Epoisses, Vacheron Mont d'Or and Boone

During my exile in Lausanne I enjoyed doing all the typical things American expats do living among the Swiss. These hobbies included unintentionally breaking the thousands of inane rules which define the Swiss social contract, mispronouncing French words, jaywalking, dissing the overpriced chasselas-based white wines, asking why all the stores are closed on Sunday, declaring the superiority of America, etc. While I'm quick to dismiss a culture who's highest achievements are cuckoo clocks and fondue, the Swiss do know their cheese and most cheesemongers carry a vast selection of Swiss, French, and other types from around the EU.

I'm a self professed fromage-o-phile and if I had to pick a general style of cheese to spend the rest of my life with it would be the soft, washed rind, aromatically offensive, runny varieties. You know the ones, they melt into a pile of goo on the cheese plate when they hit room temperature, smell like a strange mixture of feet, musk and barn and stink up the refrigerator within minutes of storage. They also get more ripe with a bit of age. A friend of mine who is an Epoisses fanatic claims that they aren't worth eating until a deep inhale of the cheese wakes up the nostrils like smelling salts.

But as usual, I digress from the point of the story. One night in Lausanne my fellow glutton CJ was preparing a cheese plate with some of the amazing finds we'd had earlier in the day at the market. Some of these outdoor markets have incredible cheese vans; essentially an enormous mobile cheese counter which sells their products like a roach coach would here in the states. We'd purchased a nice assortment and were looking forward to pairing the plate with a 2000 Ridge York Creek, Late Harvest Zin.

CJ had always been fond of our dog, Boone, a black Poodle. This particular evening Boone wouldn't stop following CJ around and at one point his affection turned to licking. This wasn't just the gentle peck or nuzzle, the dog was getting after him and it was starting to get a little embarrassing. He started to focus his licking on my friends jeans, specifically near his inner thigh and had no interest in stopping. I'm not sure if you've ever experienced one of these annoying crotch sniffing dogs who won't take the hint to knock it off but that's not Boone's gig.

We eventually realized that the source of the lust for CJ's groin was not some sort of gay tendency coming from the Poodle but rather the unintentional dribbling of the Vacheron Mont D'or which began on CJ's waist and ran down his pant leg. Mystery solved.

Postscript: despite the fact that Poodles have a European ancestry, their digestive systems are still not refined enough to process a fine French cheese of this magnitude. The next day he looked like a dog with a hangover...his ass was dragging. Quite literally. Enough said...