Whistle Stop Tour: Traders Point Creamery’s Boone County Bloomy, Indiana {American Cheese Month}

The whistle stop tour pulls into the Midwest this week, and you may be thinking, “Big deal. You two write about those cheeses all the time.” Yes, an awful lot of Midwestern cheeses regularly appear on the blog, but this week’s featured cheeses are total C+C newbies. I had never even heard of today’s selection, Boone County Bloomy from Indiana’s Traders Point Creamery, before I spied it at Surdyk’s. In fact, besides Judy Schad of Capriole Goat Cheeses, I couldn’t even name an Indiana cheesemaker. It’s a pity I didn’t know about Traders Point Creamery in college, when my parents lived just a few exits away from the Zionsville farm in Carmel and I probably could have picked up these organic cow’s-milk cheeses at every grocery store in town, but at least I found my source now.

Though the creamery makes goudas, fetas and blues, you know we favor the bloomies here, so the Boone County Bloomy was calling my name. A very young cheese (aged anywhere from two to six weeks), BCB looks like a little cake coated in ash, but when you cut into the wedge, you get a whiff of lemon and milky ooze. Though the paste looks light and fluffy in the photo, it’s actually quite dense in the center, but the runny edges balance the thicker, creamier interior. My first taste of BCB was a little off – I think it was a tad too young – but subsequent nibbles led me to discover an intriguing, zippy flavor. The sharpness of the ashy coating met was tempered by the paste’s maturing mushroom notes, making it the perfect match for a flute of bubbly and wildly addicting.

With cheese this good, one can only imagine how sinfully delicious Trader Point Creamery’s ice cream must be. Surdyk’s, I expect to see some pints in your freezer case soon.

Tagged as: american, american cheese month 2012, bloomy-rind, boone county bloomy, bubbly, Cheese!, cow, curdwise whistle, indiana, traders point creamery