If you’re a Gouda fan, add this crystalline beauty to your must-try list. Produced by an Amish couple in upstate New York with the milk from their 200-acre farm, it has everything I want in aged Gouda: a seductive toffee and pineapple aroma, a creamy interior dotted with crunchy bits and a deep, salted-caramel flavor. Some Goudas are so cloying that one bite is enough, but this cheese I couldn’t stop nibbling.

Several years ago, Jake and Sylvia Stoltzfus moved from Pennsylvania to New York to purchase a dairy farm in Oneida County. With the farm’s raw milk, they began making a traditional Dutch-style Gouda with guidance from the sales rep who sold them the cheesemaking equipment. They are clearly “A” students. A couple of years ago, a Jake’s Gouda admirer told Anne Saxelby about the cheese, and Saxelby quickly picked it up for her business, Saxelby Cheesemongers.

“We’re always on the lookout for good New York State cheese,” says Saxelby. “Vermont gets an outsized proportion of artisan cheese attention.” Jake’s Gouda impressed her for both its quality and its amazing value.

You can buy the cheese direct from the farm for $12.99 a pound plus $10 flat-rate shipping. This is a steal. However, these wheels are likely much younger than the 18-month-old cheese I tasted, which is what’s pictured above. The farm’s online store promises only a minimum of six months’ age, so what they’re selling may not have the complexity or crystalline texture of the more mature wheel I tasted from Saxelby.

Saxelby sells 18-month-old wheels on her site for $29 a pound, plus shipping, and she distributes them to others on the East and West Coasts (see below). I paid $35 a pound for it at the Sonoma Cheese Factory—not a steal but a decent price for a raw-milk farmstead cheese of this age.

“It has nice balance,” says Saxelby when I asked for her impressions. “It’s kind of toasted and caramelized like you would want an aged Gouda to be, but it still retains a milky quality. And there’s a pleasant sharpness there, too, to offset the sweetness. It’s defintitely one of our recent favorite finds.”

The wheels have a waxy coating, but it’s thinner than the wax most Gouda producers apply so the cheese can benefit from air exchange as it ages. What stood out for me was the creaminess and a subtle pineapple scent mingling with the nutty caramel, plus the expert balance of sweet, salt and acid. Let a nugget melt slowly on your tongue to experience everything this cheese has to offer. A Belgian-style triple—I love the spicy Tripel Karmeliet—is this cheese’s soul mate.

Check the Jake’s Gouda Cheese website for retail availability in the New York area. In Boston, it’s at Bacco’s Wine & Cheese. In Southern California, you should find it at the Cheese Shop of Santa Barbara and, in the L.A. area, at The Butcher (Crystal Cove), Eataly LA, Joan’s on Third, Lady & Larder, Milkfarm, Paradise Pantry, Smallgoods (San Diego) and Wally’s (Beverly Hills and Santa Monica). In Northern California, it’s at Epicurean (SF), Oxbow Cheese Merchant (Napa) and Sonoma Cheese Factory (Sonoma), which, under new ownership and management, has a terrific cheese selection now.