Featured Cheese - April 2024

White Wensleydale is firm but not dry and hard, creamy yet the surface is slightly uneven and crumbly, and has a slightly sweet but also tart flavor. It’s sometimes described as having a nutty, buttermilk flavor and with a honey aftertaste, and gentle aroma of cut grass. It has a fine curd, minimal texturing, and high moisture content. Wensleydale is usually eaten young, at about a month old. This cheese goes well with a crisp apple and is traditionally eaten with fruitcake.

Kaltbach Le Crémeux is a fairly new cheese, arriving in the United States in early 2017. It is a washed-rind cheese made at the Emmi facility in Emmen, then cave aged in Kaltbach Cave, a veritable labyrinth of 22 million-year-old natural sandstone located near Lucerne in the Alpine Valley of Switzerland. It is named after the river that runs through the cave, which keeps the humidity at 96%, a crucial component in the development of the cheese’s texture.

Sweet Grass Dairy produces six core cheeses and we are fortunate to offer the Thomasville Tomme as one of this month’s selections. Their version of a French Pyrenées Mountains farmhouse Tomme is a semi-soft, grass-based, raw cows’ milk cheese that is aged for 60 to 90 days. Reflective of its southern Georgia terroir, this cheese shows subtle earthy and grassy notes, as well as a creamy texture on the palate.

Tulip Tree’s Nettle, a 2016 American Cheese Society Winner, is a delicate, crumbly, and bovre-style fresh cheese similar in style to a chèvre but made with pasteurized cows’ milk using microbial rennet that is vegetarian-friendly. The cheese is covered in fresh mint, sage, and nettle leaves, which makes for a savory, yet clean, bright, and lactic flavor profile. It is an ideal cheese to bring along on a picnic because it is so versatile.