OF C H E E S E & RO C K S & T I M E
I
On the trail of a mystery crystal
PHOTOS AND STORY BY JOSHUA BROWN
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V E R M O N T Q U A R T E R LY
STRUVITE CRYSTALS, PAUL KINDSTEDT LABORATORY
n 1962, at the bottom of the Ika Fjord on the southwest coast of Greenland, a Danish geologist found spectacular columns of rock growing, like white and algae-covered tree trunks, up to sixty feet tall. It was the first discovery of the mineral ikaite, a strange, watery form of calcium carbonate. Later, geologists would find ikaite in the Arctic Ocean, in sea-bottom sediments in Antarctica, and other freezing places. Taken out of the cold deep water, ikaite can melt rapidly, its aqueous crystals dried into chalk. Now, walk into City Market in Burlington, or Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, and head toward the cheese counter. Ask the cheesemonger for one of their best washed-rind cheeses. If you’re lucky, they’ll have a small wheel called Winnimere. It’s only made in winter, out of raw milk from the Ayrshire cows at the Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vermont—and it’s aged at a bit over fifty degrees Fahrenheit for two months. When you get home, open the blue-labeled wrapper: it’s going to be beautifully stinky. Note the salmon-colored top surface, overlaid with white fuzz. Scrubbed with a salt brine as it ages, this rind holds a complex layer of bacteria and yeast that imparts to the oozy inner cheese an amazing complexity of flavors, like bacon mixed with sweetened cream. If you happen to get a bit of this orange rind on your spoonful of soft