First washed-rind in the log, and it's a good one to break the seal on. This is a Taleggio D.O.P. from Auricchio, a name that's been making it since 1877, and the cheese itself traces back to the Val Taleggio up in Lombardy. The word washed-rind is the whole story here. While it ripens, the rind gets regularly wiped down with brine, and that salt bath is exactly what breeds the orange-pink bacteria responsible for the smell. So when Dave says beach dumpster, he's not insulting it, he's describing the process out loud. That funk is brine and sea air by design.
The brie comparison is sharper than he gives himself credit for. Taleggio and brie are cousins in feel, both soft and buttery with a yielding rind, but they get there by opposite routes: brie grows a fuzzy white bloom, Taleggio gets scrubbed with salt water. Same plush texture, completely different smell. That sandy-but- smooth rind he clocked is the giveaway that this one took the salt-and-stink road.
The real tell is the blue cheese line. Dave keeps insisting he doesn't like blue, yet the cheese he still can't stop thinking about is Picón, a screaming Cantabrian blue, and now a properly stinky washed-rind just pulled a 4 with a shrug. The aversion was never to funk. It's to a specific kind of sharp, chalky blue bite. Stink on its own, the brine-and-butter kind, he's clearly fine with. Taleggio is the gentlest door into that whole stinky room, so this is the moment to walk through it. Next stop a Fontina, then maybe an Époisses or a Munster when he's feeling brave.
Eaten plain it does the job, but this one was born for warmth. Melt a slice over a hunk of crusty bread, or stir it into a risotto the way they do in Lombardy, and the butter goes everywhere. Pair it with something sweet to cut the salt, a few slices of pear or a drizzle of honey, and pour a glass of nebbiolo or a dry Italian white to keep up with it.
