Cheese never tastes better than from a fresh-cut wheel, so my introduction to Goat Lady Dairy’s Providence was about as good as it gets. I had stopped into San Francisco’s Cheese Plus just as the monger was making the initial cut into this crusty aged North Carolina goat cheese. What sweet, nutty, caramel-like aromas. I took home a big chunk.
Read moreDouble Vision
The Kalish twins, Michael and Charlie, have been building credentials in the artisan cheese world since their college days at U.C. Santa Barbara. Now 34, they are on the cusp of celebrity.
Read moreTiny Cheese, Giant Buzz
“I don’t know if we’ve ever introduced a new cheese that has had this much instant acclaim,” said Vermont Creamery owner Allison Hooper about the recent debut of St. Albans. “We didn’t anticipate it.”
Read morePresidential Cheese Plate
“I stole the idea from George Washington,” admits Bill Owens, the Northern California brewer credited with popularizing pumpkin ale. Historians tell us that our first President was a beer enthusiast, and that he brewed ale from gourds. Now, 250 years later, pumpkin beers are an annual American rite and a sudsy segue into autumn. Pair them with a few of the cheeses they like and there’s your debate-night platter.
Read moreNew Beauty from Basque Country
Innovation isn’t a word I associate with Basque cheesemakers, but the sublime sheep’s-milk Arpea is reason to rethink that. Created about three years ago by the Fromagerie Agour, Arpea resembles no other Basque cheese I know. A small, semisoft disk from an area known almost exclusively for hard aged wheels, it represents new thinking in this tradition-bound region.
Read moreLast Call
Made from sheep’s milk and wrapped in grape leaves, Ledyard is one of America’s most impressive new cheeses. And if you want to taste it before the year’s supply dries up, hop to it. The sheep are about to go on sabbatical.
Read moreWhat Does Cheese Need?
Roasted Concord Grapes with St. Agur/adapted from The Art of the Cheese Plate
Sixteen years ago, I wrote a cookbook inspired by some of the enticing cheese plates I was seeing in restaurants. That little book, The Cheese Course, is still in print, but restaurant cheese plates have since evolved into a platform for competitive creativity that I could never have imagined. Two new books—both from New York City cheese authorities—demonstrate the state of the art.
Read moreSummer’s Celebrity
Move over, mozzarella. Burrata—a cheese that most Americans had never heard of a decade ago—is summer’s breakout star. I know that from restaurant menus, from observing grocery carts and from these stats from Di Stefano Cheese, the Southern California burrata producer whose product I adore:
Read moreCheese Epiphany
When Daphne Zepos died, too young, in 2012, she left behind a cheese-import company and a business partner dedicated to perpetuating what they had started. Essex Street Cheese Company introduced many Americans to fine Comté and aged Gouda hand-selected from the best French and Dutch cellars.
A year after her death from cancer, Zepos’s business partner Jason Hinds traveled to the Greek island of Sifnos to assist friends and family in spreading her ashes. While there, he had an epiphany.
Read moreFresh As It Gets
Rebecca King makes some excellent aged cheeses in California’s Monterey County with milk from her 100 ewes. But if you want to taste her fresh cheese, Sweet Alyssum, now’s the moment. In early October, her flock will start a two-month sabbatical, resting up for the lambing season that begins in December.
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