I recently placed an order for cheese from Fico International (tel: 2404 3895), which is better known as a wine importer but also stocks cheese from France. I was offered something I thought was new to me: brebis fougere. I'm always willing to taste something I've never tried, so I accepted, and then did an online search to find out more.
It turns out I had eaten this cheese before. I purchased it in Bordeaux, France, from a market vendor with such a great selection of unusual, artisanal cheeses that people were lining up to buy them.
I neglected to write down the names of the cheeses I had bought that day and only recognised it because the look of the brebis fougere is so distinctive: the individual washed-rind cheese from Corsica is made from the milk of sheep (brebis) and decorated with a fern leaf (fougere) embedded in the top (you don't eat the leaf). It would be logical to assume that a washed-rind, sheep's-milk cheese would be pungent, but the odour is not as strong as you might expect (although to call it mild would be wrong). The rind is golden-orange and the soft, creamy 'paste' is slightly sweet, rich and a little sticky. It's made into individual rounds that weigh about 300 grams.
Although the cheese would be delicious in more civilised surroundings, I was perfectly happy to eat it the way we did on that mild, sunny day in Bordeaux: with fresh crusty bread, sitting at a small, rickety table, sipping red wine from a plastic cup.