In which I eat the best cheese imaginable
August 15th, 2010 at 4:40 pm ETWell, not imaginable. But it was pretty good.
At Fairway recently I came across the label below, which promised, in part, “Unsurpassed! The best domestic cheddar you will ever taste.”
“Pish tosh!” I replied, in my head. “Yet another example of marketing language getting out of hand.” But I bought.
Boy, was I wrong.
I think I can safely say not only that this Grafton Village is the best domestic cheddar I’ve ever tasted — it’s the best cheddar I’ve ever tasted, period. And it’s not just the cheese itself — it’s the milk underneath, which has a quality to it that my city-trained palate has trouble describing. “Roundness” is what comes to mind. Never mind comparing this to Kraft — very few of the expensive cheddars I’ve ever tried is anything like this. It’s so intense that I can only eat a limited amount at a time, not because it’s “rich” (i.e., full of fat) but because the flavor is so sensually intense.
The only cheddar I can think of that impacted me this way is an aged English extra-super-sharp cheddar that was brought back to me (probably illegally) on a plane as a gift several years ago, but that one was appealing in a very different way — it was semi-dry, crumbly, almost crystalline in parts, more like a Parmigiano-Reggiano. This Grafton Village, in contrast, tastes of bright fresh ripeness — you can tell, if you’ll pardon the expression, that it came out of a cow who was in the blush of good health when she gave us our gift of milk, surrounded by loved ones, probably in some sort of dell or vale with the sound of a fresh bubbling brook blowing into the barn on a spring breeze.
This sort of ripeness is a kind of taste that has basically been selected out of American industrial food production — things are vastly better in America, foodwise, than they were twenty years ago, but industrial dairy still sucks. My mother used to say that dairy products were better, fresher, brighter when she was a child, and I think this may be what she meant.
Grafon Village is the perfect centerpiece of a light summer lunch, which you can see at right. Seltzer courtesy of Sodastream. The only thing that would make this lunch better is a whole scallion (I forgot to buy them), and perhaps a dill pickle so gently pickled that it tastes like a cucumber you dipped in the sea and then set down for a few moments in the same room as a garlic clove. And, of course, home-baked bread, but I’m out.
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Rich Mintz blogs on online fundraising and social media, American history and culture, bicycling and urbanism, food, technology, and other topics. Professionally, he's an expert in fundraising, constituency development, and social media for nonprofits, cultural organizations, cause-related marketers, and corporations. He is based in New York, where he serves as Vice President, Strategy, for 
