still moist enough to slice cleanly.
