mike geno - portfolio | cheese portraits

ColoRouge

Series: Cheese Portraits

Description: This stunner, first caught my eye when I was checking out one of my favorite cheese blogs, Matt Speigler's: cheesenotes.com . Matt has a great eye and his photographs are always seductive. Reading about this cheese, I discovered it was from Colorado, a state I had yet visited with my brush. "This wrinkled blossom is the ColoRouge, from the MouCo Cheese Company, which advertises itself as producing [salaciously addictive soft ripened cheese in Northern Colorado.] Birgit Halbreiter and Robert Poland, the owners and cheesemakers, met while working on a different kind of microbially active product, beer, at New Belgium Brewing in Ft Collins" - cheesenotes.com I love that on their website, it's explained that the natural-rind wheels are shipped in special paper that allows the wheel to breath. This "living cheese" evolves and you are offered an aging guide for you to match your taste preference. I hope I can control myself and let one age: "MouCo ColoRouge is fully aged at 7-8 weeks. At this point the cheese flavor is quite complex with its buttery creamy flavors as well as a developed earthiness that is spicy and ...well...just addictive."

Origin: USA, Colorado

Tags: MouCo, natural rind, orange, cow, soft

Price: sold

Rouge Wheel

Series: Cheese Portraits

Description: La Bonne Vie "Rouge" is a petite wheel that's a washed rind cheese with a beautiful red-orange halo against the white soft bloomy rind. This cow's milk wheel is buttery and luscious and become a little spicy as it ages. If anything, it's a beauty and a tasty one at that. This small painting is a preview of a larger commission to come so I could indulge in focusing on this side view, really showing off the brainy rind (geotrichum) along the side of the wheel.

Origin: USA, Colorado

Price: sold

La Bonne Vie Rouge

Series: Cheese Portraits

Description: This delicious Cow's Milk washed rind cheese sports a warm red-orange halo on its rind with bloomy clouds of while, which comes about naturally during the "smearing" process. During the two-week aging process, each wheel is rubbed by hand to encourage that glowing pink-red-orange fringe and also to develop the flavor of the paste inside. Rouge is buttery, and luscious and as it ages it gets spicier and gooey. This special cheese is produced by Gourmet Foods International, and I was fortunate to get a case of these small wheels to paint and eat with pleasure!

Origin: USA, Colorado

Tags: cow, brie , red

Price: sold