Featured Cheese - May 2022

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.

Based in Thorp, Wisconsin, Marieke® Gouda was founded in 2006 by husband and wife team Marieke and Rolf Penterman. Originally from the Netherlands, Marieke missed the Gouda style cheeses she grew up with, so after two years of study, she created her first wheel. Just four months later, her first round of the Foenegreek Gouda was submitted to the US Cheese Championships and won a gold medal. Since then the Foenegreek Gouda has won numerous medals from various US and international competitions. The Foenegreek Gouda is made as a traditional gouda with the addition of fenugreek, an herb which gives the cheese a sweet and nutty flavor similar to maple syrup.

Sennerkäse is a traditional, semi-soft, German, Alpine cheese made from raw, organic cow’s milk and aged for six months, but made with the intriguing addition of yellow Eastern Indian fenugreek seeds. The inclusion of fenugreek is a cultural homage that celebrates the blue fenugreek that appears in decorations throughout the state of Bavaria in southeastern Germany. On the nose and palate, this creamy, buttery cheese shows herbal and grassy notes, toasted grain flavors, and slight salinity, all of which are surprisingly complemented by the nuttiness and maple-syrup sweetness of chewy fenugreek seeds.

The thin and springy rind surrounds a buttery-yellow colored paste with small ‘eyes,’ or holes, in its otherwise creamy texture. The rusticity and grassiness of the milk shines through in its nutty and salty flavor profile. Because Cuneo is located in the Piedmont region of Italy, one of Italy’s most celebrated wine regions, Raschera pairs with Piedmont whites, such as Arneis, Cortese (Gavi), and Moscato (d’Asti), as well as the region’s reds.

Because Redhead Creamery is a farmstead, the milk could not be any fresher, as the team has complete control over the cows' feed, the cows themselves, the milk they produce, and the resulting cheese. Little Lucy, a bloomy rind, brie-style cheese made from pasteurized cows' milk and aged for 4 to 14 weeks is named for founder Alise Sjostrom's young daughter, and offers a rich, buttery flavor profile, a clean mouthfeel, and a delicate sweetness.