My husband and I are planning a trip to South Korea, so we were watching Korean food videos on YouTube one recent evening. In one travel vlog, a young American couple is checking out a popular fast-food chain called No Brand Burger (definitely not on our itinerary). The official motto of No Brand Burger is refreshingly un-American: “Why pay more? It’s good enough.” The frankness made us laugh, but at a cheese tasting the day before, a guest had basically asked me the same question. How much do you have to spend to get good cheese, he wanted to know, and at what point are you spending more but not getting more quality?
The answers are easier for wine. At the upper end, wine pricing is largely about scarcity and status. (Mostly status. There’s plenty of Dom Perignon.) A $100 bottle is rarely twice as good as a $50 bottle and doesn’t cost much more to make. Wineries ask a lot for their wine to make a brand statement, and people pay a lot for wine to impress. When wine enthusiasts serve an expensive bottle, they make sure guests know what it is.
Cheese is different, thank goodness. It’s not typically a status symbol. I don’t think many creameries consider prestige when they price their cheeses, although scarcity and demand can play a role. (Looking at you, Rogue River Blue.) Instead, I would argue that cheese prices—much more than wine prices—reflect the cost of production and correlate more closely with quality. Paying more doesn’t guarantee you a better product, but there are reasons why it might.
A few explanations for why a cheese might have an elevated price:
The cheese is made with fresh milk, not imported frozen curd.
The cheese is made on a small scale, not in a large, mechanized plant designed for speed. In a small creamery, labor costs are high because skilled people—not computers—are making decisions. A small cheesemaker pays higher per-unit costs for everything, from cultures to packaging to shipping.
The cheese is made from raw milk. Andy Hatch, the Wisconsin cheesemaker behind the acclaimed Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Rush Creek Reserve, confirms that working with raw milk is significantly more costly, with higher feed, labor and cleaning costs. Read his detailed explanation for why this is so.
The cheese is aged a long time. Aging ties up money and cellar space. An 18-month-old Gruyère will necessarily cost more than a 6-month-old wheel.
The cheesemaker is not trying to speed up the process by using fast-acting cultures and other short cuts that compromise flavor.
The producer receives no government support. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Plan subsidizes dairy farmers with direct payments and other measures.
The producer rewards milk suppliers with a bonus for higher-quality milk or for exceeding animal-welfare standards. Low-priced cheese is made with low-priced milk, often pooled from many sources.
The cheese is a farmstead product, meaning it’s made on the farm where the dairy animals are. The farmstead producer gets exceptionally fresh milk but has to pay all the costs that go along with caring for livestock. Europe’s farmstead producers are often multi-generational, with land that was paid off long ago.
Cellar dweller: Gruyère price rises with age
I hope cheesemakers will comment on some of the other costs we don’t see when we’re weighing a cheap Cheddar against a high-priced one.
So, when are you paying more than you need to? That’s a question without an answer but I’ll share one recent experience in a cheese shop. I was halfway to the cash register with a piece of Serra da Estrela, an uncommon Portuguese raw-milk sheep cheese, when I noticed the price: $50 a pound. As I was putting it back, I spotted Zimbro, a virtually identical cheese for about 30 percent less. That’s the cheese that went home with me.
I hope readers view Planet Cheese as a resource, guiding you to cheeses that are especially well priced and to others that, in my view, are worth the occasional splurge. At about $22 a pound, the raw-milk Dama Sagrada from Spain, pictured on top, is an ongoing reminder that there are still some amazing buys at the cheese counter.