Colleen has been eager to try the new bistro menu at La Fromagerie since it debuted last fall, and when she finally made it there for a meal last week, she had a special guest with her – me! In town for a whirlwind work trip, I managed to squeeze in an extra day so I could visit some of my favorite people and places, and there was no question where we’d go for lunch on my way to the airport. And on a stormy afternoon, there is nothing more comforting than a hearty cheese plate, warm soup and good company.

We restrained ourselves and ordered a three-cheese plate that represented three categories: soft, stinky and blue. My sister Mandy, who joined us, was pleased her stuffed nose prevented her from fully experiencing the stink, but Colleen’s daughter E had a fine time literally licking the cheese from our knives (the non-sharp end, of course). We feasted upon:

Sofia (Capriole Farmstead, IN) This creamy goat cheese could easily draw comparisons to perennial C+C favorite Humboldt Fog, with its mild flavor and layers of vegetable ash running through the paste, but it’s a little less lemony and a tad more salty. We had to fight off E to get our fair share of Sofia.

Caveman Blue (Rogue Creamery, OR) We adore all Rogue cheeses, and the raw-milk Caveman Blue is no exception. It expertly balances the umami tones of a finely aged blue with the fruity sweetness that keeps the blue flavor from becoming overpowering. Pairing each bite with a dried apricot or fig spread made for an even better tasting experience.

Hudson Red (Twin Maple Farm, NY) Here’s our stinker! Raw-milk Hudson Red gets its pungency and bright orange rind from a brine containing B. linens. Its funkiness, dense, pliable paste and toasty flavor were well-matched with a crisp apple slice.

With some other fruits and crispy flatbreads – and, of course, glasses of bubbly – we had one of the most satisfying lunches a cheese lover could ask for. Colleen also enjoyed a bowl of stinging nettle soup with a swirl of goat cheese, while I nibbled on some steamed asparagus. We both dipped into E’s decadent, buttery, bread-crumby mac and cheese. Cheers to Sebastian and Mary for putting together a bistro menu that hits the spot!

Terraluna: the cheese without a cheesemaker. Well, I assume someone had to make this yummy specimen, but no cheesemaker is listed on the Artisanal website where I purchased my wedge. That’s a shame, too, because I’d like to give credit to the person who crafted a sumptuous, raw-milk delight like Terraluna. Will the real cheesemaker please stand up?

Made from the milk of Jersey cows, Terraluna is often likened to a cheddar, but I found it to be very different from most of the cheddars I’ve enjoyed. To me, cheddar is a full-bodied, coat-every-tastebud-on-your-palate type of cheese, and Terraluna tasted quite delicate in comparison. While definitely not as salty as Seven Sisters, it has a similar summery nuttiness that made it seem very seasonally appropriate for this wildly mild spring we’ve had in Minnesota. Terraluna is hearty enough to anchor a cheeseboard and enjoy with an ale or lambic, but I’m more likely go with Max McCalman’s suggested pairing of a pinot noir and a selection of gourmet crackers.

If anyone has any hints as to Terraluna’s creator, let us know! We’d love to raise our glass of pinot and give a more formal salute to the person responsible for this beauty.

After a two-week spring break of sorts (meaning we busy moms hadn’t had much time for blogging), we’re back with perennial favorite and seasonal smash Winnimere. Yes, we have written about Winnimere before, but this cheese is so special and eagerly anticipated each spring that it deserves an annual post. Colleen and I both got our hands on a Winni wedge last week and found that not only does it have the ability to soothe a sore throat, but it’s impossible to consume any less than your full portion in one sitting. Imagine that.

I never got any Winni love last year, so the 2012 vintage tasted even more amazing – absence does make the heart grow fonder, you know. It was perfectly ripe when I brought it home from France 44 (marveling at its peak form, cheesemonger Song said she was going to take some home for herself that night), and a couple hours on the counter made it an oozy, boozy delight. Each dip of the spoon drew out a luscious, liquidy bite that harkened visions of barbecue, bacon (or how I imagine bacon tastes, since I don’t eat it) and bonfires. My husband walked by as I was savoring each spoonful and remarked how stinky it is. That’s right, honey, go on thinking that. I’ll keep all the Winnimere in the house for myself – except that I ate it all at once and am once again Winni-less. The 2013 version can’t arrive soon enough.

Salty/sweet combos are my downfall, so when I find that taste sensation in a cheese, you know it’s going to be one of my new favorites. Seven Sisters, a raw cow’s-milk cheese from Pennsylvania, recently became my snacking cheese of choice for this exact reason. When you get the saltiness of a cracker together with the caramelly flavor of a well-made Gouda-ish cheese, you don’t even need an actual cracker. Dr. Atkins would approve.

Seven Sisters comes from Doe Run Dairy, part of a 700-acre farm in Chester County where Jersey cows are rotationally grazed and produce grassy, high-quality milk that cheesemaker Kristian Holbrook uses to make 25 lb. wheels of Seven Sisters. Even though I got my wedge in mid-January, I could taste summer in the firm, nutty paste – a much-needed vacation from a winter diet of heavy flavors and dishes like hearty stews and chilis. Sure, you could grate some Seven Sisters over that chili, but to truly savor the finely balanced cheese, you don’t need more than a sharp knive and some apple slices. Oh, and a glass of riesling, of course.

What kind of cheese do you need when you’re nursing a broken heart? Thanks to my team’s pitiful performance Sunday, I was left with a grumpy disposition and the need for comfort food. Thankfully, I had just the fix in my cheese drawer – Ascutney Mountain from Vermont’s Cobb Hill Cheese.

There must be an evolutionary imperative for craving Alpine-style cheeses this time of year. Maybe it’s because the sweet nuttiness of these firm, yellow beauties remind us that spring will come once again. And I’m glad I found solace in Ascutney Mountain, which is made by the raw Jersey cow milk by the Cobb Hill community. Led by cheesemaker Sophie Starr, the team at Cobb Hill, “an intentional cohousing community” in Hartland, Vt., has created a cheese that’s hearty in texture but delicate in flavor. It’s aged anywhere from seven to 10 months, and I definitely could tell my wedge had been made with spring milk. I really dug the fruitiness, which made the cheese so sweet it was almost candy-like. Very appropriate, since I crave sugar when stressed or depressed. One nibble turned into two, then three, then oops! my entire slice was gone.

Ascutney Mountain’s crowd-pleasing flavor marries well with most wines, ales and lagers. I enjoyed mine with many glasses of sauvignon blanc this weekend. Next time I’ll try pairing it with my favorite sweet riesling to see if sweet-meets-sweet is too much or right on target. If you’ve had the opportunity to try this fantastic cheese, which pairings did you like best?

Did you save room after yesterday’s turkey feast for cheese? We hope so, because according to the American Cheese Society, today is Blue Friday. Wrong color, you may say. Nope – the folks at ACS are getting a new tradition off the ground by encouraging cheese lovers to embrace the blues on the day after Thanksgiving.

In fact, blue cheese and the yuletide season go hand in hand across the pond, where it’s customary to serve a wheel of Stilton at holiday parties in Great Britain. But we think the quality and variety of American blues leaves you no reason to buy imported cheeses. Here are just a few of our favorites blues to consider for enjoying today and throughout the holidays. Make sure you pick up some port, too.

Midwestern Blues

I’m a lucky gal – the best blues from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa are all regulars at my local cheese shops, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. I picked up a slice of raw-milk Northern Lights Blue (above) Wednesday for a holiday cheeseboard, and my friend Katie and I couldn’t get enough tastes. Made by Joe Sherman, one of the originals behind Amablu Cheese, Minnesota-made Northern Lights Blue packs a spicy, vibrant punch with its thick blue veins and creamy, crumbly paste. It’s a show-stopper on its own or with apple slices, honey and a sweet tipple.

Colleen and I discovered Hook’s Bloomin’ Idiot almost two years ago – in Virginia, of all places – and became instant fans. (Perhaps you could say we were hooked – har, har.) It looks like brie, and the paste on its own is mild and creamy, but the rind contains mold spores that give the cheese the blue kick. Bloomin’ Idiot is not the easiest cheese to find, so snatch it up if you come across it.

If goat cheese is more your thing, seek out Billy Blue from Wisconsin’s Carr Valley Cheese. You can’t beat the combination of a fresh, snowy white chevre with the spiciness of the blue. Sheep’s-milk cheese fans will love Big Woods Blue from Shepherd’s Way Farm in Minnesota.

Pacific Northwest Blues

No list of noteworthy American blues would be complete without Rogue River Creamery’s award-winning cheeses. Rogue River Blue (above), which won Best of Show at the 2011 ACS Conference, was the inspiration behind today’s event. A leaf-wrapped, pear-brandy-washed hunk of blue lovin’, Rogue River Blue is “a testament to Oregon’s terroir,” as Colleen put it in her original review. Buttery, silky, smokey, fruity – all are apt descriptors but fail to give the complete picture. You’ll just need to buy a piece and try it for yourself.

You also can’t go wrong with sister cheese Crater Lake Blue, which, despite being made from cow’s rather than sheep’s milk, closely mimics the taste of our dear Roquefort. Rogue River also makes Smokey Blue, which gets its signature sweet and nutty flavor from the Oregon hazelnut shells over which it’s smoked.

New England Blues

Ah, memories – our very first cheese post three years ago happened to be an American blue. Bayley Hazen (above), from C+C favorite Jasper Hill Farm, will always have a soft spot in our hearts, and a place in our cheese drawers. How can we resist its creamy, salty, raw-milk-tastic bite?

Hubbardston Blue goat cheese (right) is an unusual blue I discovered this summer when I was getting my anniversary cheese deliveries from Cowgirl Creamery. A surface-ripened cheese from Westfield Farm in Massachusetts, this goat cheese gets its blue inoculation while it’s still in the milk phase rather than as a chevre. After aging 30 days, it develops a dusty gray rind and a mushroomy taste.

New England is also home to one of our noted cheese innovators, Laini Fondiller of Vermont’s Lazy Lady Farm. Though we’ve only written about Fondiller’s Barick Obama on C+C, she also makes Lady in Blue, a raw-milk, soft-ripened blue that’s currently in season. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen it in Minnesota, so perhaps one of our New England readers can give us the scoop.

Southern Blues

If your cheese-lovin’ heart belongs to Dixie, look no further than Georgia’s Sweet Grass Dairy, which makes an excellent raw-milk blue called Asher Blue (above). When I’m not obsessing over Sweet Grass Dairy’s Green Hill, I enjoy this assertive, creamy cheese. You can taste the love Jeremy and Jessica Little put into each wheel, which is pierced 50 times by hand to develop the blue veins that run thickly through the paste.

Deep in the heart of Texas, the Mozzarella Company turns out mini loaves of Deep Ellum Blue. Called “a blue cheese for people who don’t like blue cheese,” this cow’s-milk cheese is aged six weeks to develop a moldy blue exterior. Its name derives from the Dallas neighborhood where the cheese factory is located – ironically, an area where blues singers used to perform.

Which American blues will you be purchasing today? Share your finds with us!

Our group enjoyed our visit to Uplands Cheese Company so much that we were running late for our last cheesemaker stop of the day, Bleu Mont Dairy in Blue Mounds, Wis. So our time with Willi Lehner, affectionately known as the “mad scientist” of cheese in these parts for his constant tinkering of traditional recipes, was short but sweet. Especially sweet, I may add, because we got to see Lehner’s celebrated and sophisticated bandaged cheddar in its natural environment – the 1,600-sq.-ft. cave that Lehner dug out of a hillside on his farm.

No matter how blasé about cheese you may be, you have to admit that carving your own cheese cave out of the side of a hill is pretty bad-ass. It signifies not only a commitment to making cheese, but a dedication to making mind-blowing, truly artisanal cheese. A second-generation cheesemaker, Lehner credits his teenage trip to his father’s native Switzerland as the “a-ha” moment that led him to devote his life to cheese.

“That’s where I made the connection between what cows ate and the cheese that resulted [from their milk].” — Cheesemaker Willi Lehner

You may think that someone who builds his own cave leads a solitary, caveman-like existence, but Lehner’s cheese exemplifies the cooperative spirit shared among Wisconsin cheesemakers. He buys milk from his pal Andy Hatch’s pasture-grazed cows at Uplands and rents space at Cedar Grove Cheese Factory (or, depending on availability, another local cheesemaker’s facility) to craft his cheddars, goudas, havartis and Alpine-style cheeses from the spring through the fall. Lehner then brings his baby cheeses back to the cave, a capsule-shaped cocoon with a 12-ft.-high ceiling and two rooms with varying degrees of moisture. Though temperatures in southern Wisconsin can reach well below zero in the winter and close to 100º in the summer, Lehner’s cave design allows the interior temperature to fluctuate only within a 10-degree range throughout the year. The cave usually hits a low temperature of 48º in March and peaks at 58º in September.

Lehner’s signature cheese – bandaged cheddar – dominated the shelves of his cave when we visited. He wraps the heavy rounds in muslin bandages and smears the exterior with lard to keep the bandages from drying out too fast. The lard never penetrates the rind to mingle with the cheese paste, however – the mold that grows on the rinds in the cave consumes it within six months. Lehner chooses heavy muslin to prevent cheese mites (yes, they do exist!) from burrowing through the rind during the cheeses’ years in the yeasty-smelling cave. He sells the bandaged cheddar between the ages of 2 and 3, and the cliché is true – the best cheeses come to those who wait.

Lehner offered us samples of his 2-and-a-half-year-old “reserve” bandaged cheddar and Alpine Renegade, a nutty, creamy cheese that coated the mouth with its subtle flavor. The real stand-out, though, was the cheddar. Full of caramel notes and crunchy crystals, the cheddar leaves no doubts that it deserves its best-seller status. As I noted two years ago when I first tasted the cheddar, its sweetness is almost candy-like, making it a cheese to savor over a glass of wine rather than melting into a mac and cheese. Lehner sells it, along with his other cheeses and curds, at the Dane County Farmers Market, where I picked up his very potent garlic cheddar and a creamy havarti.

The cave is home to more than Lehner’s creations; he also ages cheeses for renowned Wisconsin cheesemakers such as Tom Torkelson and Katie Hedrich. And though it was only briefly home to our group’s curious minds, Lehner’s cave – as well as his cheeses – will be hard to forget.

Disclosure: The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board paid for our travel and expenses during the cheese tour. As always, all opinions, words and commentary are our own.

Happy birthday to me! My present to myself this year is this pungent slice of Vermont. In my house, age 33 is the Dorset year.

When you think about it, Dorset is a good caseic equivalent to one’s 33rd birthday. The Consider Bardwell website describes this washed-rind, raw-milk cow’s cheese as “a soft-ripening cheese with a rich, buttery texture and seasonally influenced pungency.” While I’m no longer as young as a fresh chevre or handmade ball of mozzarella, I haven’t yet achieved the crustiness of a toothbreaker cheese like Parmigiano – I’m merely ripened (and soft, thanks to two children and a high rate of cheese consumption). While not rich in the financial sense, I am wealthy in life experiences, both good and bad. And I suppose you could say I’ve developed a pungent wit over the years. Not as pungent as Dorset’s aroma, but sharp enough to hold my own against snark and sarcasm.

Gentler than Grayson’s funk but considerably more potent than its goat’s-milk sister Manchester, Dorset’s paste is relatively tame. It’s that pinkish rind that makes the cheese zap your tastebuds and olfactory. Like the trickery that Hook’s Bloomin’ Idiot plays on the senses, Dorset would taste like an entirely different cheese if you chose to forgo the rind (please don’t). Instead, take the bull by the horns and savor the entire wedge with a glass of fruity white wine or ale. As with most birthdays, it’s better to embrace it wholeheartedly than timidly tread into new territory.

A year or so ago, when Colleen and I were still making our way through the Wine Spectator list, I tasted Grayson, a washed-rind cheese from Virginia’s Meadow Creek Dairy. When I mentioned to C that I really enjoyed it, she said that if she expanded the 100 great cheeses list to 110, Grayson would have made the cut. So it’s a little odd that we haven’t posted about this Taleggio doppelganger yet, but hey, better late than never.

Colleen posted about Grayson’s sister cheese, Applachian, earlier this year, and while this is also a raw cow’s-milk cheese, Grayson has a flavor profile all its own. Its yeasty orange rind encases a smooth, thick paste that offers aromas of beef and bacon. If you like Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk or Jasper Hill Farm’s Harbison, chances are you’ll be a Grayson fan, too. But it doesn’t have the creaminess of a triple-cream like Red Hawk or the spoonability of Harbison – the texture is firmer and fudgier, making it a filling cheese that could be part of a traditional ploughman’s lunch as well as part of an elegant cheeseboard.

Grayson is a powerful cheese that dominates the palate, so you’ll want to keep the accompaniments simple and hearty.  Its consistency is perfect for schmearing on a hunk of rustic bread and pairing with a beer. Pastoral recommends a PranQster Belgian-Style Golden Ale from North Coast Brewing Company, while Culture is partial to Allagash Tripel Reserve. If you prefer wine, like I do, Meadow Creek recommends a full-bodied white or medium red.

Of the many, many cheeses that I’ve tasted since Colleen and I started this blog, I don’t think I’ve had a cheese from Connecticut before. Truth be told, I don’t consider Connecticut to be a particularly cheesy state, but perhaps that’s based more out of ignorance than fact. Because now that I’ve tasted Bridgid’s Abbey, a raw-milk, washed-rind cheese from the Nutmeg State’s Cato Corner Farm, I don’t think I’ll make that mistake again.

Fresh off my Cremont/Kunik bender from the week before, I was ready for something a little different when I stopped by the cheese shop last week. Something meatier, something funkier. Bridgid’s Abbey certainly delivers in both of those categories. This Trappist-style farmstead cheese is made by Mark Gillman, who co-owns Cato Corner Farm with his mother, Elizabeth MacAlister, and it definitely resembles a cheese you’d expect to come from a medieval monastery. The aroma of earth and bacon wafts from the cheese as you bring it to your lips, but the texture is surprisingly tender and creamy, without the tell-tale grit that can mar the flavor of many washed-rind cheeses. The smell isn’t so powerful that it causes husbands to retreat to the basement (ahem, Epoisses), but it gives off enough of a punch that you feel like you’re eating something hearty and sustaining.

Bridgid’s Abbey begs for a piece of thick rye or whole-wheat bread and a pour of Belgian ale. The In Search of Beer blog recommends Gran Met, while Chicago’s Pastoral Artisan Cheese suggests Hop Ruiter. Or, if you’re not a beer drinker, try a dry red European wine or a dry, full-bodied white.