Six months into this horrid pandemic and we still can’t plan for the future. Will we be able to gather for Thanksgiving? Will we have holiday parties? For me, these aren’t top-of-mind questions, but if you’re a cheesemaker, you need to guess, now, what people are going to want two or three months from now. The usual customer buying patterns have been completely upended. Montenebro (above), the fabulous Spanish goat cheese, is in short supply because the cheesemaker slashed production two months ago. Iffy flight schedules still plague air-freighted cheeses from Europe.

I recently asked three U.S. importers to update us on the pandemic’s impact. Will we be able to get the European cheeses we love in the weeks to come? Will they be affordable?

Stephanie Ciano
Vice president of international purchasing
World’s Best Cheese/ Massachusetts

“Air fright is not back to normal by any stretch. There are a lot fewer flights between Europe and the U.S., so the more perishable cheeses are more difficult to get and a lot more expensive. It might translate into $4 to $5 a pound more at retail. Sales are almost back to normal but there’s a shortage of product because cheesemakers weren’t producing as much. We have to give the producer of Montenebro a forecast now, like two months ahead. Berthaut Epoisses, an iconic cheese, cut back because they were concerned about throwing away product, and now demand is higher than we can meet. We lost two months of sales on that.

“Air freight is still so unpredictable. We think we have something flying on Tuesday, then they reschedule for Thursday, then they cancel and it flies on Friday. It’s a bit of a mess. We have to have a driver on call to get the product when it lands. Logistically, it has been a challenge.”

Michele Buster
Co-owner
Forever Cheese/New York

“Fresher cheeses just weren’t selling; we couldn’t give them away. Taleggio wasn’t selling. Spanish blues weren’t selling….La Peral, Andazul….It’s like they vanished off the face of the earth. We ended up donating thousands of cases or selling at ridiculous prices. People bought Manchego, Parmigiano, pecorino romano. They wanted the staples, something sturdy that will last. Out of almost 500 cheeses, we were selling maybe 20 types. And we had so much cheese on the way. You can’t just go cold turkey with producers and say, ‘Tomorrow I want nothing.’

“All my producers are backed up. They have contracts for their milk and have to keep buying it. Nobody understands the market. My Drunken Goat producer called and asked me, ‘What does it look like?’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you.’ They decided not to produce for three to four weeks and now I’m short.

“I have a super heavy heart. I feel responsible for our producers, but it’s impossible to know what to do. We’ve made some strides back but the drop was substantial.”

Bob Stonebrook
Co-owner
Aniata Cheese Company/Vista, CA

“We’ve been able to return to flying Italian cheese in every three weeks and French cheese once a month. The Italian cheeses fly from Paris on Air France. (The forwarder trucks them from Italy to France.) We fly into LAX so having a direct flight is important. But the cost is about 40 percent more than pre-pandemic. And the dollar has weakened against the Euro by about 5 percent, further increasing the cost of European cheese.”

Bottom line: Expect prices to climb and supplies to be spotty for European cheeses in the weeks ahead. Do keep your eyes out for Montenebro, which is trickling back in. That’s Penicillium roqueforti on the rind, giving this dense, herbaceous goat cheese a faint blue cheese flavor. It is made in Avila, near Madrid, by the daughter of the man who created it 30 years ago.