Name your top 3.
Except for
@FSUTribe76, from whom I expect a minimum of 5, extensive history on the cheeses, tales of travel related to the cheeses, followed by a how to on making your own cheese that is way better than the cheese you can buy.
Wensleydale with Cranberries
Beecher Dulcet
Maple Leaf Smoked Gouda
In answer to my favorite cheeses in order it would be:
1) Aged Gouda over 24 months, the older the better. As it ages you get more little “pop rock” style crystals and the more caramely it tastes.
2) Cabrales, a blue cheese from Spain that’s so blue it tastes spicy even though no pepper or horseradish is involved and it inverts your taste buds turning sour foods sweet and vice versa for a short time.
3) Truffle Tremor by Cypress Grove, the best tasting truffle flavored cheese on the market. I’ve tried them from almost every European country including the Basques/Spain variety Costco pushes and Truffle Tremor is the winner.
4) Caerphilly, an oddly sweet and incredibly crumbly (locally in Wales it’s just called “the Crumbles”) mild cheddar-like cheese. It’s very tough to find in the US, the closest easy to find similar cheese is the Skellig Irish cheese from Kerrygold. But real Caerphilly blows away Skellig.
5) Purple Haze by Cypress Grove, a fresh ie soft goat cheese with lavender and fennel pollen.
6) Real French Camembert de Normandie, the crap Camembert and Brie we get imported to the US is bland and flavorless compared to what you can get in France (or England actually). The difference is that the US only allows pasteurized cheeses where heat has killed off all of the bacteria (including “good bacterias” which provide a lot of flavor) and that means most of the flavor never develops over the aging period. American camembert is a mostly tasteless and smellless milky soft cheese while the French version is so strong you can smell the funk a mile off. Even if you buy a French brand of Camembert from a gourmet shop or cheeseshop either online or in person you’re not getting the real Stuff as they’re not allowed to import it. You’ve got to go to France or Britain yourself or know someone there who can mail it back and skip the import laws (and you’re still risking it at customs).
7) Epoisses, just like the Camembert, the real stuff in France is far more potent in flavor. But even the American import versions made with pasteurized milk is pretty funky once it’s appropriately aged and gooey.
8) Rogue River Blue
9) Constant Bliss, a nutty, mushroomy and salty American cheese that I like better than Gruyère which would I guess be the closest to compare it to. Imagine a cheese midway between an American Brie and Gruyère with a lot more flavor.
10) Idiazabal is a fantastic sheep only cheese from the Basque region. If I only had one cheese to snack on by itself rather than a full cheeseboard with different flavors, I’d actually choose this number one. It’s not overpowering in any flavor, it’s just by far the best “well rounded” cheese around.
Others I strongly considered but ultimately will just put down here in a “honorable mention”/“cheeses you should still buy for your cheeseboard immediately” are: Le chevrot, charolais, P’tit Basque, Manchego Curado (the 2 year old stuff not normal Manchego which is too bland), Pico by Picande, Smokey Blue by Rogue Creamery, Thomasville Tomme by Sweetgrass Dairy, Pecorino Toscano Stagionato, Dancing Fern by Sequatchie Cove Creamery, Bread Cheese by Carr Valley Dairy (requires panfrying to become extraordinary), Green Hill by Sweetgrass Dairy, Asher Blue by Sweetgrass Dairy, Maroilles, Raclette, Fiore Sardo, Zamorano, Smoking Goud by Boston Post Dairy, and Cayuga Blue by Lively Run Goat Dairy.
Two other things I love that some people call cheese but like American “cheese” is a processed product not a pure uncooked, unmixed cheese, are the Boursin Garlic and Fine Herb cheese spread (which is amazing on burgers) and Gjetost. I’d definitely have those in my top 20 and maybe top 10 if they actually counted as cheese.
