Stóri Dímon — My first Icelandic cheese

You never forget your very first.

In this case it happened only moments ago so one would hardly think such a thing possible absent Korsakoff's syndrome.

I happened on the cylindrical wooden container at Whole Foods yesterday, browsing as I was in the cheese department.

Never saw cheese from Iceland before so I studied the box.

It was all in Icelandic and I saw that somewhere along the line Reykjavik was involved — that's the only word I could read.

So I bought one ($7.99) and waited until this morning to try it.

Impossible to tell what's going inside from the outside.

Still cheeses run deep.

There was only one thing for it: enter.

And so I did.

What I saw is what you see below.

You can't see, though, that the cheese was nicely yielding to my knife.

It's a veined cheese somewhat similar in appearance and consistency to Saga Blue, a mild cheese out of Denmark which is closer to Brie than to the more potent veined cheeses of other countries.

Stóri Dímond is creamy with a faint bite, not nearly as intense as that of Cabrales or the classic blue–veined cheeses of France.

Smooth, very silky mouthfeel.

Quite nice and a definite keeper.

I had the crack research team delve deeper into the subject of Icelandic cheese and learned, among other things, that about 100 different cheeses are produced in the tiny nation of 300,000 people.

The team also found an Icelandic company that ships a variety of Icelandic cheeses globally.

There is no question that the Icelandic cheese space is worth exploring in more depth when the bookofjoe World Tour makes its stop in that nation.

I do so like the Ice.