I was hoping to order a favorite French cheese for an upcoming class, but the distributor had unwelcome news for me. “We haven’t had it for months,” she said. “The producer stopped making it.” Her reporting turned out to be largely, but not entirely, accurate. There was more to the story.
Read moreRemember Morbier?
After a nine-year absence, real Morbier is returning to American cheese counters. If you didn’t realize it was missing, that’s probably because multiple faux Morbiers have attempted to fill in the gap. The photogenic cheese with the ash ripple in the middle has been MIA since 2014, victim of the uproar we’ll call Ashgate. Thanks to our vigilant FDA, Americans have been protected for the past several years from a cheese that the French have been enjoying for two centuries. Are you ready to take a risk and eat some raw-milk Morbier again?
Read moreBreakout Stars of 2022
Which cheeses broke away from the pack at retail counters this year? I asked a few of the nation’s influential mongers what generated the most buzz in their store, and to guess—if they could—why those cheeses resonated. Some of their choices are newbies, some are classics, and a few I haven’t yet tried. If you want a cheese “bucket list” for 2023, this could be it. How fun, after the long pandemic standstill, to have some new cheeses to try.
Read moreAsh Gets Trashed
Not again. For the second time in a month, a cheese that I had requested for a class would be a no-show, the distributor informed me last week. The French producer had declined to ship any Couronne de Touraine, concerned that the goat cheese might be detained by the FDA. The issue? The ashed rind.
Read moreSo Long, Roquefort? →
Have you heard about all those people getting sick from eating Roquefort, raw-milk Morbier and raw-milk Tomme de Savoie? I haven’t either because it hasn’t happened. And the FDA is going to make sure that it doesn’t.
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