Library of Cheese

Barick Obama

Lazy Lady Farm - Westfield, Vermont

A mild and nutty washed rind square from Laini Fondiller. Originally crafted during the heady days of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, this cheese has been resurrected as a ray of hope (in curd form) during these crazy political times! The flavor is goaty and fruity, with a hint of funk and barnyard imparted by the brine wash.

Barkeater

Crown Finish Caves / Consider Bardwell Farm - West Pawlet, Vermont

A washed rind, bark-wrapped oval of cow’s milk cheese made at Consider Bardwell Farm and aged at Crown Finish Caves. The wheels are washed with a salt brine as they age, helping to develop their rich, meaty flavor. The bark wrap imparts some extra rusticity - aromas and flavors of smoked meat, mustard, and juniper penetrate the paste, which maintains a bright, creme-fraiche quality.

Bayley Hazen Blue

Jasper Hill Farm - Greensboro, Vermont

This blue is so good it’s almost obscene. Named after the Bayley Hazen road, built by George Washington’s troops to launch a Canadian invasion way back when, it is creamy and cow-y and salty, oh my. The craftsmanship executed by the cheesemakers up at Jasper Hill is laudable, and lucky for us, edible too. Each wheel is crafted from the milk of Jasper Hill’s Ayrshire cows, a Scottish breed known for its balanced, yet butterfat-filled milk. The interior of the cheese is pocked with fuzzy green-blue mold that imparts a mushroom, anise seed, and chocolate flavor. Kinda makes you thankful we ever had a reason to fight with Canada. Aged for 3-5 months.

Ben’s Cream Cheese

Ben’s Cheese Planet - Spring Valley, New York

NYC’s most iconic cream cheese! What began as a small storefront cheesemaking operation on Houston Street has expanded to serve all the schmear-crazy folks in the five boroughs and beyond! Ben’s operated on Manhattan’s Lower East Side alongside beloved Jewish food institutions like Russ & Daughters and Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery until 2007, at which point the owners decided to expand the operation and move it upstate. Ben’s is the best cream cheese we’ve ever tasted. It’s richness is unparalleled, the thick, almost peanut-butter-like texture divine, and the flavor - sweet and creamy with touch of tang, is perfection. This real-deal schmear is devoid of gums and stabilizers, making it the purest (and most delicious!) cream cheese we’ve found. Made to order each week and delivered fresh to Saxelby Cheesemongers.

Ben Nevis

Bonnieview Farm - Craftsbury, Vermont

Named after the tallest mountain in Scotland, Ben Nevis is an interestingly-shaped jewel of a cheese from Bonnieview Farm. The aging of this cheese can range from quite young, just three or four months, to downright old and rustic. Each wheel is pressed by hand, resulting in a unique texture that is chalky and dense. Ben Nevis is a bright, verdant, grassy and citrusy cheese with notes of wool and toasted nuts. The striking natural rind is mottled with blue-green, gray, and purplish molds… you might mistake it for a rock if you didn’t know it was a wheel of cheese. Young wheels have a lighter, flakier, and creamier texture, while aged wheels have a firm, Parmigiano-like texture and take on more nutty, oxidized flavors. Bonnieview Farm has a unique seasonal cheesemaking cycle because they milk both sheep and cows - their sheep produce milk from May through October each year, and the cows come online in the late summer when the sheep milk supply is beginning to dwindle. They make mixed milk cheeses until the sheep are dried off for the fall and winter and then transition to 100% cows’ milk cheese. Aged 3-8 months.

Big Cow

Twig Farm - West Cornwall, Vermont

A hefty wheel of natural-rinded cows’ milk cheese from Twig Farm. The milk to make Big Cow is sourced from the Crawford Family Farm, a neighboring cow dairy and transformed into curds and whey by Michael Lee at Twig Farm. The rustic tommes have an earthy gray rind and a semi firm paste dotted with small eyes. The flavor is deep - with notes of sour cream, earth, green onion, grass, and toasted bread. Made for a short period each winter when the Twig Farm goats are pregnant and off duty.  Aged for 10 months.

Bijou

Vermont Creamery - Websterville, Vermont

Literally translated as ‘jewel’, these little thimbles of cheese are just that! Each 2oz wheel is ripened for just a few weeks so that the clean, tangy quality of the fresh goats’ milk shines through. The rind that develops is nutty and slightly yeasty in flavor, while the interior of each diminutive wheel is lactic, musky, and creamy. All in all a perfect little mouthful of goats’ milk cheese.

Bismark

Crown Finish Caves / Grafton Village Cheese - Brooklyn, NY / Grafton, VT

Bismark is named for a 19th century ram who is enshrined in the annals of Vermont agricultural history. The wheels of cheese are produced at Grafton Village Cheese in Vermont, one of the state’s best-known cheddar producers. The young wheels are shipped to Crown Finish Caves in Brooklyn, New York where they are bandaged with cheese cloth that is slathered in smoked lard from Smoking Goose Meatery and aged for 4-6 months. The cheese is a hybrid of styles: cheddar and traditional sheep’s milk cheeses from the Pyrenees region of France, so it tows the line between green, tart, and acidic to sweet, honeyed, nutty flavors. The firm paste also carries a touch of earthy, savory, meaty flavor due to the lard bandaging. A dense, warming, and toothsome cheese!

Blended Nevis

Bonnieview Farm - South Albany, Vermont

Blended Nevis is the cousin of Ben Nevis, the pure sheeps’ milk cheese from Bonnieview Farm. Originally conceived to stretch what is a short season of cheesemaking (sheep only give milk for 5-6 months at a go) by blending in some more plentiful cows’ milk, Blended Nevis has evolved into a delicacy in its own right. It boasts the best of the two barnyard worlds - the nutty and woolly qualities of the sheeps’ milk entwined with the buttery and grassy flavors of the cows’ milk. Each rich and hearty wheel of cheese tastes of toasted nuts, brown butter, and fruit. Bonnieview Farm has a unique seasonal cheesemaking cycle because they milk both sheep and cows - their sheep produce milk from May through October each year, and the cows come online in the late summer when the sheep milk supply is beginning to dwindle. They make mixed milk cheeses until the sheep are dried off for the fall and winter and then transition to 100% cows’ milk cheese.  Aged 3-8 months.

Bleu d'Auvergne

Herve Mons - Auvergne, France

The people of Auvergne insist that their blue is the reference for all other French blue. Our Bleu d’Auvergne comes from the caves of affineur Herve Mons. The cheeses are sourced when young from a small farmer/producer-owned cooperative called Laqueille. The coop is made up of 63 local dairy farms that are all shareholders in the company. In addition to making top quality cheese, the coop aims to support the community and to keep the village vibrant and economically viable for future generations. The Coop was started in 1949 and currently employs 96 people. Each wheel is cave aged for a minimum of two months. During the maturation process, the wheels develop a strong mushroomy quality that is followed by a smooth, milky mouthfeel and hazelnut aroma. Pairs well with full bodied wines and sweet white wines like Sauternes.

Blue Goat

Twig Farm - West Cornwall, Vermont

A rare treat from one of our favorite farms! Every year in the late winter, Twig Farm cleans out the proverbial old cheese cellar and sends us some special aged wheels. Blue Goat is one of those, and it is one of the most unique blue cheeses we’ve come across. Firm in texture, this blue boasts a sweet and slightly spicy flavor that is part burnt sugar, part toasted hazelnut, and part black peppercorn. Aged for 6 months or more, it’s a rare treat to be savored!

Bohemian Blue

Hidden Springs Creamery - Westby, Wisconsin

Sheeps’ milk blue at its tangiest and tastiest! Bohemian Blue is crafted from the milk of cheesemaker Brenda Jensen’s flock of East Friesian/Lacombe sheep and aged for 6 months. The wheels are crumbly and moist, reminiscent of fine Roquefort with a distinctly American twang. The flavor is bold and fruity with a sweet & savory back-and-forth that brings salted caramel to mind. Hidden Springs Creamery is located in southwestern Wisconsin, and abuts an Amish community. Brenda and her husband Dean are committed to sustainable farming, and use draft horses to plow their fields and harvest their own hay. These wheels of blue are made and aged at the nearby Hook’s Cheese Company, who has specialized equipment for packaging and aging blue cheese.

Bon Pere

Boston Post Dairy - Enosburg Falls, Vermont

Made from a mixture of 80% cows’ milk and 20% goats’ milk, Bon Pere is a fruity, nutty, and complex mixed milk cheese. Boston Post Dairy is run by the Gervais family, and got its name from the fact that the old Boston Post stagecoach road runs right through the center of their farm. The name Bon Pere translates to ‘good father’, a nod to the four Gervais sisters’ father Robert. (The Gervais sisters now run the Boston Post Dairy - they also have 11 brothers, so perhaps ‘good father’ is a bit of an understatement!) The flavor imparted by the goats’ milk is sweet, malty, and caramelized, while the cows’ milk gives the firm paste a more grassy and buttery tone. Its bright red rind makes for a beautiful presentation, a natural addition to any cheese board.

Bonaparte

Lazy Lady Farm - Westfield, Vermont

A riff on the famed French goat cheese Valencay, Bonaparte is a truncated pyramid of soft-ripened goats’ milk cheese dusted with vegetable ash. In France, the story goes that Valencay was originally a pyramid-shaped cheese, but after Napoleon lost his military conquest in Egypt, the local cheesemakers decided to lob off the top, ere the memory of territories lost would prove too painful to recall. Lazy Lady Farm proprietor Laini Fondiller ladles each of these beauties by hand, and ages them in her natural cave (i.e. dug into the hillside - no refrigeration units on this solar and wind powered farm!) until perfectly ripe. The flavor is tart, musky, and briny, and the texture ranges from chalky (when young) to ooey gooey when very ripe. Aged 4-6 weeks.

Bonde du Poitou

Herve Mons - Poitou-Charentes, France

A chalky, lactic goat cheese made by a small cooperative in the Poitou-Charentes region of France. This fresh and tangy cheese tastes of yogurt, goat musk, and grass with a touch of yeast on the rind. The cheese tends to get dense and clay-like in texture just under the rind, and retains a white chalky center. ‘Bonde’ means hat in French - each wheel resembles a top hat without the brim. Aged in the caves of Herve Mons for 6-8 weeks.

Bone Char Square

Crown Finish Caves / Old Chatham Sheepherding Co. - Chatham, NY and Brooklyn, NY

Saxelby Cheesemongers is thrilled to announce the arrival of Bone Char Square - a new cheese that is the fruit of a collaboration between our friends at Blue Hill Stone Barns, Crown Finish Caves, and Old Chatham Sheepherding Company! Prior to its launch on saxelbycheese.com, the only way to savor this cheese was to dine at Stone Barns and hope that it made its way into your tasting menu rotation of farm-fresh delights. Now you can purchase this cheese directly from Saxelby Cheesemongers and enjoy it in your own home!

Bone Char Square is a mixed milk cheese (75% cow and 25% goat) that is made at Old Chatham Sheepherding Co. in New York’s Hudson Valley. The young cheeses are dusted with a fine coating of bone ash produced by Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and aged by the expert affineurs at Crown Finish Caves until they reach three weeks of age and are ripe and ready to eat! Bone Char Square is tangy, grassy, and distinctly earthy with a tannic and mineral finish imparted by the bone ash.

Bone Char Square was conceived by chef Dan Barber and his team up at Blue Hill Stone Barns as a part of their crusade to cook the most delicious food imaginable using the most sustainable means of farming, production, and harvest possible. One of their imperatives is to not waste anything that comes out of their kitchen - bones left over from stock-making are carbonized in a special high-heat, low-oxygen environment and then used as charcoal that imparts a smokier, fattier, gamier flavor to anything cooked on the grill.

Chef Barber wanted to see if the ash from the ground up bone charcoal could be applied to the surface of the cheese, like the famed ashed goat cheeses of the Loire Valley, and if so, what flavors would it impart? Enter Saxelby Cheesemongers and Crown Finish Caves. Saxelby Cheesemongers is Blue Hill’s trusted partner in crime when it comes to their cheese selection. We tested out several different cheeses for this project, and landed on the Old Chatham Square because of it’s crisp, tart-yet-buttery, and slightly yeasty flavor profile.

Crown Finish Caves completes the final, and most crucial part of the puzzle for this one-of-a-kind cheese. Their temperature and humidity controlled caves - old lagering tunnels located deep beneath the streets of Brooklyn - provide the ideal environment for these little cheeses to mature and develop flavor. The cheeses arrive at Crown Finish Caves when they are one week old - fresh, young, and rindless. The cheeses are then dried in a special ‘sechoir’ or drying fridge, to prime the surface of the cheese to grow the right kind of rind. The cheeses are then dusted with the bone ash and moved into the caves to grow their supple bloomy rinds.

Bonne Bouche

Vermont Creamery - Websterville, Vermont

Bonne Bouche literally translates to ‘a good mouthful’ and we couldn’t agree more! These diminutive discs of goats’ milk cheese are dusted with ash and lightly aged, developing a thin, wrinkly and bloomy rind that shows hints of gray atop the ivory white paste. Chalky and firm when young, Bonne Bouche will break down as it ripens into a creamy, silky and seductive round of gooey goodness. The flavor is classic chevre - tangy, mineral, lactic and musky with some beautiful nutty and yeasty notes on the rind. Aged for 4-6 weeks.

Boucher Blue

Green Mountain Blue Cheese - Highgate Center, Vermont

This ‘gateway’ blue can make a blue-liever out of just about anybody! The sweet and salty paste is riddled with deep green and blue veins that taste of white pepper, wet straw, mushrooms, and chocolate. The texture is firm and fudgy; each morsel has a long and complex finish that will leave you craving another bite! Made by Dan and Dawn Boucher, fourth generation dairy farmers in the northernmost reaches of Vermont. Aged 3-4 months.

Brebis Blanche

Three Corner Field Farm - Shushan, New York

Brebis Blanche is a fresh lactic cheese; the milk is allowed to sit out overnight in order to let the culture do its work and build up lactic acid the evening before the cheese is made. The curd is then hand-ladled into small forms and allowed to drain until the desired consistency is reached. Each four ounce drum is light and fluffy in texture, and tastes of citrus, cultured cream, and freshly cut grass. Aged 1-2 weeks.

Brie du Pommier

Herve Mons - Normandy, France

Have you always wondered what real Brie tastes like? Look no further! This Brie is pasteurized to comply with US regulations, but the producer managed to get as close as he could to the original flavor of the raw milk version by using a proprietary blend of cultures. Each flavor-packed wheel is ripened to perfection, and is aged for between 8 and 12 weeks. The thick, buttery paste is laden with hints of truffles, cauliflower, cultured cream, and barnyard. Pairs well with light red wine or dry apple cider.  

Brieba

Barn First Creamery - Westfield, Vermont

A creamy, lactic goat cheese from cheesemaker Rebecca Velazquez and Barn First Creamery! Barn First has a small milking herd of thirty-odd goats, and is located in Westfield, Vermont which is part of Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom. Brieba sports a dual layer of vegetable ash - on the rind as well as one layer that runs through the center of each wheel. The cheese breaks down into gooey goodness as it ages, and the flavors morph from tangy and bright to musky, sweet, mushroomy and earthy.

Brillat Savarin

Herve Mons - Ile de France, France

A rich, luscious triple creme cheese made from a blend of whole milk and cream. Triple creme refers to the fact that the cheese contains over 75% butterfat, meaning in layman’s terms that it is decadent and delicious! Brillat Savarin is a bloomy rind cheese with flavor notes of cultured cream, mushrooms, and butter. When young it has a creamy, fluffy texture like whipped butter that breaks down into a more satiny creme fraiche-like paste as it ages. It is named after the famous gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin who famously stated, "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye." Kind of a creepy comment, but we’re guessing it sounds better in French... Pairs well with sparkling white wines and champagne. Aged 6-8 weeks.

Buck Hill Sunrise

Lazy Lady Farm - Westfield, Vermont

A scrumptious little morsel of creamy, brie-like cow cheese with a light bloomy rind.  These little tommes are ideal cheese plate fare… smooth, rich, and silky in texture with a not-so-bashful richness and mushroom undertones. Named for Buck Hill, where Lazy Lady Farm is perched in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Aged 4-6 weeks.

Bufarolo

Crown Finish Caves / Quattro Portoni, Brooklyn, NY / Italy

A square of pasteurized water buffalo milk cheese that is made at Quattro Portoni in Italy and aged at Crown Finish Caves in Brooklyn. Quattro Portoni is a caseficio (cheese house) located in the Bergamo region of Italy, just to the east of Milan. After the wheels cross the Atlantic and arrive at Crown Finish, they are washed with a variety of local beers, spirits, and wines, making the cheese a canvas for the expression of microbiological terrior between the washes and the original cheese. The paste is firm and clay-like, exuding fruity minerally, and earthy flavors with a slightly gamier, animal aftertaste.

Burrata

Maplebrook Farm - Bennington, Vermont

Burrata - one of mankind’s highest achievements (and guiltiest pleasure!) in the medium of curds and cream. Burrata is made from fresh mozzarella curd, which is kneaded and stretched before being formed into a pouch-like shape. The cheesemakers at Maplebrook Farm then fill the middle with a mixture of thick heavy cream and strings of mozzarella called ‘stracciatella’. The result is a sweet, decadent, and buttery cream that oozes forth when cut into. Burrata originated in Andria, a small city in southern Italy as a way for cheesemakers to re-use the ‘nodini’ or knot-shaped mozzarella that was left over at the end of the day. The cheesemakers would simply untie the knots of mozzarella curd, pull them apart into strings, and soak them overnight in salted heavy cream. The next day the mixture of ‘stracciatella’ would be used to fill the burrata. God bless the Italians and all the delicious things that have resulted from their thrift and ingenuity in the culinary arts!