If you want to show Canada some love right now, seek out this award-winning Canadian Cheddar. I was surprised to find it at a local shop recently; we get so few cheeses from our northern neighbor. For complicated reasons—tariffs being only one—we can purchase pecorino from a remote village in Sardinia but not the terrific cheeses made in Quebec and beyond unless we venture across the border ourselves. I was so happy to get reacquainted with this clothbound beauty and hope you can get your hands on some before a trade war makes that impossible.
Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar comes to us from COWS Creamery on Prince Edward Island. The creamery is best known for ice cream and butter, but several years ago the owner visited Scotland’s Orkney Islands and took a liking to the Cheddar made there. He brought the recipe home and persuaded his ice-cream team to get to work on it.
Cheddar master: Avonlea cheesemaker Armand Bernard
In the nearly two decades since, Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar has won heaps of awards, including Canada’s Cheese of the Year, Grand Champion at the SIAL International Cheese Competition and multiple blue ribbons at American Cheese Society judgings. In 2018, it took third place overall at ACS, competing against nearly 2,000 entries. So you don’t need me to tell you it’s good.
Avonlea tastes like fine English Cheddar, not like the sweet, pineapple-scented American Cheddars so prevalent today. It is grassy, first and foremost, with a flavor that the creamery attributes, in part, to the “salt air and iron-rich soil of Prince Edward Island.” That may sound like marketing-speak but it really does capture something unusual and elusive in this cheese, a sort of saline herbaceousness and minerality. Consumers accustomed to fruity, nutty Cheddars like Prairie Breeze may find this one austere and perhaps even peculiar. To me, it’s a reminder of the singular personality that can emerge in cheeses from different hands and different landscapes.
According to the label, the piece I purchased was 18 months old. The rind was healthy, handsome and liberally dusted with mold. The interior had a rich golden hue and the waxy/creamy texture that I associate with traditional clothbound Cheddars. I used a Parmigiano Reggiano knife to break it into nuggets rather than slicing it.
Look for Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar at Concord Cheese Shop (Concord, MA), Happier Grocery (New York City) and Sunshine Foods (St. Helena, CA). Why aren’t more retailers carrying this gem? It’s comparably priced to other Cheddars of its caliber. Cheesemongers: The sole distributor is Food Matters Again in New York.
“It is very hard to know what will happen with tariffs in the coming hours, days, and months,” said Andrea White, the creamery’s wholesale manager. “Things change daily.” As of March 4, any cheese coming into the U.S. from Canada will have a 25% tariff. “We are hopeful that these tariffs will be lifted soon, but all we can do is watch and wait.”
Serve Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar with a red wine with firm tannins, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, or a dry amontillado sherry.