I recently watched a cheesemonger cut open a new wheel of this cheese, and I didn’t need a sample to know I wanted some. For starters, the wheel was gorgeous—hefty and symmetrical, with a handsome caramel-colored rind. Then I saw the inside. Just look at that golden hue. Milk from grass-fed cows, for sure. Guests in my classes often ask me whether diet really makes a difference, and the image above is your answer. This exceptional American mountain cheese occupies a niche that seems to shrink every year: farmstead, raw milk, produced only when the cows are on pasture. Taking a piece home felt like a rare privilege.

Meadow Creek Dairy’s Mountaineer flies under the radar because this Virginia producer makes so little of it—only about 650 wheels a year. That’s roughly one wheel a month for every state in the nation. A lot of it goes to regional restaurants. A few top independent retailers get some. (See list below.) And you can buy it direct from the creamery or from Saxelby Cheesemongers online. Round up a few friends and purchase a large piece so the shipping cost is less onerous.

Helen and Rick Feete started their dairy in the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1988 with a herd of pure Jerseys, renowned for their high-butterfat milk—great for butter, not so great for cheese. Over time, they added Montbéliardes (the main breed used for Comté) and New Zealand Friesians (sturdier than Jerseys) and now have a cross-bred herd that delivers on all fronts: the ability to graze a mountain landscape and milk with the desired protein-fat ratio for cheese. They now milk about 130 cows.

Helen, a largely self-taught cheesemaker, modeled Mountaineer on Comté, her favorite cheese. It’s a 14-pound wheel made with roughly the same methods as many other hard alpine cheeses. The curds are cooked in their whey, then drained, put in hoops, pressed and brined. The objective is to remove enough whey—through cooking and pressing—to make a wheel capable of aging for six months or more. During its life in the cellar, Mountaineer is repeatedly brushed with brine inoculated with bacteria—good bacteria—which encourage the rind to form.

I get so much aroma from this cheese, an appetite-arousing scent of roasted peanuts, caramelized onions, beef broth and custard. Semi-firm to firm, with a few small openings, it has a creamy, melting texture that reminds me more of Raclette than Comté. A Belgian strong ale, dry cider or a full-bodied white wine would be my choice with it.

Meadow Creek makes Mountaineer only from April through July; in late summer and fall, the milk is too high in fat for aged cheese. The Feetes’ daughter, Kat, confirmed that the intense color comes from the beta carotene in the cows’ grass diet. She also concurred that fewer and fewer American cheesemakers do what her family does, using exclusively their own milk from grass-fed cows.

“It’s really hard because you’re talking about two very high-skill professions,” says Kat. “You have to be a farmer and people don’t understand how complicated that is, and you have to be a cheesemaker, which takes a lot of work and skill and thinking.”

It's a relief to know that the Feetes have a succession plan. Helen still makes the cheese, assisted by her daughter-in-law, Ana Arguello. Son Jim runs the farm with Rick, and Kat handles everything else. Nacho, Ana and Jim’s toddler, is waiting in the wings.

Look for Meadow Creek Mountaineer at Chantal’s Cheese Shop (Pittsburg, PA), Counter Cheese Caves (Charleston, SC), Eataly (Los Angeles); Farmshop (Santa Monica, CA), Feast (Charlottesville, VA), Psychic Wines (Los Angeles), Sonoma Cheese Factory (Sonoma, CA) and Vaughan Cheese Shop (North Beach, MD). The West Coast distributor is Gourmet Imports, so ask your local retailer about ordering it.

NOTE: Due to the avian flu outbreak, federal agencies are currently recommending that people avoid eating raw-milk cheese. Samuel Alcaine, an associate professor of dairy fermentations at Cornell, told me he believes this recommendation is out of “an abundance of caution,” given that there is no published research on whether the H5N1 virus can survive in aged cheese (and all raw-milk cheese is aged at least 60 days). In any case, wheels of Meadow Creek Mountaineer for sale now were made last summer, well before the outbreak. The virus has not turned up in Virginia dairy herds. What’s more, Meadow Creek has long had a closed herd, meaning they don’t purchase cows from anyone else.