Wine with cheese? Of course. Wine on cheese? Absolutely. It may seem gimmicky, but steeping cheese in wine has a long history, especially in Italy. Some say it dates to World War I, when people would bury their wheels in wine barrels to hide them from soldiers. I would bet it’s an older practice than that. In any case, the niche has a new entry—and a particularly tasty one. The newcomer is on the right, above, alongside one of the category’s best sellers. With autumn coming at us and the wine-grape harvest underway, it’s a nice time to get acquainted with these “drunken” beauties.
Read moreBorn-Again Cheese
After a long hiatus, Cowgirl Creamery’s beloved cottage cheese is back. Plump, tender curds in a thick and tangy dressing—ready to dollop on peaches for breakfast or top with cherry tomatoes for lunch. If you think of cottage cheese as grandma food, or grim diet food, prepare for a revelation.
Read moreBlockbuster Cheese
You’re not imagining it. Burrata is everywhere. A cheese that almost nobody knew 20 years ago (even in Italy) is now summer’s blockbuster. Retailers struggle to keep it in stock, and chefs have taken it well beyond the predictable insalata caprese. What else can you do with this dreamy dairy queen?
Read moreHow Rich Can Cheese Be?
Triple-cream cheeses are the industry’s gateway drug. Who isn’t seduced by all that buttery goodness? Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam, Brillat-Savarin, Explorateur—these luscious creations take cheese to the limits of richness. Pass the walnut bread. But now the triple-cream niche has a new challenger for the butterfat crown. Are you ready for quintuple-cream cheese?
Read moreBumpy Ride for Cheesemakers
This is not the Manhattan skyline. It’s the average price of milk paid to America’s dairy farmers between June 2012 and March 2018. Who can operate a business with price swings like this? Not surprisingly, many dairy farmers can’t. Between January and July of this year, 338 Wisconsin dairy farms stopped milking cows.
Read moreIs A2 Yogurt for You?
Yogurt. Blueberries. Now’s the moment. I’m a cheerleader for plain whole-milk yogurt because it’s so easy to add fresh fruit myself. The challenge, in some markets, is finding yogurt that meets my specs: plain, whole milk, stabilizer-free (no pectin, no gelatin) and not Greek. Straus Family Creamery is my go-to, but a new California yogurt checks all those boxes as well. What’s more, it’s made with A2 milk.
Read moreNow Here’s a Fresh Idea
From Turin to San Francisco is 9,500 miles, a long journey if you’re a cheese. Fresh cheeses like ricotta and mozzarella have to travel by air, which makes the cost spike. Inspections or missing paperwork can delay entry, further shortening the precious selling time. So here’s one Italian creamery’s solution to the fresh-cheese challenge: produce it in California. Northern Italian know-how meets West Coast milk.
Read moreShow Canada Some Love
The Canada-bashing coming from the White House lately will do nothing to help achieve my goal for U.S.-Canada relations. I want to see more Canadian cheese in the U.S., not less, and the heated rhetoric has me worried. I felt bad about the name-calling from our side, so I picked up a pound of aged Canadian Cheddar, just as a one-woman show of support.
Read moreRogue Creamery’s Next Chapter
Rogue Creamery the Oregon producer of some of America’s most acclaimed blue cheeses, has a new partner: the French dairy giant Savencia. Good news? I wasn’t sure. I’ve been a huge fan of Rogue since David Gremmels and Cary Bryant bought it, in 2002, from Ig Vella, whose father founded it. Gremmels and Bryant had zero cheese experience. But Gremmels had the marketing chops and Bryant, who knew microbiology, quickly mastered the cheesemaking. Ig mentored them both until his death in 2011.
Read moreMasterful Cheese from Magic Milk
Dinner guests don’t usually bring me cheese. Coals to Newcastle and all that. But recently some friends showed up with a new Oregon creation, and let me just say they are welcome back any time. The wedge was luscious, aromatic and unusual—potentially a great new American cheese. But could the cheesemaker repeat the feat? Yes. Would I love it as much the second, third and fourth time? Yes.
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