If you’re a Gouda fan, add this crystalline beauty to your must-try list. Produced by an Amish couple in upstate New York with the milk from their 200-acre farm, it has everything I want in aged Gouda: a seductive toffee and pineapple aroma, a creamy interior dotted with crunchy bits and a deep, salted-caramel flavor. Some Goudas are so cloying that one bite is enough, but this cheese I couldn’t stop nibbling.
Read moreNew Blue to Dream About
Do you eat more blue cheese in winter? I know I do. That big, spicy flavor is what I want when it’s cold outside. I love it melted on polenta, crumbled in an escarole and radicchio salad with walnuts, or on a cheese board after a bowl of vegetable soup. So this new blue from New York landed in my kitchen at just the right time. I think it’s dreamy, and even my husband—not a blue-cheese enthusiast—gave it a rave.
Read moreCheese to the Rescue
Putting others first: Ford (left) and Messmer
The Covid pandemic is devastating cheesemakers around the country. No restaurants, no foodservice, no sales. But as the owners of Beehive Cheese in Utah and Lively Run Dairy in New York watched their revenue plummet last month, they independently hatched the same plan. Both creameries had empty cheese vats. Both had idle cheesemakers. Their milk suppliers—small family farms—were about to dump milk. If they couldn’t make cheese to sell, they would make it to donate.
Read moreTop Five States for Cheese
Left to right: Bellwether Farms Pepato, Roth Grand Cru, Von Trapp Oma
Can you name America’s top five milk-producing states by volume? Let me help you: California, Wisconsin, New York, Idaho and Texas. Are these also the top five states for artisan cheese? Not if you ask me. Considering not only the quality of what’s produced in the state but also how enlightened its retailers are, I’ve compiled a different list. See if you agree with me.
Read moreSlumping Beauty
New York’s Meadowood Farms specializes in sheep’s-milk cheese, which means the creamery is idle for several months each year. Sheep don’t produce milk year-round in any case, and Meadowood’s practice is to milk them only when they’re on pasture. In Cazenovia, just east of the Finger Lakes, that’s a lot of down time.
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