Niolu — Highland Sheep Cheese of the Corsican Interior

Niolo plateau, Corsica — above 1000m altitude; raw sheep-milk tradition of the Corsican interior.

Niolu takes its name from the Niolo plateau — a high granite basin above 1000m in the central Corsican interior — and is produced from the raw milk of Ovis aries sheep that graze the alpine grasslands and maquis at altitude. It is a semi-soft washed-rind cheese: the curd is pressed lightly, drained, and then washed periodically during ageing with brine or occasionally a light eau-de-vie to encourage the orange-brown Brevibacterium linens rind that gives Niolu its pungent, animal character. At three to four months the paste is pale ivory, yielding, and paste-soft at the centre; the rind is sticky and deeply aromatic. Niolu is the most assertive of the Corsican cheeses — a strong-smelling, full-flavoured mountain cheese in the tradition of Munster or Époisses, though with a distinctly Corsican flavour profile: the maquis pasture contributes thyme, rosemary, and wild fennel notes that no mainland washed-rind cheese carries.

Pungent, animal, washed-rind intensity; paste is mildly sweet and yieldingly soft; maquis-herb undertone; assertive, not for the unacclimatised.