Seven blue-ribbon winners on one plate. Am I fantasizing or what? Thanks to a little help from my friends, it happened. Guests in last night’s World Cheese Tour class got to taste not only a hand-picked selection of first-place finishers from the recent American Cheese Society competition. Among those seven were the Best of Show, the first runner-up and another cheese that finished in the Top Ten overall. For us cheese lovers, that’s a Grand Slam.
Read moreThe Brie That Never Dies
Many years ago, I ordered cheese in a Paris restaurant (surprised?) and I vividly recall the moment it arrived at the table. “Le véritable Brie de Meaux,” the waiter announced as he set it down with ceremony, pronouncing each syllable slowly so we couldn’t miss his message: This was the real deal—raw-milk Brie with a protected name, the epitome of French soft-ripened cheese.
Read moreMascarpone Works Magic
I know full well that a single Sungold plant generates more tiny tomatoes than my two-person household can eat. Still, you can’t grow less than one, so every year at this time I am inundated. We snack on them like peanuts, but even so we can’t keep up. When we’re really getting backed up, I’ll roast a baking sheet full of them.
Read moreBack from the Brink
Even well-known cheeses with long histories can vanish if people stop making them. Traditional Wensleydale has been on the brink more than once. But now this centuries-old British cheese is experiencing a mini-revival, with a handful of artisan producers hoping to save it from a purely industrial fate. I had never heard of Yoredale Wensleydale (pictured above) until I started hunting for some interesting selections for a recent class.
Read moreNew Tuscan Cheese is a Fan Favorite
“Sometimes a new cheese arrives that’s so striking, so alluring, that customers ask about it the second it appears.” That’s not me talking—that’s Milkfarm, the highly regarded Los Angeles shop, on its Facebook page. But I’m equally taken with this Italian newcomer, which the retailer aptly describes as “a beautiful white cloud of a cheese.” It’s from Tuscany, from a blend of cow’s and sheep’s milk, and it’s one of the most enticing cheeses I’ve tasted all year.
Read moreTough Times for Swiss Cheese
Swiss made: Cannalina
Prepare to hoard some Gruyère, people. Unless talks this week produce a shift in positions, the U.S. will immediately implement a 39 percent tariff on imports from Switzerland. I can live without milk chocolate, but I can’t imagine life without my beloved Swiss cheeses. What will happen to Gourmino, the cooperative of small Swiss producers who send us their cave-aged gems, including the wheels from a four-time World Champion? What will happen to Caroline Hostettler, whose U.S.-based business and life’s mission is sourcing, shipping and celebrating traditional Swiss alpine cheeses? Her Adopt-an-Alp program has raised awareness for these rare products and may not survive a trade war.
Read moreAll Eyes on Canada
Left image courtesy of Morgan Mannino/Formaggio Kitchen
For the second year in a row, a Canadian cheese has taken Best of Show at the American Cheese Society’s prestigious annual judging. More astonishing, the winner was the same creamery. Québec’s Fromagerie La Station won with a different cheese this year, but still. It’s back-to-back victories for this fourth-generation family business specializing in farmstead cheese from organic raw milk. What a validation for traditional practices, and a reminder of how much we are losing by not having freer trade with our northern neighbor.
Read morePeak Cheesecake
How is it that I’d never heard of Japanese cheesecake until now? This jiggly, airy, cloudlike creation is so crushable—a shoo-in for the Cake Hall of Fame. Part cheesecake, part spongecake, part soufflé, it had me at the first fluffy bite.
Read moreMasterful Makeover
Napa Valley’s V. Sattui Winery has long boasted a substantial cheese counter. Yet, despite living nearby, I almost never shopped there. Driving past it, I channeled Yogi Berra. (“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”) Sattui’s St. Helena tasting room is one of the most visited in the valley, its parking lot perpetually filled with tour buses and its grounds thronged with picnickers. Navigating that scene for a pound of cheese was something I rarely had the patience for. But boy, have I had an attitude adjustment. After an extensive remodel, the tasting room looks like a Ralph Lauren store and the vast cheese counter—now in the hands of one of the nation’s most experienced mongers—repays braving the hordes.
Read moreDecoding Greek Yogurt
Photo: Eva Kolenko
For all the hype around plant-based “dairy,” Americans have not abandoned real milk yet. True, we’re not drinking as much milk as we used to, but sales of cultured dairy products are soaring. You might think “cultured dairy products” includes cheese, but it’s industry terminology for the fermented dairy foods in your supermarket’s refrigerated reach-ins, like cottage cheese, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, sour cream and cream cheese. In that group, cottage cheese is the breakout star—thank you, TikTok—but yogurt (including yogurt drinks) is a phenom, too, approaching $12 billion in annual sales in the U.S. Astonishing, no? Greek-style yogurt accounts for more than half of that.
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