Janet Fletcher teaches cheese-appreciation classes and is the author of 'Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing, and Enjoying' and 'The Cheese Course,' both from Chronicle Books. Next up: Montagne du Jura, a raw cow's milk cheese from Switzerland. Look for Harbison at Cowgirl Creamery, Rainbow Grocery, Cheese Plus, Mission Cheese, Say Cheese and Bi-Rite in San Francisco at Pasta Shop in Berkeley and Oakland Cheese Board in Berkeley and Oxbow Cheese Merchant in Napa. Saison Dupont from Belgium is a classic in that style. 'The texture should be ooey-gooey,' Kehler says.Ī beer enthusiast, Jasper Hill's cheese maker recommends Harbison with Saison-style ale. When it gives readily to pressure, bring it fully to room temperature before serving. Keep it in a lidded plastic container and monitor it often, turning the wheel over every couple of days. If you want to experience Harbison at optimum ripeness and it isn't there yet, Kehler suggests putting the cheese in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. As needed, the bark strips are boiled to sterilize and soften them, so they will bend around the day-old wheels. Jasper Hill harvests the paper-thin strips of bark in the spring from white spruce and dries them. 'We knew we were on to something tasty,' says Mateo Kehler, Jasper Hill's cheese maker. The experimental cheese became runny when ripe girdling it with the spruce band helped contain the interior and imparted a woodsy scent. At the Cellars, we ripen cheese made by Jasper Hill Creameries as. The Cellars were constructed for the purpose of providing affinage, or aging expertise, as well as distribution and marketing services for local cheese makers. Jasper Hill fans will recognize it as the love child of Moses Sleeper, the creamery's Camembert-style cheese, and Winnimere, its bark-wrapped washed-rind wheel. The Cellars at Jasper Hill Farm is an innovative 22,000 square foot underground facility located in Greensboro, Vermont. Like many American artisan cheeses, Harbison, a bloomy-rind disk wrapped with a strip of spruce bark, evolved from an experiment.

Jasper Hill also has a big hand in the award-winning Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, because it ages the wheels - made by a neighbor, the huge Cabot Creamery - in its underground caves.

Even if you don't recognize the name Jasper Hill, you may have had some of this pioneering farm's cheeses, such as Bayley Hazen Blue, Constant Bliss and Winnimere.

Jasper hill farm