Once I see a wheel of Harbison at a vacation occasion, I feel: This particular person is aware of the way to 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 accessible for dipping. Usually, the cheese stands alone — with sides, however not a number of different cheeses.
Made by Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, Harbison is a bloomy rind cheese, a class that additionally consists of Brie. Wrapped with spruce and aged, it’s pudding-like in texture and umami-rich and woodsy in taste. It’s finest served at room temperature with its high sliced off to show its comfortable 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 varieties the crux of my fancied-up vacation internet hosting thesis: Everybody makes a cheese board, however extra folks 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 financial system? I’d additionally argue that when there’s an excessive amount of of all the things, we, as eaters, have a tendency to understand every part much less. So if maximalism and minimalism occur in cycles, every a response to the opposite, maybe we’re due for a extra streamlined strategy to cheese.
One other showstopper that each helps my thesis and is particularly 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 reduce off. It’s additionally produced solely within the fall, which attracts on the custom of Switzerland’s seasonal Vacherin Mont d’Or. Just 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 laborious 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 a substitute 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 dear. A wheel of Harbison typically clocks in at round $25, whereas Rush Creek Reserve is $37. However it helps to do not forget 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 approach 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, influence, 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 additionally helps small producers who’re preserving cheesemaking traditions alive. These showstopper cheeses test these bins — and likewise occur to be adequate that they don’t want so many distractions.
Dina Ávila is a photographer in Portland, Oregon.
Picture assistant: Eric Fortier