Current Featured Cheese - November 2024

Young Farmdal is everything you want in a fine gouda, but with a softer paste. It is ivory in color, with a luxurious buttery texture. While it shows traditional gouda notes of caramel, it is more reminiscent of sweet cream and vanilla with a tangy finish. It will accompany fresh fruit, charcuterie, and crackers on an appetizer platter. Or, melt it for fondue, grilled cheese sandwiches, mashed potatoes, and cheese-based soups.

Point Reyes Toma is all natural and made with cow milk, as well as being gluten-free and made with microbial (vegetarian) rennet. This semi-firm cheese is creamy with buttery flavor with a grassy tang finish making it the perfect cheese to go with just about anything. Toma also means “cheese made by the farmer himself” in Italian and that’s fitting as it’s made by a family-run dairy farm and creamery in Marin County.

Made by master cheesemaker Walter Räss at Käserei Tufertschwil in the St. Gallen region of Switzerland, Chällerhocker has achieved cult classic status and is on every cheesemonger’s short list. Chällerhocker is an Appenzeller-inspired cheese and has consistently placed 1st or 2nd in Walter’s region for 15 of the last 20 years. The name Chällerhocker is translated roughly as "sitting in the cellar," a reference to the cheese’s extended aging on wooden boards for a minimum of 10 months.

Using old-world techniques, all of their cheeses are hand-ladled to preserve the delicate characteristics of the curd. They also use uncommonly-long sets to draw out a full, complex flavor, and a low-heat, long pasteurization to maintain that flavor. Many a food critic have observed that if it’s got the Zingerman’s brand on it, you will be able to “Taste the Difference,” and the creamery is no exception.

Winner of the 2016 World Cheese Championship Contest, Roth Cheese’s Grand Cru Surchoix was the first Wisconsin-produced cheese to do so in nearly 30 years. In 1999, the cheese you’re about to taste this month also took Best in Show at the American Cheese Society competition. Grand Cru Surchoix is a small-batch, washed-rind, Alpine-style cheese, made with the freshest raw cow’s milk in imported copper vats and aged in Roth Cheese’s cellars for at least 9 months.