Featured Cheese - December 2014

Carr Valley Cheese has been making cheese in Wisconsin for over a century and they’ve become one of the finest specialty cheese manufacturers in the States. Glacier Wildfire Blue is a soft to semi-soft cheese, and this ‘hot’ blue is mild to medium in heat but still has the creamy, crisp, and clean flavors of a regular blue that will melt in your mouth. Add this crumbly cheese to sauces, mac and cheese or anything you want to kick up a notch. It will pair very well with wines like Viognier and Chardonnay and moderately hoppy beers like an American Pale Ale.

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.

Purple Haze is a fresh goat’s milk cheese flavored with lavender buds and wild harvested fennel pollen. The name, inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s classic song, reflects more of the appearance rather than the taste of the cheese. This chevre has a sweet, flowery (but not overwhelming) flavor of soft, creamy texture. Pair it with crackers, ripe figs or Zinfandel.