News From The Cheese Caves

It makes us happy to be surrounded by so many lovely cheeses these days. They are all looking for a nice home in your tummy. We hate to part with them but we realize that this is not a museum here; we prefer to think of it as a “day school” for cheeses. We like to acquire them on the young side them nurture them to their most glorious peaks, and then send them out into the real world.

The Laurier goat milk cheese that I tasted earlier offered one of the most delightful flavor profiles ever – this cheese crafted by our friends at the Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery.

One of the loveliest uncompromised milk French cheeses we have in the caves at this time is the Abbaye de Tamié. Another little gem is the Tomme Vaudoise from western Switzerland. Other fine delicacies we have from Switzerland I won’t mention right here; we have several in limited quantities. You can click on Switzerland and see what may be around. I am fairly certain that we will have some Vacherin Fribourgeois around for you, that deep-flavored one-of-the-original Fondue cheeses. Personally, as much as I may enjoy a good fondue I see no reason to melt this cheese down.

The Crater Lake Blue from the Rogue Creamery in Central Point Oregon is brilliant right now. And speaking of phenomenal blues we are especially proud to have the Carles Roquefort that is the sweetest Roquefort available, no doubt about it. There is one other gorgeous Swiss cheese I want to point out – the scary looking Blaui Geiss – that is pictured on the front cover of my latest book – Mastering Cheese. This is one you’ll want to watch out for, in case we run out by the time you’re reading this. One of the qualities we especially respect in this cheese is that it is a blue made with 100% goat milk; there are just too few of these.

Then there is Iberia, where you will find inimitable cheeses like the Queijo Amarelo da Beira Baixa, which offers “the-best-of-both-worlds” in that it is made with sheep and goat milk, and that it is also crafted by uncompromised milk. And the best known cheese of Portugal, the Queijo Serra d’Estrela, is a crowd pleaser if there ever was one. Under Events and Education you can find seats available for Great Iberian Peninsula. These classes open up a world into the diversity of fine cheeses available from this special part of the old world. And from Castilla-León now, the Valdeón is beautifully balanced.

These cheeses and many others have successfully graduated from our day school for cheese now. We hate to see them go but we know that they’ll make us proud.

Max McCalman
Dean of Curriculum

I had the pleasure of working as one of the judges at the Wisconsin World Cheese Awards in March and it was no surprise to me to see that the winner of Best-in-Show was a Gruyère, and that the second runner-up was another phenomenal cooked and pressed cheese from Switzerland. The two cheeses that won these awards were excellent indeed.

Our friend Rolf Beeler who goes around to the best dairies in Switzerland and hand-selects his choices told me that his favorite cheese was Gruyère. If you average out all the “quality” scores that I hesitantly supplied from country to country for Cheese, a Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best you would find that the Swiss cheeses were at the top. In my new book – Mastering Cheese, Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager – following a chapter on American’s Artisans I have a chapter dedicated to the cheeses of Switzerland alone: “There is no Swiss Cheese”: Switzerland’s Best.

I have recognized for some time that the real excitement occurring in the cheese world today is happening right here in the United States, without a doubt. The improvements in U.S. artisan cheeses are utterly amazing, yet there are some things that have been happening across the pond in the tiny country of Switzerland for centuries that are simply breath-taking. Beyond fine watches, chocolates and tennis players, the Swiss have a long history of producing outstanding cheeses.

Our caves have a great grouping of Beeler’s selections now, cheeses that are “screaming-to-be-eaten,” that include some of my all-time favorites: Appenzeller, Gruyère, Hoch Ybrig, Prattigauer, Sbrinz and Val Bagner. Along with these harder cheeses we have a limited supply of some excellent softer Swiss cheeses: Bergfichte (a.k.a. Forsterkäse), Stanser Rotelli, and the cute little Tomme Vaudoise. The softer cheeses won’t be around here long (partly because I won’t be able to resist them myself) so I would recommend that if you haven’t had one of these before that you try and get them now. And the harder ones will one by one go on to make many other cheese lovers smile.