Irene Clemente—the woman who kicked off her self-described love affair with cheese via a charcuterie board business dubbed Mrs. Platters—holds up a waxed round of England-based cheese company Valley Of Stone’s Smokey Oak. A naturally smoked cheddar, the cheese has not just been recognized as one of the best cheddars in the world, but it often tops the awards list.
Beautifully fragrant—the type of smokiness that comes from natural smoking, not injecting liquid smoke—wonderfully off-white, and surprisingly creamy in texture, she first asks you to smell it as she begins to tell the story behind the cheese. She asks you to slightly pinch it, releasing further aromas. Taste it by itself always at first, and then, through a pairing with Cockburn’s port, discover the cheese’s additional depths. Savory. A wee bit of sweet. Earthiness.
“Doesn’t it almost feel like you’re being transported to a farmstead?” she asked. “It’s almost as if you can taste, through the cheese, the grass the cows were eating… Yup, I remember now why this cheese won the top spot.”
And Irene would know: She was one of the judges who gave the cheese gold spots in the Best Smoked Cheddar and Best Flavoured Cheese at the prestigious British & Irish Cheese Awards. Her expertise, however, goes far beyond judging at lauded award banquets. And while we surely have some pretty spectacular cheese shops—Oh La Vache on 4th Street and Vintage LBC in Bixby Knolls immediately come to mind—what Irene offers is in its own distinct category.
So who is Irene Clemente and what, exactly, makes her expertise so special?
Irene Clemente has graduated from Wisconsin’s Cheese State University—largely considered the most robust and arduous cheese education in the States—and is working on her Level Two certification at England’s esteemed Academy of Cheese. Of course, this didn’t all come immediately but was driven, like most masters of their passions, a failure.
“I had really wanted to do a pop-up at The Wine Country, offering my boards that I was doing as Mrs. Platters,” Irene said. “And Randy saw all the fruits I had put beside my charcuterie and cheeses. And he dismissed me. ‘I can’t have the fruit interfering with the wine tastings,’ he told me. And I was rejected… Little did he know that rejection put me on this course.”
Through her eventual travels—life-altering experiences in places like Bayonne, France or Somerset, England—she learned that Europeans rarely if ever put fruit on cheese and meat boards. Crackers or biscuits, sure. Wine, absolutely. And then, her proper love affair with cheese began.
Irene Clemente garners relationships with spaces that are difficult, if not outright impossible to access through American cheese stores.
Irene pointed to a large, waxed round, its surface a deep eggshell white-bordering-beige with nothing but “4/4” written on it in red marker. “That one,” she said, lamenting, “doesn’t exist anymore.” It is a 12-month-old Sao Jorge from the now-defunct Joe Matos Cheese Factory in Santa Rosa. And Irene scored the last of their rounds.
She then points to a bit of Petit Agour Pur Brebis from the Basque region, a wonderfully dry sheep’s milk cheese that is shaved into a flower-like structure via a griolle. Marvelously mild, the cheese’s taste and structure alters with Irene’s various pairings: A sip of champagne there. A dollop of cheddar pickled chutney atop a charcoal biscuit there.
And mid-bite, she gestures to a clothed round of Somerset, England-based cheddar producer Keen. Ran by the Keen family since 1889, the 500-acre farmstead has not only stood the test of time but remains one of the world’s most respected cheddar makers.
Mrs. Platters and expanding the presence of rare cheese and the stories behind them.
“When George [Keen] said he would have his son James show me around, I was expecting a simple tour,” Irene said. “I was taken aback when I got to walk through nearly every inch of that space. We’ve since developed a relationship and it is always an honor to share one of their cheeses Stateside.”
These are but a few of the examples Irene wants to rightfully share with Long Beach.
“I want people to experience the wonder I experienced in my love affair with cheese,” Irene said. “And yes, that includes my struggles in studying and mastering my knowledge. I am quite clear on the fact that I am a tiny, brown, Filipina woman in a world dominated by white people. But I have made space for myself and have done so without apology—and the French and the English have, truly, welcomed me in a way I haven’t even felt at home in the States. But I know, if just given the chance, there are countless people out there who would appreciate accompanying me on this journey of cheese.”
So how does one get a cheese tasting with Irene Clemente?
If you’re wanting to immediately experience one of Irene’s bespoke cheese tastings, this Saturday is your chance. She will be co-hosting a fundraiser for the Long Beach Youth Chorus at the Seal Beach Tennis & Pickleball Center on Saturday, April 26, from 5:30PM to 7PM.
And, of course, she will happily do private events as she begins to expand her public offerings, which not only include bespoke cheese tastings but eventual curated travels to some of her favorite cheese makers across Europe.
For more information on Irene Clemente of Mrs. Platters, click here.
