OK, here's the hard part: vanh-day-anh bee-shawn-nay. Give each syllable equal weight. Now you know how to ask for a wedge of the lovely Vendéen Bichonné, a pasteurized cow's milk cheese from Brittany whose name translates as "the pampered cheese from the Vendée region."
The person doing the pampering is Pascal Beillevaire, an affineur (cheese ager) who buys 6-week-old wheels from a cooperative near Nantes and transports them to his underground cave, a former railroad tunnel, in the Auvergne. The wheels stay in this humid environment for two months, during which time they are turned and brushed occasionally to clean them up.
But they aren't brushed that much, it seems, because the wheels, which weigh 10 to 12 pounds, arrive in the Bay Area with a healthy cloak of gray and white molds. Before Beillevaire buys and matures the wheels, the cheese is known as Halbran, a name that I would bet even few French people recognize. It is primarily a local cheese – at least until Beillevaire matures it, rechristens it, puts it in his retail shops in Paris and ships it overseas.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The San Francisco Chrnonicle.