{"id":45952,"date":"2023-06-21T11:28:31","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T15:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=45952"},"modified":"2023-06-21T11:28:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T15:28:33","slug":"voicings-affineur-ashley-morton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/voicings-affineur-ashley-morton\/","title":{"rendered":"Voicings: Affineur Ashley Morton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photographed by Claire P\u00f6u<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On her website Brieyonce.com, Ashley Morton describes herself as a \u201cglobal cheesemonster on the go,\u201d and it\u2019s easy to see why. When I caught up with her in March, she\u2019d just returned from a tour of the Netherlands with Beemster Cheese and was making plans to visit Athens for the 2023 Food Expo. A New Yorker by birth (Harlem, specifically), Morton moved to Paris on a whim in 2017 after stints at Murray\u2019s and Chapel Hill Creamery (where she attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). She\u2019s since made Tomme de Savoie, gruy\u00e8re, and manchego with master cheesemakers; taught cheese classes all over the world; and worked as a brand ambassador for several European cheesemakers. Now, she wakes at 5 a.m. to work the caves of Schmidhauser Affineurs in France\u2019s Haute-Savoie. She joined me on Zoom from her home in Annecy (a resort town near the border of Switzerland she moved to in 2021) to chat about judging cheese awards, the turophilic lingua franca, and the spooky art of affinage.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

 <\/strong>culture (CM): <\/strong>You do a lot of scientific work. What did you study in college? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Morton (AM): <\/strong>My major [was] in sociology, with biology and anthropology for my minors. I used to work in labs. All the kids that go [to Chapel Hill] want to go into medicine or research. I realized I was kind of doing things I thought other people wanted for me, rather than what I wanted for myself, and I was completely miserable. I had taken this break from school because I just felt so lost. And I\u2019d always loved cheese, but for me, cheese was going to the deli with my mom and getting slices of provolone. I had heard of asiago as a bagel topping, but I never grew up in the kind of situation where we were going to a cheese shop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CM: <\/strong>What made you decide to take that first Murray\u2019s job? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AM: <\/strong>I accidentally found my way into cheese through the suggestion of a relative, she\u2019d seen a job offer posted by Murray\u2019s. They called [the position] a \u201ccave dweller,\u201d and I remember thinking, is this a real thing? They said, \u201cWe work with 300 cheeses minimum.\u201d I didn\u2019t know there were 300 different kinds of cheeses! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CM: <\/strong>And now you\u2019re a judge at the World Cheese Awards! What was that like? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AM: <\/strong>Oh, gosh, it was so cool. It was great to be able to try really funky products that I\u2019d never seen before. I remember I had one from Japan that was amazing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

CM: <\/strong>Am I correct that you only speak English? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AM: <\/strong>I speak French now, but when I first came to France, I didn\u2019t. I just had it in my head that I speak cheese. Rodolphe Le Meunier was one of the first people I ever met in the cheese world. After I left Murray\u2019s he kept in touch with me, and he kept saying, \u201cAshley, I think you\u2019re wasting your time in the United States. With what you want to do, you need to come to France.\u201d I kept thinking how many adults I would meet when I was younger who would say, \u201cI wish I had done this when I was younger,\u201d or \u201cI regret not trying this.\u201d And I said to myself, I\u2019m never going to be like that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

 IN A WORD <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Morton has been to just about every major cheese festival out there. We asked her to describe each one in a word: <\/p>\n\n\n\n