The Grand Finale

Tuesday was the final night of The Amazing Cheese Story, our four-session community education course at Santa Fe College. We decided to devote the entire evening to an expanded tasting, and had 12 cheeses, all of which were made in North America. They were:

Westfield Farms Capri Goat Cheese, a soft, unaged cheese from Massachusetts

Old Chatham Hudson Valley Camembert, a bloomy-rind white mold sheep milk cheese from New York State

Blue Bonnets

Westfield Farms Capri Blue Bonnents, an unusual cheese, tiny and surface-ripened with blue mold, also from Massachusetts

Cypress Point Creamery Baby Swiss, and Alpine-type cheese from Hawthorne, Florida

Meadow Creek Dairy Appalachian, a tomme-style cheese from Virginia

Winter Park Dairy Florida Tomme, this quite different tomme is from Florida

Halls Farmhouse Cheddar, our own young homemade cheddar-style cheese

Old Quebec Vintage Cheddar, a 3-year old cheddar from Canada

Vella Monterey Dry Jack, a delightful aged version of the familiar and rather bland Monterey Jack

Bleu Sunshine

Winter Park Dairy Bleu Sunshine, an aged, blue-veined cheese from Florida

Winter Park Dairy Black and Bleu, a version of Bleu Sunshine with added cracked peppercorns

Meadow Creek Dairy Grayson, a pungent washed-rind cheese from Virginia

Residue of a Tasting

Our tasters were delighted to be able to sample so many cheeses. However, despite our best efforts in trying to turn them into cheese enthusiasts, in general they reacted most favorably to the milder kinds. We'll have some more data when we offer these or similar cheeses at two other planned tastings.