Love is in the air! At Murray’s we get a lot of requests for cheese that will help make the night extra special, and we always know just what to recommend. Here are our staff picks for the sexiest cheese around – Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Robin:  A ripe Époisses is beautiful, and its silky texture just makes you go “Mmmm….”

James:  Monte Enebro is luscious, thick, and velvety in texture. Plus it has the best rind in the world. Peppery and saucy, like any good woman should be.

Carlos:  Podda Classico is sharp and has great curves.

Cielo:  Humboldt Fog. It’s made by ladies and it’s SO GOOD.

Elizabeth:  Brebisrousse d’Argental is bursting out of its bold red rind. Oozy, mild and unexpected.

Andrew:  Winnimere! Because it’s creamy, oozy, and complex.

Deena:  Zimbro is nice and plump, plus it’s wrapped in cloth so you get to undress it.

Beth:  Burrata is the oyster in cheese form, except it tastes like gorgeous mild milky goodness instead of the sea.

Nobody knows cheese like the mongers at Murray’s. That’s why we asked 10 cheesemongers what they’re bringing to Thanksgiving Dinner this week. Here are their recommendations, straight from the red jackets themselves!

Cielo – Keely’s Across the Pond*. God Bless America!

James – Jasper Hill Harbison has been tasting amazing, with a really delicate mustard flavor.

Eric – River’s Edge Up In Smoke, for post-Thanksgiving breakfast with turkey and stuffing!

Sydney – St. Maure*. They are super gooey right now, and the creamy texture means the flavor is even stronger.

Brian, Caves Manager at Murray’s Cheese – (Let it be noted that he had a very hard time deciding.) Consider Bardwell Pawlett*, because it’s savory with flavors of sauteed garlic and onion, and a slight tangy-ness. It’s a beautiful table cheese, on point right now, and a total crowd-pleaser.

Joshua – Colston Bassett Stilton, because it is just delicious.

Sarah – Tomme Chevre Aydius*. It’s light enough that it is a perfect appetizer, especially with crostini.

Kevin – Etivaz, it is a super-delicious flavor explosion!

Brian – Quadrello di Bufala is sweet and meaty like many Thanksgiving dishes. Most people don’t serve Italian cheese at Thanksgiving, so it’s nice to bring something unique and unexpected to the table.

Adam – Spring Brook Tarentaise, my baby. It’s a lovely, hearty cheese and is always great this time of year.

*These cheeses are available in our NYC retail stores but are not currently available for online purchase.

Elizabeth Chubbuck is the Associate Director of Wholesale at Murray’s Cheese. If you’ve eaten a delicious cheese at a restaurant, chances are she had a hand in getting it on your plate. Her passion for all things cheesy is rivaled only by her near encyclopedic knowledge of the same. She recently visited Twin Maple Farm and learned the fascinating story behind the cheese we love so much.

A photo of Twin Maple Farm should be printed in the dictionary next to “bucolic.”  The land, continuously farmed since 1801, is rolling, green and tucked away on a narrow, winding road in New York’s Hudson Valley.  The old farmhouse still stands upright and resolute, and the hills are dotted with Jersey Cows. It’s also where Hudson Red, one of our favorite cave aged cheeses, is made. We’ll get to that later… first, a story!

Two years ago, childhood friends Matt Scott and Dan Berman bought Twin Maple farm and retrofitted the original red dairy barn to accommodate cheese production and aging. Not content to sit back and enjoy the view, they embarked on a larger project to help rebuild the rural landscape and economy of the Hudson Valley.  Armed with a vision of supporting family farms, they created The Pampered Cow, a company dedicated to providing sales and distribution solutions for farms throughout the region.

Sales and distribution solutions, you say?  Sure, it might sound a bit city-slicker when paired with the rural beauty of the land, but for small-scale, family-owned dairies outside marketing and distribution solutions can allow them to focus energy on creating better cheeses, slowly increasing production, and eventually moving from Farmer’s Market-only sales into a slightly larger arena where more people can enjoy their cheese.

Increased production also means more jobs in rural communities where opportunities can be scarce.  It means that more cows are out to pasture, which means more fields are green with grass and hay farmers stay in business. Starting to get the picture? With time, cheesemakers no longer have to work around the clock, 7 days a week, just to scrape by. It’s still hard work, but their lives become more balanced and sustainable, their cheese more delicious and reliable.

So, where does that delicious Hudson Red fit into all of this? About a year after the Pampered Cow started working to improve the lifestyle of local farmers, Hudson Red came into existence.  Their original cheese maker spent time in Italy working with Italian producers before returning to the Hudson Valley to make cheese at Twin Maple.  Inspired by Italian Taleggio and Alsatian Munster, Hudson Red is a funky, washed-rind, raw cow’s milk cheese.  The dense, fudgy paste becomes silken and pudding-like with careful washing and aging in our caves. The funky, wild flavor that develops echoes the rugged, rural landscapes that inspired it. Wash it down with a glass of New York Riesling for the Empire State’s quintessential terroir-based pairing. You’ll make Matt Scott – and a lot of local farmers – proud!

Aaron Foster works in the Buying Department at Murray’s Cheese and is always on the hunt for the next delicious experience to share with our customers. This year Aaron attended the American Cheese Society conference to learn about what it takes to make the nation’s best cheese, and to taste a few dozen himself.

As a first-time American Cheese Society Conference attendee, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I’ve worked in cheese for over 9 years, but somehow I’d never actually made it to the main event. The conference is a moving target, one year in Louisville, another in Chicago, the next in Seattle, and so on. Having resolved to finally attend, as a representative of Murray’s Cheese, I lucked out with this year’s destination: Montreal. Now, I hear you say… isn’t it called the American Cheese Society? Indeed, it is. This is the first year that the conference was held outside of the continental US. I’m guessing Canada gets a pass because of a parenthetical “north”, as in (North) American Cheese Society.

Harbison aging in the Cellars at Jasper Hill

In any case, I was excited to travel to Montreal to meet some of the great minds of our industry, and to introduce myself to the cheese luminaries whose books I read and whose names have been synonymous with American dairy since before I was born. I arrived in Montreal late in the evening on my birthday, August 3rd, and joined the crew from the Cellars at Jasper Hill for dinner. Part of what is so amazing about the conference is that it pools together cheesemakers, retailers, distributors and enthusiasts, to share their views and insights with one another. Dining with the cheesemakers from the Cellars, I was able to explain how their cheeses are received by actual people, customers who buy Bayley Hazen Blue or Cabot Clothbound Cheddar from our cheese counter. It’s almost silly to imagine, but cheesemakers rarely interact with the people who are eating their cheese most of the time. On the flip side, we as retailers and cheese consumers often don’t fully understand the challenges and work that happens at the farm.

The American Cheese Society conference is made up primarily of lectures, seminars and panel discussions which happen throughout the day. Some are very technical, geared towards cheesemaking minutiae. Others are historical or cultural, say – the history of monastic cheese in the US. And still others concern themselves with issues of regulation and safety. As a retailer and a diehard cheese-lover, I made sure to attend as many different seminars as possible.

I started with a lecture on starter cultures… the beneficial microorganisms added early in the cheesemaking process to help acidify the milk and develop flavor in the cheese. Suffice it to say the bulk of this talk was way over my head, but I took away two points – that cheesemaking is usually more science than art, and that even small variations or inconsistencies can make for wild variations in the end product. Cheesemakers need to keep extraordinarily detailed records of their process, and need to replicate that process to the T; a make at 92 degrees F might yield a cheese with perfect texture and depth of flavor, whereas a make at 88 F could result in a cheese that’s barely recognizable. I don’t envy cheesemakers – that’s a pretty narrow margin for error.

I attended another talk on food safety from farm to fork. From a food safety perspective, cheese is a relatively safe, although perishable, product. But from cow to cheese vat to aging room to distributor to wholesaler to retailer to consumer, a given piece of cheese passes through many hands. We all have a duty to take every precaution to ensure the safety and preserve the quality of the cheese.

My next seminar was a tasting workshop, on identifying flavor in cheese. It’s not as easy as you think! We practiced by tasting candy while holding our nose. What tasted only sour and sweet with our noses pinched was actually a very strong mint once we could smell again. This exercise was meant to demonstrate how much taste is actually a function of smell. We also smelled covered containers of six different scents, and had to guess what they were. I got three out of six (butter cookies, black pepper, onion powder), but missed a gimme like sauteed mushrooms. The point is that we unwittingly depend on visual cues to help categorize what we’re smelling and tasting, and to be more conscious of this when evaluating flavor in cheese.

Aaron Foster with Sister Noella, "The Cheese Nun"

But the best talk I attended was on the microbiology of cheese rinds, called Growing Mold Gracefully. Led by cheese rockstar Sister Noella Marcellino of Connecticut’s Abbey of Regina Laudis and Harvard microbiologist Rachel Dutton, the panel treated the diversity and complexity of micro-biomes in cheese rinds. The rind of a cheese is an exceedingly complex conglomeration on molds and bacteria that exist in a delicate and unique symbiosis. Every cheese in every batch is different; and while cultures may be added to guide rind development, Rachel and Sister Noella agree that the influence of indigenous microrganisms is far more important. Rachel is using state of the art gene sequencing techniques to develop a taxonomy of organisms found in cheese rinds. She has already discovered that cheese rinds exhibit some species that have also been found in Arctic sea ice, Norwegian fjords, and Etruscan tombs!

The conference ends, as always, with a tense announcement of the winners of the cheese contest, punctuated by the Best in Show award. This year, there were 1,676 entries across 99 different cheese categories. I certainly don’t envy the judges for their tasting duties… the judge who tasted the least amount of cheese still tasted nearly 100 varieties. This year, Rogue River Blue from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon took Best in Show. A lovely leaf-wrapped, raw milk blue, this seasonal beaut of a cheese will be available from Murray’s in a few short weeks. And finally, comes the Festival of Cheese – the attendees’ opportunity to taste the myriad entries, and to get a true lay of the land for the American cheese industry. I probably made it through 50 different cheeses before giving up… perhaps I’m not quite fit to be a judge yet.

All in all, the American Cheese Society conference was a fascinating and rewarding experience, enormously valuable to cheese professionals and enthusiasts alike. I won’t miss another one any time soon.

Tune in to Martha Stewart Living this afternoon?  You may have heard Liz Thorpe chatting with Kerry Nolan about her favorite cheeses for summer.  Easy to pair with your favorite seasonal treats from the farmers’ market, here’s the scoop on what you will find most of us eating at Murray’s this month.

Burrata: For a spin on the classic caprese salad, try burrata – mozzarella’s even creamier sister. 

Mascarpone: Top it on seasonal fruits – berries and melon are perfectly in season right now in New York!

by Anuradha Jayakrishnan, Head Cheesemonger at Murray’s Cheese in Grand Central Terminal

Have you ever wanted to get your hands on a Hooligan? No, I don’t mean one of us cheesemongers behind the counter, I mean a REAL Hooligan, like the ones we made at Cato Corner Farm on a recent Thursday.  If you love cheese as much as we do at Murray’s, you’ve got to know a cheese’s ins and outs, its story, it’s SOURCE. So, sinking our hands right into the cheesemaking process was, in fact, wonderfully appropriate.

The Murray’s crew and I departed Bleecker Street and headed across state lines to farm country, also known as Connecticut. We arrived at Cato Corner Farm just after noon that Bloomsday and a small gang of friendly but boisterous dogs heralded our arrival. As we poured out of the mini-van, the smell of hay, barn and warm sunshine welcomed us without words; it was going to be a good day.

The cows at Cato Corner gave a warm welcome.

Liz, owner of the farm, greeted us with a grin, and a laugh, “You must be from Murray’s.” I was sure my Ray Bans, beat-up Beatles t-shirt, and red cut-offs would make me look farm chic, but alas, I fear my oversized flower tote containing bronzer and sunscreen gave me away. We freshened up and then met Mark, Liz’s son who oversees the farm’s cheesemaking. He took us underground to see affinage at work in their aging facility, which was not unlike the cheese caves beneath our Bleecker Street store. I was amazed by the sheer number of cheeses being aged at one time in the small farm’s complex. Shelves of old and young wheels formed passageways that towered over us like halls of an antique library (and the smell wasn’t that dissimilar either). Incredibly enough, the thick, dull brown rinds on the large wheels and the (almost cute) furry blue and grey rinds on the smaller wheels were derived from ambient molds that occur naturally in the caves themselves (local mold makes local gold! Ha!).

Yours truly, in good company!

Next up on the docket was cheesemaking. Now, if you’re as big of a cheese nerd as I am, you’d understand why I was giggling through the whole sanitizing process. There I was, every appendage covered in plastic yet I couldn’t help but clap with joy in a ruffled frenzy at the thought of molding curd with my own fingers. We surrounded the enormous bath tub (at least it look like one) filled half way with what looked like an untouched layer of plain yogurt. Having added the rennet an hour before, Mark said, the milk  should be firm enough to cut by now – and with that, he pierced the creamy film, and to my amazement, it didn’t blob into a soft creamy mess, but yielded to the knife like a limber slice of tofu. The curd was ready. He began slicing the curd into half inch pieces using a large wire cutter. Then we took turns dipping our hands into the vat and milling the curds into finer, more even bits. The curd itself tasted like sweet, warm milk Jell-o, but in the best way. After draining the whey, we scooped the curds into baskets, piling the milled bits into heaping snow cone-esque forms for further drainage and shaping. Minutes later, we popped the curds out of the molds and voila – curds in their perfect form, ready to join their comrades in the aging room, but with the added touch of Murray’s handiwork; hooligans indeed.

Stirring the curd that will later be molded into Hooligan.

We concluded our cheese-making escapade with a picnic lunch outside where we all enjoyed sandwiches, charcuterie, pickles, farm fresh fruits and veggies, and of course, cheese. We tried a very special cheese only available at the farm, the 1 year aged Anniversary Bloomsday, made a year ago to the day! It was nutty and sharp with crystalline pops of sweetness and a pale, custard yellow paste that sang of summer sun and happy cows.  Naturally, we also sampled Hooligan, a large muffin shaped cheese with a dense, flaky center and mildly pungent rind. We finished with Misty Morning, a creamy, earthy blue that was lovely with bites of freshly picked strawberries.

The finished product, after aging: Funky funky hooligan

After touring the farm and thanking the cows for their generous bounties, we climbed back into the mini-van, ripe Hooligans in tow (think ripe plus hot cramped car… serious funky town), and headed back to the West Village. Great cheese and great people; I could not have asked for a better Bloomsday.

James Stahl is a cheesemonger, a melt-master and an all-around crazy dude in the kitchen. This blog invites you to take a peek at his most recent creations and dares you to try this at home.

Important Disclaimer: While I assume that this will be readily apparent, I am not a professional chef. I am simply someone who loves to cook. My desire is to expand my ability to create amazing dishes and, with access to the best quality ingredients in New York City courtesy of Murray’s Cheese (not to mention a pretty sweet discount), I intend to share that experience with you.  Okay, that was far too serious. It won’t happen again, pinky swear. On to the food!

Spicy Barbecue Shrimp Quesadillas

Note: The recipe shown is how I executed the dish that is pictured, not necessarily how I conceived of the dish or how I would make it again.

Ingredients:

1 pound uncooked large shrimp, cleaned
3/4 cup sherry vinegar
1/2 cup spicy ketchup
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup dark beer
1/2 cup shredded jalapeno jack
1/2 red onion, chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
5 tablespoons butter
1/2 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 large flour tortillas

In a large skillet under medium-low heat melt 3 tablespoons of the butter. Add garlic, cook until browned. Add onions, sauté until soft and translucent, about 5-6 minutes.

Pour in vinegar, beer and chicken broth, raise heat to a boil. Add ketchup, mustard, cumin and cayenne pepper. Stir until fully mixed. Lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until reduced by about a quarter.

In a separate pan, heat up olive oil until just before smoking and add shrimp. Sear each side a nice golden brown, just over a minute each side, so pay close attention.

Heat tortillas in a microwave for about 30 seconds, add half of the shrimp on each tortilla, cover with sauce and half of the cheese. Fold tortilla on top of itself.

On a grill pan, over medium high heat, melt a tablespoon of butter, place quesadilla on pan and brown each side, a couple minutes for each side. Cut in half and serve with sour cream.

What Went Well

The Sauce. Hot damn that sauce turned out great. I was aiming for a pulled pork vinegar-style and I think I nailed it. The chicken broth balanced everything out nicely despite the fact that I hadn’t originally planned on using any. The importance of good chicken broth cannot be understated.

Could it have been spicier? I think it was plenty hot for a mixed crowd, but I wouldn’t turn down the option of chopping up a serrano pepper and cooking it with the onions.

The Shrimp. I had tossed around the idea of using a pre-roasted chicken and shredding the breast into the sauce and letting it simmer for a good long time, but shrimp really turned out to be the better option. The chicken would’ve gotten lost in the sauce while the texture of the shrimp really stood out.

What Went Less Well

My Impending Senility. So the plan was to finely chop up some chorizo, fry it crisply and add to the sauce. I bought it. It was in the fridge and everything, but I just flat out forgot about it.

The Tortillas. The large tortillas were rather unwieldy and it was difficult to get an even browning on my fry pan. I would definitely use smaller tortillas next time.

The Definition of “Cleaned” Shrimp. Apparently mine is different than the seafood shop’s. De-veining the shrimp wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had imagined, but it wasn’t particularly fun either.

That’s What She Said

The Girlfriend: “Pretty awesome but perhaps a tad too saucy, the tortillas ended up a bit soggy as a result. But I’d definitely eat that again.”

The Verdict

I definitely give it a thumbs up, but hopefully I’ll remember the chorizo next time. The smokiness and crunch from the crisp chorizo will be a killer addition to the sauce.

Favorite Song Internet Radio Played While Cooking

Dominion/Mother Russia by The Sisters of Mercy. Thank God the internet didn’t really exist back during my high school goth phase. Nobody needs to relive that. Seriously.

By Steve Millard

As the Store Director of our Greenwich Village shop, I get asked lots of questions every day.  Questions like “Do you have any raw milk cheeses?” or “I am having five people over and need to get 5 cheeses – can you help me?”  The other question I get, not as frequently, is “Why are you so thin?”  Fact: I do eat a lot of cheese.  But I also work a lot of hours on my feet and if you’re here on a busy Saturday, you’ll see that I’m burning a lot of calories along with my staff.

The truth is that I run.  I run a lot.  About two years ago, I decided I needed to lose weight and wanted to run a marathon before I turned 41.  So I started running, and watching what I ate.  The end result two-plus years later is that I lost 60 pounds, went from a 2XL to a large and saw my waist shrink from a tight 38 to a comfy 34.

I know what you’re thinking – another born-again thin dude who runs all the time.  But I promise to stick to what I know:  dairy!

While training for what was to be my first marathon (in Honolulu!) three years ago, I suffered a stress fracture when I ran my first 20-miler.  Any chance of running in Hawaii vanished, and I had plenty of time to figure out why that had happened.  A quick look at my diet revealed a key piece missing.  Any guesses?  It was dairy!  The only dairy I consumed was half-and-half in my coffee.  I had cut out cheese, ice cream and yogurt under the guise of my diet and cutting out fat.  (The lack of dairy was not the only culprit – I was also over-training and not following the key running mantra of no more than 10% further or faster than what I did in the previous week).

Fast forward two years – I’ve added lots and lots of dairy to my diet, maintained my weight, and have become a fairly good ultra marathon distance runner (with a half-marathon, marathon, 50-miler and a 50K under my belt).  Not a single day goes by where I don’t eat dairy of some sort.  By eliminating dairy I was eliminating calcium and short changing my body of protein and fat.

Here are a couple of things that get me through the day (not including bites of cheese).  I’ll be contributing more blog posts in the future, so check back for other tips, whether you’re interested in increasing your exercise regimen or you’re just curious about the diet of a cheesemonger/runner.

Strained Yogurt: My day begins with a strained yogurt every morning.  I vary it up: either Fage Total 2%, a Greek style low fat yogurt that packs a whopping 20 grams of protein and 6% GV of fat, topped with Bee Raw Star Thistle honey.  I also like Siggi’s Skyr, an Icelandic style yogurt  - it’s incredibly tasty and full of protein.   These strained yogurts have a lot of the whey removed — leaving a deliciously thick, protein- packed punch that gets me going in the morning.

Mid-Day Snack: We all have that mid-day snack attack when you need to get some life back into your limbs and your brain.  In the past, I would turn to something sugary or a cup of coffee, but my new pick lately is a White Cow Dairy Tonic.  What the heck is a whey tonic and why is it so good?  Part yogurt whey, part yogurt solids, part delicious flavors like star anise or turmeric, these tonics contain lots of protein and are really refreshing.  We already love fourth generation dairy farmer Patrick Lango’s amazing yogurts and custards that come in flavors as diverse as Chocolate Malt and Apple Pie, when Patrick mentioned the tonics back in January, little did we know how hooked our staff would get.

The whole Murray’s crew swears that there is restorative goodness in every bottle of Dairy Tonic.  They keep us on our feet whether we’re running around the store or running 50 miles in the park.

Murray’s staff aren’t the only ones who think White Cow Tonics are incredible – check out write-ups from The New York Times, Tasting Table and Serious Eats on these amazingly refreshing drinks. Yogurts and dairy tonics are currently available at our 2 retail locations only.

… and now you can, too!

By Deena Siegelbaum

I came to work at Murray’s Cheese because of my love for slow food – and my work at Slow Food.  For many years I worked for the sustainable food-loving organization, thrilled at every chance to meet food producers along the way — cheesemakers being no exception.  A few years ago, while on a US tour with the organization’s founder Carlo Petrini, I fell in love with goats (and goat cheese) during a visit to Prairie Fruits Farm, the first farmstead cheesemakers in Illinois — whose cheese you’ll now find on our NYC and online cheese counters.

The Petrini entourage drove down to Central Illinois from Chicago on a warm May day.  Having been on the road hosted in restaurants and lecture halls for days, a farm day was a welcome stop, and we were about to be hosted by farmers who had been making and selling cheese for less than 2 years.  We arrived to meet Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell and their kids – I mean their goats – who were joyfully running and playing on the lawn safely inside of a little fence.  Named for the fruits on the property, Prairie Fruits grows apples, peaches, pears and berries in addition to cranking out farmstead cheeses using milk from their goats, and also sheep’s milk from a neighboring farm.

What I remember from that day four years ago: tasting the most exceptional, sweet and creamy chevre; cuddling with goats; touring their small, well-run cheesemaking house; and savoring a farm-fresh meal with the inspired cheesemakers.  Leslie and Wes left academia to make cheese and to help build a vibrant food community in Central IL — they were welcoming, knowledgeable, and had the cutest kids on the planet.

A gooey piece of Angel Food

Flash forward a few years, and Leslie and Wes have continued expanding their operation.  Their cheese is available in fairly limited quantities, so we’ll be selling a variety as we’re able to get ‘em.  The two all-goat, gooey bloomy rinds are Angel Food and Little Bloom on the Prairie.  Angel Food is 3 weeks old with a thin, edible white rind – it’s a ladled curd cheese.  A bit stronger, Little Bloom is a cut curd that has ripened for four weeks.  Turning to sheep, we’ve got Ewe Bloom, a Camembert-style square cheese that’s pleasantly pungent.  Black Sheep is ash-covered and soft-ripened, reminded us of Selles-sur-Cher.  Not surprisingly, Prairie Fruits picks are really enjoyable with fresh or dried fruit.  Perfect for your summer picnic of a fun way to end your next BBQ!

Murray’s Cheese currently has select Prairie Fruits cheese in limited quantities in our New York City stores and online. Not all styles are available at all times, so check back soon or give us a call if you don’t find what you’re looking for.

By Robert S

Photo from Consider Bardwell Farm

Rupert isn’t the only cheese from Consider Bardwell that’s creating buzz around Murray’s.  The recent arrival of Pawlet has our mongers going crazy!  Named for its hometown in Vermont, Pawlet is a raw Jersey cow’s milk treasure, one of a handful of cheeses made at the farm.  Originally founded in 1864 by Consider Stebbins Bardwell, it was the first cheesemaking co-op in the state.  Little more than ten years ago, new owners Russell Glover and Angela Miller began to revitalize the traditional farm, spanning 300 acres from Vermont’s Champlain Valley all the way to Washington County, New York.  With 100 Oberhasli goats, and using cow’s milk from a neighbor’s herd, their handmade cheeses are all named after local towns and mountains.

So what’s got us so jazzed about Pawlet? Quite simply, I think it’s a perfect cheese to eat right now because it works well for all of my summer eating:  sandwiches, snacking and BBQing.  This 4^th of July I’m going to shred it over grilled local vegetables from my farmers market.  I’ve already paired it with a red ale while snacking, and I know it’ll be amazing with any crisp wine – try a robust Sauvignon Blanc.  Creamy, nutty and rich, you’re going to love how Pawlet melts – either over a burger or on a grilled cheese.  It’s as versatile as the town of Pawlet itself, which the cheesemakers tell us is home to syrup, timber and slate!