Cheese snob visits Sam’s Club, finds grès d’Alsace

A cheese snob walks into a Sam’s Club.... It sounds like the start of a joke, but I was on a serious mission.

Like lots of other cheese fans, I like to support the small neighborhood shops with the best selection of hand-picked cheeses at peak ripeness, coddled and cared for by a team of enthusiastic cheese-heads.

But Sam’s Club, the No. 2 warehouse club operator behind Costco, has touted its cheese offerings (part of its expanded food department) and I wanted to know what was what. Could there be great cheeses at great prices in what I pictured as aisles of so many shrink-wrapped chunks o’ cheddar?

Well, yes indeed. On a recent visit to the Sam’s Club in Torrance, cheese finds included: the soft, oozy, mild French double-cream Fromager d’Affinois, soft-ripened Camembert, 4-year-old cheddar, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Laura Chenel chevre, Societe Roquefort, Manchego, Stilton, Istara Petit Basque, espresso-rubbed BellaVitano from family-owned Wisconsin cheese maker Sartori Cheese Co., a d’Affinois with truffles and a firm Italian sheep’s milk cheese with truffles too.

“We carry 45 to 50 cheeses at a time, both domestic and imported, and rotate them every three months,� says Jim McGrath, Sam’s Club director of gourmet deli and cheese, or “chief fromagier.� McGrath, recently inducted into the International Cheese Guild, says he travels France, Italy, Holland and the U.S. searching for cheeses.

And, Epoisses lovers, the stunner among its selection: a small oval (roughly 4 ounces, about the size of a fancy hand soap) of a washed-rind cheese called grès d’Alsace, as stinky as Epoisses or a good Muenster. Its orange-pink rind is decorated with a small fern leaf or two, and its interior is rich and unctuous, the kind of cheese whose top you could trim off and stick a spoon into. At Sam’s Club. Who knew?

And as for the price -- most of the cheeses in the selection pictured above cost less than $15 a pound. Toss in a 10-ounce jar of fig jam for $5.98 and three pounds (!) of roasted almonds for $12.98 and there’s your holiday cheese board.

Cheese plate tips:

• “Something old, something new, something stinky, something blue,â€� says McGrath. Choose at least one each of cheeses that are aged (such as aged cheddar or Gouda), a fresh (chevre), a stinky washed-rind (Epoisses or Vacherin Mont d’Or), and blue (Roquefort or Stilton).
• Include a variety of textures. A firm cheese such as Manchego or Parmigiano-Reggiano and a soft cheese such as Camembert or Brillat-Savarin.
• And a variety of flavors: select cheeses made from different types of milk (cow, goat, sheep).
• Serve at least one familiar cheese.

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