Even though balsamic vinegar is a specialty of northern Italy, I could not get away from it on my trip to Sardinia this summer. Everywhere, balsamic.
Read moreWe Have a Winner →
Vermont’s Tarentaise Reserve took top honors at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition last week, surpassing 1,684 other cheeses to earn the prestigious “Best of Show.” I served as a judge and concur that this awesome two-year-old wheel deserved the recognition. It was my first choice. (Judges taste blind, but the distinctive concave rim of this 20-pound wheel gives it away.) Honestly, though, I tasted at least a half-dozen other cheeses that I would have been happy to see at the top. That’s a testament to the growing prowess of America’s cheesemakers.
Read moreRunning the Numbers →
Which cheese will take Best of Show in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition this week? We’ll know soon enough (award ceremony is July 31 in Sacramento), but in the interim, I gathered some stats on prior winners. Could the judges’ past preferences help us predict who might get the gold?
Read moreUps and Downs with Feta →
The same purchase provided the high and low moments on Planet Cheese last week. The high was finding Vermont Creamery goat feta at Oxbow Cheese Merchant in Napa, my neighborhood shop. Vermont Creamery makes some of my favorite bloomy-rinded goat cheeses (Bijou and Bonne Bouche among others), and a sublime cultured butter as well. But I didn’t know the creamery made feta.
Read moreToujours Paris →
America's cheese merchants have never been more knowledgeable or numerous, but for me, Paris still sets the bar. With only three days to spend there in June, I didn’t make the grand rounds, but I did find a few shops that were new to me and thrilling to visit. File these addresses for the next time fortune brings you to France.
Read moreDesert Island Cheese →
What's the one cheese you can’t live without? I asked 10 top American cheese merchants recently to name their “desert-island cheese” and got 10 different answers. Actually, more than that because some folks just could not commit. I know the feeling. I’ll reveal my choice at the end (don’t skip ahead), but here are the cheeses some leading retailers love most.
Read moreKatie’s Creation →
She's not yet 30, but Katie Hedrich is already a rock star in the American artisan cheese world. The daughter of Wisconsin dairy-goat farmers, Hedrich made headlines at the age of 25 when her aged goat cheese, Evalon, scored 99 points out of 100 to become the 2011 U.S. Championship Cheese. The win propelled the Hedrich family to build its own creamery—the winning cheese was produced in borrowed space—and take a deep dive into cheese.
Read moreMove Over, Feta →
In hot weather, I can’t think of many cheeses that appeal to me more than manouri. What an underappreciated Greek cheese, forever in the shadow of feta. Would it do better in the U.S. under another name? Does it sound too much like a soil amendment?
Read moreFlory’s Story →
With raw milk from their 30 Jersey cows, the Flory family of Jamesport, Missouri, is making one of the country’s finest Cheddars. I first tasted Flory’s Truckle at the American Cheese Society conference last year, and finally a few of these handsome wheels have arrived on the West Coast.
Read moreKnock on Wood →
What does Italy's incomparable Parmigiano Reggiano have in common with Wisconsin’s Pleasant Ridge Reserve, England’s Colston-Bassett Stilton and French Comté? All of them, indisputably, are among the world’s finest cheeses, and all are matured on wooden shelves. Because of that age-old practice, common to countless other cheeses, these beauties are currently in the cross-hairs of the FDA.
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