Looking for new items at the Oxbow Cheese Merchant in Napa recently, I spotted a cheese that surprised me on two fronts.
First, it was really well priced, at under $13 a pound. Second, it was a rindless block English cheddar, not an artisan traditional cheddar with a natural rind. Block cheddars have about as much cachet as screw-cap wines had before cork taint made them more acceptable.
Intrigued, I took home a nice chunk of Barber's Vintage Cheddar and tried it that evening. It would have been a good buy at half again the price. Rindless cheddars like Barber's mature in closed environments, such as sealed plastic bags, so they never develop external molds or any kind of coat. They don't have the air exchange that a rinded cheddar has, so they lose moisture more slowly, evolve more leisurely, and – some say – never achieve the aromatic and flavor heights of rinded cheddars.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The San Francisco Chronicle.