July 2007



Today you can probably count New England's remaining small cheesemaking operations on one hand and Grafton has been our favorite for many years now. We've been buying cheese from them for nearly twenty-five years. From a travel standpoint, I could tell you that Grafton Village is about as New England as it gets. All their cheddars are hand-made, as they have been for decades. They use only the raw milk of Jersey cows, an old breed whose milk is particularly rich and makes for notably more flavorful cheese.

For the last five years, I've been going out there every six months or so to taste and select cheddars to put under our label. Even if you're buying from top-notch artisan producers like these guys, the cheese is always somewhat different from one day's production to the next. That's the nature of artisan food. To test the validity of all this travel and tasting I pretty regularly go out and buy blocks of Grafton's "regular" cheese from others who sell it around here. While it's always good, they're almost never as good. You really can taste the difference. Consistently the cheeses we've brought back have been great. We sell them at the Deli and Creamery, ship them from our Mail Order, serve them at the Roadhouse, bake with them at the Bakehouse and eat them at home all the time.

For our one-year old cheddar, we chose cheese made on March 1st, 2006. It's got a really big flavor, a wonderful, gentle egginess, a marvelous, mouth-watering finish and a very buttery, creamy texture. Full-flavored enough to appeal to the most discriminating cheese eaters, still gentle enough to please a pack of novices. It's a great cheese for eating on its own. It's also excellent for grilled cheese, or cubed and tossed into salads, or grated onto just-cooked macaroni for a quick dinner. Really, I think you'll find it one of the most wonderfully versatile, full-flavored artisan cheeses around.

If the only mature cheddars you've tried have been bitey and bitter, the creamy, smooth intensity of this one will really be a revelation. After tasting a few dozen different cheeses, I picked one that was made on January 19, 2005. It has a very nutty flavor that hints of fresh fruit. It's very creamy on the palate and it has a really fine finish! I've been eating this one at home for a few weeks now, and it's really been a pleasure. Impressively, I haven't tired of it at all, even after trying it on salads, in cheese sauces, on sandwiches and as a snack. Great flavor, great finish, great cheese!

This very special cheese was made on December 30, 2002, so it's actually well over four years old now. It's incredibly flavorful but without that unpleasant bite or bitterness that can mark so many really aged cheddars. I know there are folks who think that bite is supposed to be part of any aged cheddar, but to me it's an undesirable characteristic, a sign of suboptimal cheesemaking and/or not great milk. A really well-made cheddar (like this one, in my opinion) should be able to age and intensify in flavor, and be both strong and smooth at the same time. When you taste this 52-month-old marvel, I think you'll be impressed by its complexity and intensity, as well as by its long, really enjoyable finish and a wonderfully surprising sweetness that's remarkable for cheddar of this age. It's been a huge staff hit ever since it arrived. How good is it? One staff member who's worked with cheese for years told me "It's like eating candy!" Stop by and take a taste for yourself.

The oldest and sharpest of the lot, made on July 18, 2001, it's still very well rounded and not bitter or bitey.

All four of these traditional raw milk Vermont cheddars are outstanding on their own. But they're also really good for grilled cheese, marvelous with mustard, superb with salami, great for cheese grits, and outstanding in omelettes!

It Isn't a Deli Sandwich without Grafton!
Okay, that's not totally true but Grafton cheddars show up so often on our Deli menu, we could've based an entire restaurant around them. Try it in: #5, #14, #19, #21, #54, #61, #62, #74 and (the numberless) Breakfast BLT, Jen's Pimento Parti, Syd's Design Studio, Renee's Kitchen Magic, Becky's Backstage and Carole's Can'tuck Canter (Phew!)

Pimento Cheese
It's the kind of simple, traditional food steeped in history and fiercely loved by those who grew up with it that we love to find and serve at Zingerman's. There are as many recipes for it as there are kitchens in the South. We use Grafton cheddar, Hellmann's mayo, pimentos and spices. Buy it by the pound at the Deli and Creamery, in a decorative crock from zingermans.com or atop a Roadhouse burger. 50 million pimento cheese fans can't be wrong!