Once I see a wheel of Harbison at a vacation social gathering, I believe: This particular person is aware of host. Then I plant myself as near the cheese as is socially acceptable and acquaint myself with it and, ideally, any thick-cut potato chips out there for dipping. Typically, the cheese stands alone — with sides, however not quite a lot of different cheeses.
Made by Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, Harbison is a bloomy rind cheese, a class that additionally contains Brie. Wrapped with spruce and aged, it’s pudding-like in texture and umami-rich and woodsy in taste. It’s greatest served at room temperature with its high sliced off to show its gentle insides, that are good for scooping with bread, chips, and even fries. It’s a head-turner, like a baked Brie however not fairly as primary, and it types the crux of my fancied-up vacation internet hosting thesis: Everybody makes a cheese board, however extra individuals ought to serve a single, showstopper cheese.
As a lot as I really like cheese boards — and I do, with all of the zeal of an individual who has not, knock on wooden, wanted Lactaid — the rising complexity of cheese boards has given me fromage fatigue. Grazing tables, with their ever-increasing gluttony, make my eyes glaze over and my hand clutch my pockets. You need me to purchase all that on this economic system? I’d additionally argue that when there’s an excessive amount of of the whole lot, we, as eaters, have a tendency to understand every element much less. So if maximalism and minimalism occur in cycles, every a response to the opposite, maybe we’re due for a extra streamlined method to cheese.
One other showstopper that each helps my thesis and is very becoming for this time of 12 months is Rush Creek Reserve from the Wisconsin-based Uplands Cheese. Like Harbison, it’s spruce-wrapped and aged and meant to be served with its high minimize off. It’s additionally produced solely within the fall, which pulls on the custom of Switzerland’s seasonal Vacherin Mont d’Or. Much like Rush Creek is Greensward, which is made in partnership by Jasper Hill Farm and New York Metropolis’s Murray’s Cheese and washed in exhausting cider because it ages.
Clearly, I’m figuring out a kind right here, however the idea of the holiday-worthy showstopper cheese extends past pudgy-centered, spruce-wrapped bloomy rinds: As an alternative of numerous little cheeses, every vying on your consideration, strive a single wedge or wheel that steals the present. Who wouldn’t like to chip hunks off an enormous block of parm?
These wheels can admittedly be expensive. A wheel of Harbison usually clocks in at round $25, whereas Rush Creek Reserve is $37. But it surely helps to keep in mind that in paying for one large wheel of cheese, you’re not paying for a bunch of smaller cheeses on your unfold, which has a method of including up. And if there’s something I took away from my time working at a cheese journal, it’s this: From a manufacturing, impression, and high quality standpoint, it’s price it to eat much less however higher cheese. By “higher,” I imply cheese that not solely tastes richer and extra flavorful but in addition helps small producers who’re maintaining cheesemaking traditions alive. These showstopper cheeses test these containers — and in addition occur to be ok that they don’t want so many distractions.
Dina Ávila is a photographer in Portland, Oregon.
Picture assistant: Eric Fortier
