Chabert Tomme Crayeuse

Tomme Crayeuse is a semi-soft cow's milk cheese from Savoie, in the French Alps, developed in 1995 by affineur Max Schmidhauser as a modern take on the old Tomme de Savoie recipe. What makes it special is the two-stage aging: a stint in a cool, damp cellar to build the chalky natural rind, then a move to a warmer cave so the paste softens from the outside in.

Cut a wedge and you can see exactly what that does. There's a creamy, almost melting band right under the rind, then a firmer, slightly chalky core in the middle. The paste is buttery and mushroomy with a clean lactic tartness on the front of the tongue, and the rind brings a real forest-floor character without any of the funk you'd get from a washed rind. It eats gentle but it's not a shy cheese, plenty going on between the cream line and the center.

The natural rind, dusty grey-white and very alpine-looking, is edible and worth eating, that's where most of the earthy depth lives. A great cheese for someone who likes a Tomme de Savoie but wants something a little softer and a little more expressive.