I’ve been a cheesemonger for a long time and a cheese enthusiast for even longer. Through all that, I have to say that one of the most distinctive memories I have from my cheese life is the first time I tried Montgomery’s Farmhouse Cheddar.
Most people don’t think of cheddar as a fancy cheese, mainly because we have all heard of it and eaten it since we were little kids. Besides Kraft singles it’s probably the main cheese most of us grew up on. When I started getting into fancy cheese as a late teenager, I kind of expected that process to be a sort of branching out from cheddar, just eating lots of moldy, runny, stinky things; that is, until I tried Montgomery’s cloth-bound for the first time.
The cheddar we all grew up on is mass-produced in factories, sourcing milk from god knows how many hundreds of farms. The milk is pasteurized (usually at high temperatures) and in many cases harsher starter cultures are added to increase the acidity levels in the milk and in the final cheese product—this gives the cheeses their desired “sharpness”.
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