If you are looking for an exceptional American cheese for your Thanksgiving festivities, or for a host gift, you won’t be disappointed by this beauty. It’s a recent release with a long origin story and absolutely worth the wait. A collaboration between the Maryland creamery that produced it and the New York affinage team that nurtured it from infancy to its prime, this aromatic goat cheese seduced me at the first sniff. I’m hoping that affinage—expert cheese aging—will become more of a thing in this country, as it is in Europe, and that success stories like this one will pave the way.

Meet Carpenter’s Wheel, a joint venture between Maryland’s Firefly Farms and the affinage wizards at Murray’s in New York. Firefly Farms’s owners, Mike Koch and Pablo Solanet, developed the recipe years ago to utilize excess spring milk. They christened it Bella Vita and it quickly won a major award, but the farm lacked enough aging space to make it regularly. Production became sporadic. Whole Foods commissioned a batch for the holidays in 2018, and it sold out by early December.

That might have been the end of Bella Vita. “We couldn’t invest the labor dollars in the care that a natural-rind cheese requires,” says Koch. Nor could they afford to sit on the inventory for six months. Koch, a former finance executive, refers to his creamery’s aging room as “my large uninsured savings account.”

But the Bella Vita recipe did not die. Crown Finish Caves, the Brooklyn affineur, agreed to purchase and age a batch in early 2020. They renamed it Carpenter’s Wheel, inspired by the Carpenter’s Star, an Appalachian quilt pattern. A replica of a Carpenter’s Star quilt hangs on the Firefly Farms barn in rural Accident, Maryland, part of a county-wide effort to celebrate the local quilting tradition. When Crown Finish Caves closed unexpectedly last year, it looked like Carpenter’s Wheel might be a “one and done.”

Then Murray’s stepped in, rescuing the cheese from the dustbin of history. Crown Finish turned over its aging protocol, which Murray’s followed at first, then started tweaking. For six months, the 16-pound wheels are washed repeatedly with a 4 percent salt brine and flipped—simple practices, but not so simple.

“It’s more complex than you can imagine,” says Murray’s senior cave manager, Josh Windsor. “Is 4 percent the right amount? Should we change how frequently we wash? Should the wheels be on mats for more airflow or directly on wood? A lot of the work is reading the rind and formulating a response.”

If a rind gets too wet, it can stick to the board, exposing the cheese inside. If it gets too dry, it cracks and the cheese dries out or gets internal mold.

The wedge I sampled was hard to fault. The rind was intact, thin and handsome, as you can see in the image above. The interior smelled like cheesecake. The texture was firm, maybe a touch sandy at first but creamy as it dissolved on my tongue. I got a hint of caramel sweetness, followed by a pleasingly tart finish that drove me back for more.

Koch is among the few who have tasted every iteration of this cheese: Bella Vita aged at Firefly Farms, Carpenter’s Wheel aged at Crown Finish and Carpenter’s Wheel aged at Murray’s. Same base cheese (pasteurized goat’s milk, cooked-curd method) matured in three different environments. According to Koch, the differences are notable.

“The cheese that came out of those Crown Finish Caves (which were underground) was much earthier, more musty,” says Koch. “You were tasting that environment in the cheese. Murray’s caves are aboveground and that results in a lactic, nutty character and almost a Swiss sort of finish.”

For a mind-blowing cheese course, serve Carpenter’s Wheel alongside Firefly Farms’s Cave Dweller. Both start as the same cheese, but one goes to Murray’s for six months of open-air aging while the other remains at Firefly, where it’s vacuum-sealed and aged without air for at least eight months “in nooks and crannies, literally,” says Koch. After several months they’re quite different, says Koch. The sealed cheese retains more moisture and develops a sharper flavor, a case study in what different aging protocols will do.

For now, Carpenter’s Wheel is available only at Murray’s New York City stores and from Murray’s online. With shipping, it’s not inexpensive, but what a delicious holiday treat.