Innovation isn’t a word I associate with Basque cheesemakers, but the sublime sheep’s-milk Arpea is reason to rethink that. Created about three years ago by the Fromagerie Agour, Arpea resembles no other Basque cheese I know. A small, semisoft disk from an area known almost exclusively for hard aged wheels, it represents new thinking in this tradition-bound region.
Read moreLast Call
Made from sheep’s milk and wrapped in grape leaves, Ledyard is one of America’s most impressive new cheeses. And if you want to taste it before the year’s supply dries up, hop to it. The sheep are about to go on sabbatical.
Read moreCheese Epiphany
When Daphne Zepos died, too young, in 2012, she left behind a cheese-import company and a business partner dedicated to perpetuating what they had started. Essex Street Cheese Company introduced many Americans to fine Comté and aged Gouda hand-selected from the best French and Dutch cellars.
A year after her death from cancer, Zepos’s business partner Jason Hinds traveled to the Greek island of Sifnos to assist friends and family in spreading her ashes. While there, he had an epiphany.
Read moreFresh As It Gets
Rebecca King makes some excellent aged cheeses in California’s Monterey County with milk from her 100 ewes. But if you want to taste her fresh cheese, Sweet Alyssum, now’s the moment. In early October, her flock will start a two-month sabbatical, resting up for the lambing season that begins in December.
Read moreWine Family's Awesome Cheeses
Mostly goat: Velvet Sister
Nothing makes cheese taste better than seeing the place where it’s made. Alas, most American creameries don’t welcome visitors. Sanitation is the main issue, and few small producers have the staff for tours. But in California’s scenic Anderson Valley, Pennyroyal Farmstead Cheese is charting a different course. In March, the three-year-old Boonville creamery opened a tasting room and began offering tours. From anywhere, it’s worth the journey.
Read moreIt's Now or Never
My fava bean crop was a disaster this year—diseased leaves, low yield. I have no clue why, but the best gardener I know had the same issues so I’m not taking it personally. The upshot is that I have had to be miserly with the favas and the harvest is ending way too soon. In my garden, it’s now or never.
Read moreWhy So Expensive?
(left to right) Oveja Negra Manchego ($30/lb); Pecorino di Filiano ($20/lb); Bellwether Farms Pepato ($40/lb)
“For years, we’ve held our price down,” the cheesemaker told me. But he couldn’t hold the line any longer. The economics of aged sheep’s milk cheese was forcing him to bump up prices, and not by a little. What I didn’t understand, and what the cheesemaker convincingly explained, was why comparable wheels from Europe often cost much less.
Read moreBoard Games
No, it’s not art. It’s a cheese board, and it’s meant to be consumed down to the last pistachio. Cheese artiste Lilith Spencer creates these edible dreamscapes for Cheesemongers of Santa Fe, the year-old store where she works. Wowza. Looks like we’re all going to have to up our game.
Read moreMexico’s Ambassador of Cheese
With The New York Times ranking Mexico City as the top travel destination for 2016, maybe you have moved this vibrant capital higher up on your bucket list. If you do go, make time for Lactography, a petite cheese shop inside the hip Mercado Roma.
In a space the size of a walk-in closet, Carlos Yescas and his sister, Georgina, have amassed hand-crafted cheeses from all over Mexico. On a mission to help rural cheesemakers find markets, these two evangelists are trying to elevate the image of their country’s dairy output and persuade Mexicans to take their own cheeses seriously.
Triple Play
Introduced in March of this year, Tomales Farmstead’s Teleeka is already outselling the four other cheeses made by this California creamery. I’m not surprised. Inspired by La Tur, the wildly popular bloomy-rind cheese from Northern Italy, Teleeka has a luscious factor that’s hard to resist.
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