"BlueCheese" news and stories

Deliciously juicy crisp apples and pears – just some of the fruits we associate with autumn – make especially tasty cheese pairings. Their crunchy texture and sweet taste enhance the flavors of many cheeses, ranging from spicy creamy blues, like Vaquero, to nutty Alpine cheeses, including Gruyère and Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Since this blend of tastes and textures works so well, it would seem as if the cheese options were limitless. However, after eating a large number of cheeses, we discovered that the ones which work best are those with complex flavor profiles that do not overwhelm the palate.

Summer's a great time to pull out the chips and dips when entertaining. Here are three easy ideas that wil work with either Greek-style yogurt or sour cream

No cheese better captures both the earthy, nutty taste of cheddar and the piquant kick of a blue cheese like Dunbarton Blue from Roelli Cheese Company in Shullsburg, Wis. This cheese hybrid is not the result of mere coincidence. It's the brilliant effect of ever so carefully applying several different cheese-making techniques – "cheddaring," piercing the cheese and above all cave-aging the cheese. To find out more about how all these procedures create Dunbarton Blue, we spoke to its creator, Chris Roelli.

"I set out to create a young to medium aged farmstead cheddar with a hint of blue," explains Roelli. To achieve this goal, he begins with collecting high-quality fresh milk from a single dairy. According to Roelli, selecting the milk is one of the most important parts of the cheese making process. The blue veins are created by introducing blue mold spores to the already flavorful milk. But, that's not the only way blue is added to the cheese.

The mere thought of blue cheese evokes a surge of flavor memories -- sweet caramel, piquant peppers and earthy aromas. Favorites such as Gorgonzola Piccante, Rogue River Blue, Fourme d'Ambert and Vaquero all come to mind. But Cayuga Blue from Lively Run Goat Dairy eschews the standard flavor profile of a blue cheese. Instead, it's downright subdued with an herbaceous grassy taste reminiscent of a goat's milk tomme-style cheese, similar to Twig Farm's Goat Tomme.

The blue veins interestingly seem to function as a slightly spicy "topping" to this already flavorful cheese. The delicate goat's milk comes across first before you're hit with the mild tang of blue molds. Aged for two months, the cheese develops a firm dry texture that becomes soft and velvety on the palate. Altogether, it makes for a subtle blue, toned down with a rich, creamy taste.

At the Lively Run Goat Farm in the Finger Lakes region of New York, meticulous care of the several different goat breeds (Alpine, Nubian, Saanen and South African Boer breeds, and even crossbreeds) results in the flavorful aromatic raw milk used to create the cheese. In addition to the milk from her own farm, Susanne Messmer mixes goat's milk from five other sustainable farms in the area with hers to produce Cayuga Blue.

The days when only Maytag Blue represented American blue cheese are long gone. From sweet and peppery Bayley Hazen Blue to the mineral-like taste of Tilston Point and the fruity pear flavor of Rogue River Blue, the options for American blue cheeses have dramatically increased. And, now, there's a new distinctly rustic blue cheese to add to this growing list -- Vaquero from Willow Hill Farm in Vermont.

Unlike other American blue cheeses, Vaquero has a creamy taste with a fascinating and delicious crispy dark chocolate flavor. "I would have to say it's the milk combination," explains Willow Smart, who co-owns the farm along with her husband, Dave Phinney. "We milk both sheep and cows, hence the yellow-ness from the cow's milk. We milk Brown Swiss and Dutch Belted cows, which always have very yellow milk as the beta-Carotene [red-orange pigment] from the pastures comes through in their rich milk."

Vaquero's rustic-looking rind, pale-yellow paste, and thick buttery consistency also make it stand apart from other blues. The natural exterior of the wheel appears similar to that of a Tomme de Savoie. Indeed, the cheese has the same brown Tomme de Savoie mold. Aged for three to five months, the molds, flavor and spreadable texture develop in caves that Willow and Dave built back in 1999.