Best New American Cheeses? Ask a Monger

May 3, 2023 janet@janetfletcher.com

After a long pandemic pause, American creameries are launching new cheeses again. Hooray! Optimism is trouncing uncertainty and yielding some exciting newcomers for our cheese boards. American Cheese Month—that would be May—is a great time to celebrate this creativity and encourage our cheesemakers to keep at it. I asked some of the nation’s leading retailers to name a new domestic cheese that they’re loving. Consider this your bucket list for the months ahead.

Cheese for the Win

June 11, 2020 janet@janetfletcher.com

Everyone I talk to seems at loose ends right now. What’s the right thing to think, say, feel, do when your country is experiencing an emotional earthquake? Cheese seems trivial, perhaps, but to dairy farmers and cheesemakers it is not. It’s a livelihood. It’s the future for their land, their livestock, their families.

Brave or Foolish?

September 12, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

What does it take to get American cheese into a European cheese shop? And will anybody buy it if you do? Raymond Hook, a New York City-based specialty-food broker, is close to someanswers. Working with partners, Hook is attempting to build a global audience for cheeses from Oregon’s Rogue Creamery, Virginia’s Meadow Creek Dairy and Georgia’s Sweet Grass Dairy, among others. The export learning curve has left a few bruises, but Hook is an optimist. Today: London. Tomorrow: the world.