Nowadays most cheeses are available all year round, in standardized products there is little if no difference of taste between 1st January and 31 December. The makers of such products want you as a customer all year round, by not challenging you they often manage too!
Artisan cheese though is a very seasonal product which will be experiencing seasons, indeed the taste will vary along the year depending on the nature of the feed of the animal, fresh lush grass from Spring to Autumn and dry feed in the winter.
What can we call a Winter cheese?
A soft cheese made from the last succulent grasses of the Autumn that reaches maturation at the start or during the Winter.
I chose Burrata from Italianate at Borough market. http://boroughmarket.org.uk/the-parma-ham-and-mozzarella-stall-2 . It is a rather fresh products, a week old, it was made in Puglia southern Italy where Buffala cows are grazing later than in Northern Europe which translates into a very floral cheese.
Look for raw soft cheeses if you want to taste the Autumn grass flavours.
A winter cheese can be too a hard cheese which traditionally was made in the mountains, the geography makes it difficult to keep large herds of cows therefore the farmers would pull their milk together in order to create hard cheeses of large size which could keep for long periods, specially when the weather was so bad that the mountain snow impeded their movement. These cheeses are called Fromage de Garde, keeping cheese.
To illustrate this type of cheese i have taken with a Monte Veronese from the Lessinia mountains North of Verona, Northern Italy, this cheese is 20 months old and has been ripened up to eight months in Passito wine, a local sweet wine. The cheese is supplied by http://boroughmarket.org.uk/lubriaco-drunk-cheese
A Winter cheese can be too a cheese rarely consumed in the Summer but often cooked with in the Winter.
Raclette is the most famous Winter cheese, you may well have already witnessed someone scraping such cheese on some potatoes, raclette indeed means to scrape. To illustrate this type of cheese, i have taken the Ogleshield from Neal’s yard dairy. It is essentially a British Raclette.
I do recommend you to visit your local cheese mongers, sure they will be more than happy to take it from there.
rindwash 