Featured Cheese - August 2024

We are delighted to share with you this month the wonderful, not-to-be-missed Montegrappa. It is a cheese with a storied history, having been made for centuries at the bottom of the 5825-foot Mount Grappa in the province of Treviso, in the Veneto region of Italy between the Venetian plains and the northern Alpine region, not far from the village of Bassano del Grappa. It shares its heritage with Asiago and Montasio DOP cheeses, whose farmers’...

Grana Padano, DOP cheese was originally made by the Cistercian Monks of Chiaravalle in the twelfth century – in the region between the Po, Ticino and Adda Rivers – as a means of not wasting fresh milk. By 1477, Grana Padano had evolved into one of Italy’s most sought-after cheeses. Until the early twentieth century, it was made in a variety of shapes, sizes, and methods. However, in the 1930s, advances in cheesemaking technology standardized production. Grana Padano is aged a minimum of 9 months, though the version we select for our club members is aged 18-20 months. The source of our Grana Padano selection is Farm 539, which is located on the border of two provinces, Parma and Piacenza, in the municipality of Villanova sull’Arda within the region of Emilia-Romagna.

Situated on the edge of the beautiful rolling hills of Lincolnshire Wolds, about ten miles from the United Kingdom’s coastline bordering the North Sea, lies family farm Ulceby Grange, home of Lincolnshire Poacher. The property has been in the family since 1917 and became a dairy farm in 1970 under third-generation family member, Richard Jones. Richard's son, Simon, began making cheese on the farm in 1992. The raw milk for Lincolnshire Poacher is sourced from the farm’s herd of Holstein Fresian cows. After 14-24 months of maturation, the resulting cheese is a rustic hybrid of sorts, exhibiting qualities of both an English Farmhouse Cheddar and a Swiss Alpine Comté.

Procured and aged at the renowned Fromagerie L'Amuse in Santpoort-Noord, Holland, just outside of Amsterdam, each batch of L’Amuse Gouda is selected for us by L’ Amuse owner Betty Koster. It’s aged for over a year, allowing big crunchy flavor crystals to develop. Over the years, owners Betty and Martin Koster have built up the L’Amuse brand to be one of the more respected gouda producers in the country through their affinage, or cheese maturation process.