Ford Farm West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, tl:dr

That's "too long, didn't read" in internet-speak, just so's you know. This is the internet, after all.

As is so often the case, great pomp and circumstance comes with a name of that length (also it's English, they love them some pomp. Don't mind the circumstance, either). This is, according to the world body that governs cheese, UNCO, the original Cheddar. Perhaps not this particular brand, but this designation; West Country Farmhouse Cheddar.

Want to call your cheddar a West Country Farmhouse? Tough. You don't even live in England, do you? Well, maybe you do, but chances are you don't live in the particular bit of south-west England where, according to English Law, this Cheddar has to be made. You see, the French aren't the only ones who got wise to putting legal protection on cheese names. Only difference here is that, as is all too obvious with the proliferation of hack-rate cheddars the world over, only Roqeufort can be called Roquefort. Any old cheese can be called cheddar, which is where this West Country Farmhouse moniker comes into play. Want to have the baddest bragging rights in all of the Cheddar world? ("Yes!", cried the assembled masses), better move to England.
All joking aside this is a legendary cheese, but the caseophile must always be wary. No amount of hype can substitute for the old "try it and see for yourself" method.

Origin: England
Milk: Cow, pasteurized
Rennet: Vegetarian
Affinage: 12 months (alternatively one year, if they're feeling crazy)
Notes: Comes wrapped in an imposing black wax. Kind of a red flag, to be honest. It is also a handmade cheese, by order of law, and is made on the farm where the cows are milked (hence Farmhouse), also by order of law.
Thoughts: Surprisingly moist, one almost expects to taste the port or whiskey of the infused cheddars based on the soft texture of this cheese. Also odd considering it's age. The strong creaminess compliments the mild start of the flavor and the dry tang that develops towards the end. While this is certainly a tasty cheddar I've got to be honest, I need a second opinion. And by opinion I mean taste, a second brand. If I were to judge my entire West Country experience solely off of this one cheddar... well it's certainly not the best cheddar I've had. In fact I've had better Cheddars from Ireland. The USA even. Maybe the US will grant name controlled status to Beecher's Flagship one day. I doubt it, but the problem there is with the Man, not the cheese.


Big, dumb Man


Also, there is no UNCO. Only in my imagination.

Casatica, Not Just an On-Time Post

Get our your flying-pig nets, those ones that you have, because they're... well they're flying. The pigs, not the nets... shoot.

This on-time post is brought to you by the magic of Thanksgiving and having a week off of school. 

Also blogger-guilt. 

I'll just come out and say it, today's cheese blew me away. Wild stuff, let me tell you. The story here, stolen from the folks over at Cowgirl, is one that should excite any cheese lover. Brothers Alfio and Bruno Gritti took on their father's creamery with a big old herd of cows and have since moved to an all buffalo line. All buffalo, as in all rich/meaty/bold/creamy/fatty/delicious. Apparently they make 25 different kinds of buffalo milk Italian cheeses so..... only 24 more to go?

Oh, and today's is called Casatica.

Origin: Bergamo, Italy

Milk: Buffalo, pasteurized

Rennet: Animal

Affinage: 4-5 weeks

Notes: Actually, these are the same folks to make the delicious Gran Blu di Bufala, a cheese I've tried and recorded but have yet to blog about... so many cheeses so little time!

Thoughts: If ever there was a surprising cheese, this is it. It looks unassuming enough, plain yellowish paste with some uneven eyes throughout, but one bite and your tastebuds are sent into shock. The smallest square of this cheese gives you the sensation of eating an entire meal, and a hearty one at that. The first course is bread, followed by and dipped in a rich mushroom soup. This cheese is so rich, thanks to that protein and fat strong buffalo milk, that you have to remember you’re eating cheese and not butter. Hints of salt bring out flavors of the local flora, and the final course is the meatiest steak you have ever had, garnished with garlic. This cheese doesn’t so much break down on the palate as it does blitzkrieg it’s way to your tastebuds and set up a forward command center. The rind… well it’s dry an bland and doesn’t add much, but the paste! The pâte! Milky and yet full bodied, bright in the back of the mouth while heavy on the tongue, this is something to be thankful for!

But seriously, I'll spend about 3 hours tonight updating my cheese records. Quick, pity the poor blogger.

Updated Cheese List!!!!

It's a Thanksgiving Miracle! The cheese list (which can be found by clicking on the ENJOY text on the right column) has been brought up to date. 213 cheeses and climbing, what a good thing! One of the new ones is the subject of today's post, so get eager!
-TFCA

Salers, Similar to Cantal

What is Cantal? 

Oh, you've probably never heard of it.

Dear reader, cheese is not for the hipster. Not exclusively, at least. I mean... who knows.

Um.

Today we have a cheese that hails from France for a wee change. It is an unpasteurized gem that benefits from a rocky and volcanic homeland. That either means it tastes like grounded flights, cool sunsets, and weird floating stones, or mineraly, rich milky gold. 

Happy days it tastes like gold.

Origin: Auvergne, France

Milk: Cow, unpasteurized

Rennet: Animal

Affinage: 6-9 months

Notes: Made in the mountains and best eaten in the winter months, once it's been aged for a proper period. Save the dainty french chevres and complex Bries for the summer months, this is a hearty mountain man's cheese. Any heartier and it'd have a beard....

Maybe it really is hipster.

Thoughts: For such a firm paste it has a surprisingly smooth texture after the initial bite and hints immediately of a very meaty cheese. Salty and fruity notes play off of each other but the more notable flavor is the ever-so-slightly sour effect of the raw milk. There is a noted creaminess to both the texture and flavor but never so much as to overtake any other feature, more just carrying on and intensifying the already mentioned flavors. On the whole a hearty and satisfying cheese, rightly delicious.   

 Everyone should go to the Cheese Importers in Longmont and get their holiday orders in. Things are going to get pretty crazy, and you don't want to be caught with your pants down and out of cheese. As the classic saying goes.

First Of All

This stout Yeoman would like to personally thank each and every one of you loyal interneters, extrabloggers, and webberseiters for still bothering to visit these dusty pages. If I had some valid excuse for not updating in the past two weeks I surely would have given a pseudo-update to that effect. So neglectful have I been that even apology mouse made an appearance. 

I'm sorry. 

That is not to say, however, that I have been away from the world of cheese for these past weeks. Far from it, I have been knee deep. Waist deep. Neck deep. Earlobe deep. Name a body part, I've probably been that deep in cheese. 

How is this, you ask? How does one man find his way into so much cheese? 

Intentionally. Also with the help of Groupon. Yeah yeah half price cheese heaven yeah. 

Not only have I sampled and documented some new cheeses, I have also had the supreme pleasure of attending my second cheese festival, this time held in Aurora, Colorado. By Aurora, I mean way deep off in the prarieland at the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds, more commonly home to cattle russtlin', sheep pennin' and other stereotypically western fare than fine artisan cheese exhibitions. That being said, it did the trick; this cheese festival was wild. I mean, I haven't had this much fun since I was abroad; it was just a warehouse full of people crazy about fine cheese, crackers, and wine. We need to have one of these in every major city, every month of the year. Really we need to have a more robust local food movement to provide the vendors for more of these events, but let's settle in our simplification for now. 

Upon driving out to the middle of nowhere (and by the way, on the corner of two streets whose names I forget there is a pair of very nice women selling home made cinnamon buns and coffee. I'm not much one for either, especially not at expensive cheese prices (you know, that standard price range), but they were pretty tasty. This is useless unless you frequent the Buckley Air Force Base area and are prone to a) getting lost and b) spontaneously buying roadside breakfasts, but while I have your attention I might as well ramble. Or something like that. I won't even close off that first parentheses. Just happened.

Cheese!

Cheese is why we're here. 

At this fairgrounds, inside the majestic halls, there were two main rooms. One was filled with a circuit of vendor stalls, offering samples as well as information, the other with workshops on cheese and other good stuff. I missed most of the workshops due to obsessive sampling, but I'm at peace with that. I ate a lot of cheese that day. The hall of cheese was also a hall of biscuits, wine, and other goodies, which meant that the whole booth circuit was pretty much a course in fine dining stuffs. After completing the hour or so tour the only workshop left was for soapmaking. Very good I'm sure, but non-edible, non-spreadable, and generally not the focus of this blogger's fancy. 

Let's not waste energy on what I didn't see, however, when what I did was something magical. Vendors from all over Colorado and coast to coast were there showing off their prime creations, making for a gastronomic joyride. It is truly a pleasure to find so many new cheeses and brands in one place and with samples of their finest wares literally set before you, and let me tell you, dear reader, that quality cheese is alive and well in the USA. Quite well, in fact. Not only that but, being a mature adult or something legally resembling one, I was able to purchase quality local wines to pair with my campaign of cheese. Not just wines, but there was some real quality biscuits there too, I mean super delicious like fig and almond delicious. Happy days, dear reader. Happy days. I could wish no greater cheese happiness for you than to attend such an event. 

For those of you living in the vicinty of Longmont Colorado, I have some great news: The Cheese Importers is now carrying a number of the outstanding cheeses on display and in the photos, and the rest should be available somewhere in CO at the very least. With that short, concise, and to-the-point-yea-the-spirit-of-brevity introduction, here is my photo-documentation of the Colorado Cheese Festival. 

The hall-o-cheese

 The good folks at Rocking W Farmstead Dairy were there and I had the absolute pleasure of being introduced to these two, the Farmers and the Portobello Leek Jack. I'm not usually not a fan of either styles but this is done so well I would happily feature it at a cheese party. Also; portobello and leek and cheese? Genius!
 The B

 Jumpin' Good Goat Dairy brought the whole family along to hawk their wares, and it's a good thing because there must have been 25 different kinds of cheese out on their u-shaped megatable. I couldn't quite give each one a due tasting so I focused on a couple, here are those pics!

Their Beuna Vista Bleu Cheese was something to behold, a serious curd that is naturally inocculated in their home-made aging caves. Why is the paste brown, I asked? Because that's what the cave does to it, came the answer. Well there you go. Silly question, silly answer. 

Seriously, these folks brought cheese on cheese. Their chipotle cheeses, again usually not my favorites by a long stretch, were tasty morsels to say the least. The old taste buds just got a little confused is all. 

The James Ranch Artisan Cheese booth only brought two cheeses to show off, but man were they good. I mean serious A-game material and prime proof that America has real original cheeses to bring to the table. Literally in this case.

The Mature Belford stole my heart pretty quickly and secured a spot among my favorites from the festival, rich and nutty, dark, complex, wit a well balanced errrething. So good. Wow. And such friendly employees, too!

I have already professed my undying love for Beecher's to a degree that borders on the obsessive, but here they just proved that even and old love can still be exciting and new. Their Flagship cheddar may be my go-to but the No Woman and the Marco Polo show that you can in fact put things like jerk spices and cracked pepper into cheese and end up with something that actually tastes better than it did before. So well balanced, perfectly displaying the featured flavor while also  respecting the cheese itself... well played Beecher's. Well played.

Caves of Faribaoult's flagship blue cheese, St. Pete's Select Blue was a mouthwatering delight, slightly smoky but creamy and rich, hot but not burning and spicy... pretty much everything you could ask from a blue cheese. I could just curl up in a kiddie pool of the stuff with a pound of crispy bacon and.... oh. People read this blog, I'm sorry. I'll clean it up. 

Crackers, those are clean! And delicious, talk about delicious! Daelias makes some of the singularly most worthy crackers I've ever come across, and believe you me brother/sister, I've eaten a lot of crackers in my day. Nothing quite like these, though, hoo-doggie.

What? More Faribault? Oh that's right, because Blogger's pic-placement system is rubbish and also because this cheese is deluxe. I mean top shelf. Look it up. Fini Cheddar. Nom hard.

All the way from Vermont (and called Vermont Farmstead) was this booth and their Alehouse Cheddar. Talk about cheddar overload, if there was such a thing as too much tasty it would be here.

 I'm not usually a fan of smoked cheese, and Scamorza has never really been an exception, but Fiscalini again proves it's worth with this their take on the classic Italian smoked mozz. Chewy, perfectly balanced smokiness, creamy, just a little salty, really a treat. That's probably why there's hardly any left in the picture. Cue early bird cheese metaphor.

Emmi Roth, a company that makes cheese both in the Old Country (Switzerland) and here in the good old US of A, brought some creamy goodness to the table with this buttermilk blue. Nothing like buttermilk to foil the heat of blue cheese mold, goes down smooth like butter.

Here (below) is the Cypress Grove booth. No, there were no new cheeses or surprise treats..... just the standard super delicious mind-blowing standard-setting epoch-defining cheeses. Ho hum.

 This is exciting, however, and let me tell you why. Sartori, in this stout Yeoman's opinon. Is one of the best cheesemakers to come out of the US. Period. They belong in any competition (and indeed they've won their fair share), on any fancy restaurant's cheese plate, at any respectable cheese party, and on any cheese lover's bucket list. Plus they have their own custom toothpicks, which I'm pretty sure are hand-hewn from timber salvaged from the Titanic. That. Epic. Also it's from Wisconsin... so I guess there's something to that whole Wisconsin Cheese thing. Go figure.

This is a lineup to salivate over. Each one a Gem.

On top of their Sarvecchio Parmesan, which actually defines top shelf as a designation, they have a Balsamic Bellavitano offering..... Oh my dear goodness so good. Go find it and see.

Then there is their Rosemary and Olive Oil Asiago. If you had told me before this event that such cheeses were possibly from within these borders... I'd have called you a liar liar pants on don'tyoujokeaboutcheesewithme.

 Fruition Farms, a company from right here in Colorado, brought some friendly faces and a few excellent sheep's milk cheeses to show off. Their Ricotta especially, was so fresh and so clean clean. Clean clean. Just a super pure representation of what sheep's milk can taste like. What more you could ask for I don't know.

Also, they have a brandy-dandy new cheese that we got to test-drive: Shepherd's halo. Brie-like, sheepy, light, airy, and full of flavor, pick up the first piece you find and savor it with friends. You will not be disappointed.  

At this point I need to point out that, even with this ridiculous wall of photos (congratulations on making it through, by the way), I did not cover every booth in this update. Nor did I even give each cheese/cheesemakers it's proper due. I can't stress enough how good these cheeses are, how good America's finest can do when they set about making a heavenly curd. Never let anyone tell you otherwise, we have a rich tradition here that is only on the up.  I will be reviewing as many of these cheeses as I can find in more detail in the coming months, but if you see any of them I could not recommend cheeses more highly. 

So.

Thank you for putting up with the wonky formatting, the late posts, and the super long read today.... You're all pretty great. 

omnomnomnomomnomnomnomnomnonononmnomnomnomnomomomomomomnomnomnomnomnomnomnonnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnonnomnomnomnomomomomomomomomomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnom.

But Seriously.