Mystic Cheese Co., long-time Cheesenotes favorite, with a penchant for maritime-themed names, recently announced the newest cheese in their lineup: Sea Change. Like its siblings in the Mystic family โ the Melinda Mae (named for a girl in a Shel Silverstein poem who ate a whale) and Melville (named for the author of a whale-themed novel of some repute) โ the name derives from a source that does honor to the company location near the historic seaport town of Mystic, Connecticut. (See my reviews for theย Melinda Maeย and Melville).
In this case the name comes from Ariel's Song, a verse passage in Shakespeare's The Tempest:ย
"Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
This seems particularly apropos given Mystic's motto: "Dedicated to the Science and Art of Milk Metamorphosis". For Civitello, the transformation is always about allowing the quality and flavor of the milk to come through with minimal intervention. as discussed in the previous posts, Brian learned the art of cheesemaking in Italy (see the Melinda Mae post for an in-depth profile of Brian and the Mystic business, including their custom shipping container cheesemaking facilities, aka "cheese pods"), and he has made his focus the development fabricating the cheese with the freshest milk possible "30 minutes out of the cow at pasteurization", as Brian put it (Mystic has no bulk tanks, because the milk, rather than sitting around for a day or more, goes directly into the vat) and coaxing the wheels to reach their full expression while still young and capture the personality of the high-quality milk without overwhelming it.
The Sea Change is inspired by the delicate, silken mixed-milk cheeses of Northern Italy (which traditionally fall under the "Robiola" header, a category which actually encompasses a broad variety of styles, formats and flavors, similar to the word "Tomme"). The Sea Change uses a "Stracchino" fabrication style, similar to that of Melvile, but with some custom tweaks.ย This is a fairly young cheese; the wheel I was eating was around 20 days old, and from make to shipping the Sea Change averages just 13 days. Mystic's cheeses are specifically designed to age to peak during shipping and storage, rather than being aged to ripeness before being released. Some, like the Melinda Mae, even come with their own specially designed cardboard aging box to ensure that the conditions are right even once the cheese has left the Mystic caves. ย
The wheel is small, around four inches in diameter and an inch or less in height, with an ivory rind, a frosting of bright white yeast cultures across the surface. In addition to standard cultures, Mystic also cultivated wild yeasts, indigenous to their location, for use on the rind. The paste is pale, glossy and a bit elastic, but not runny. ย In flavor the Sea Change is mild, milky and buttery, with briny, fruity and yeasty notes and a bit of a yogurty tang. As a recent Grub Street post notes, Brian likes to call his cheeses "session cheeses", similar to "session" beers, in the sense that they are both delicious and easy to eat a lot of, whether on its own or melted over a crisp, thin pizza. Either way, this is a good cheese to set sail with (or enjoy it indoors if the seas are rough).ย
Available at Saxelby Cheesemongers.ย
