Asiago Pressato

Produced in the Po Valley near Treviso, Asiago Pressato is a milder, sweeter Asiago with a springy, pale interior. It is classified as an Italian DOC (Denominiazione di Origine Controllata) cheese, meaning that it is protected by governmental standards regarding the cheese’s origin and techniques. Made from pasteurized whole milk and aged for 20 to 40 days, this young cheese has a full, creamy flavor. We suggest enjoying Pressato with crusty Italian bread and a glass of Pinot Grigio! 

Mustard Seed

Beemster with Mustard is a unique cheese with robust flavour. This cheese is sure to pleasantly surprise any audience. Beemster with Mustard Seed is a superb addition to hamburgers on the grill or any dish where the added texture of the mustard seeds can be appreciated

 

 

Vlaskaas

Beemster Vlaskaas is the newest addition to Beemster’s line of Premium Gourmet Dutch Cheeses; however, is the oldest cheese recipe with the group of cheeses. When translated Vlaskaas mean Flax cheese. This delightfully sweet and creamy cheese was made only during the harvest festival of the flax for the workers to eat on thick slices of bread and with porridge while they worked and celebrated. In 2004 the harvest festival celebration was recreated as a community event. While digging through archives for information on the exact way to recreate the harvest festival the recipe for Vlaskaas was discovered. It was soon decided that after generations of rest it was time for Vlaskaas to live again!

Renowned for the best milk quality in The Netherlands, Beemster was asked to make the Vlaskaas recipe. The result was spectacular! Vlaskaas became the centrepiece of the entire harvest festival. With much encouragement Beemster decided to enter Vlaskaas in the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Competition, which is regarded as the most fierce cheese competition in the world. Vlaskaas took home a Gold Medal in its category and 3rd place in the overall competition!

 

Beemster X-O

Beemster X-O- is matured for 26 months making it Beemster’s oldest cheese. Many people see 3-5 year old cheeses in stores and ask us why we do not make an older product. Once you have tasted Beemster X-O- you will see the answer is quite simple. As a cheese matures the flavors one tastes in the cheese expands. As this process happens moisture also exits the cheese, thus leaving the cheese tasting crumbly and granular in one’s mouth. Because of Beemster’s unique milk, X-O- is able to obtain one of the widest flavor ranges possible in only 26 months and still retains its smooth and creamy taste.

Beemster X-O- is wonderful with port wines, as well as sweet whites, such as a Riesling. X-O- can also be grated and used as a wonderful alternative to Parmesan for pastas.

 

Buttermilk Blue

 To craft Roth Käse’s line of luscious blues, we start with Wisconsin’s renowned natural resource: local family farms producing the highest-quality milk from Jersey and Holstein cows. The raw milk, higher in butterfat than most and with a character that changes from season to season, is transformed into delicate curds by our cheesemakers. They hoop the curds by hand into traditional round forms, then pierce, salt, and careful cure the cheese for two months or more allows a lacey network of natural blue veining to develop. It takes time and effort to handcraft our cheese, but the result is well worth the effort: a classic blue cheese, deliciously creamy and tangy with a clean, sweet finish.

Moody Blue

Made in small batches from fresh, local Wisconsin milk, our rich, creamy blue is delicately smoked over fruit wood to create subtle smoky undertones with hints of roasted nuts and coffee. Beautifully balanced, sultry, and seductive, Moody Blue is excellent on a cheese plate and delicious in culinary applications.

 

 

 Chimay

The very personal preparation and maturing of this cheese make it an exclusive product.

Its natural rind is bathed in Chimay Trappist beer so that its incomparable flavour flatters the palate and the nose.

 

 

 

 Edam

A cheese that defines Dutch culture, Edam is a mellow, savory, slightly salty cheese that has a pale yellow interior with a red or yellow paraffin coating. (The yellow is more common in Holland; the red is intended for export). It is made from part-skimmed milk (30 to 40 percent milk fat) and comes in spheres with flattened ends. Edam, named for a Dutch town, is second only to Gouda as Holland’s most exported cheese. It is a great all-purpose cheese, especially good when served with dark beer.

 

 Fontina

Fontina is the symbol of agriculture in Italy’s tiny, French speaking Aosta Valley region. The cows that produce the milk for Fontina Val d’Aosta graze on high-altitude Alpine pastures dotted with wildflowers and native herbs. Fontina is a great cooking cheese, as it melts evenly without losing any flavor. Extremely aromatic (some might say “stinky”), Fontina is best noted for its value as a savory and fruity table cheese. Its slightly grassy flavor embodies the taste of a true raw milk cheese

 

 Drunken Goat

Similar to the Spanish wine cheese, Drunken Goat ®, this wine-bathed cheese is made from pasteurized goat’s milk in Murcia region of Spain. This region has a rich variety of grasses, shrubs, and wild herbs on which the goat’s graze to give the cheese a distinctive taste and aroma. The unique feature of Murcia al Vino is that it is washed in red wine during ripening. The wine deeply tints the cheese, giving the rind its characteristic burgundy color and imparting a strong floral bouquet. Murcia al Vino is a real gem. It not only has a bold, delicious flavor, it has the intoxicating aroma of a good bottle of wine.

 Capra Honey Goat

Creamy and rich, as a goat cheese should be, Celebrity Goat is aged for only a few weeks, so it is firm enough to slice but creamy enough to spread. In the best-selling Honey flavor, the addition of a drop of sweet ‘liquid gold’ gives the cheese a hint of sugar that is extremely pleasing to the palate. Importantly, its sweet side tempers the delightful tanginess inherent in all goat cheeses. Also available coated in Wild Herbs, this mild, smooth, refreshing cheese is fast becoming one of our favorites.

 

Grana Padano 

 Stravecchio Oro del Tempo is a superior, 22-month aged Grana Padano produced by Agriform near Venice. This masterpiece compares beautifully with its better-known cousin Parmigiano Reggiano. The flavor of Stravecchio is intense and complex, with fruity overtones that evoke pineapple or strawberry, depending on the season. Like all precious things, every Stravecchio cheese is one of a kind, and each wheel is branded with a unique serial number. Agriform tests the quality of each wheel of Stravecchio every week until the twentieth month of aging. The end result of this rigorous testing process is that only the cheeses that deserve to become prime Grana Padano Stravecchio are stamped with the certificate of origin and guarantee.

 Parmigiano Regiano

Parmigiano Reggiano The Italians are horrified by our usage of this, the world’s most famous hard cheese. Here in the States, it is thought of as purely a grating cheese. The rest of the world savors Parmigiano-Reggiano as a delicious, full-flavored eating cheese. It began life seven centuries ago in the Italian provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, part of Bologna and part of Mantua. Nature blessed this zone with the most idealistic cattle grazing land to create the unique milk from the “Zone Tripica”. The local cheese craftsmen took it from there, utilizing a totally natural process that has not changed for 700 years. No additives, no machinery, no gimmicks. Just sweet, fresh milk in its pristine state; the artisan’s ancient skills and then nature’s own good time (aged from 18 to 20 months). What you see today is just what the knights, serfs, saints and kings of old ate!

America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated have both voted igourmet.com’s Parmigiano Reggiano #1 in their quest to find the best Parmesan in America today. “We preferred the igourmet regular and Vacche Rosse Parmigiano-Reggiano by a landslide, ranking them significantly higher than the other cheeses for complexity of flavor and appealing texture. And when we tasted the regular Parmigiano from igourmet against our supermarket cheeses, it was an easy winner.”

 

Pecorino Romano

Pecorino denotes sheep’s milk in Italian, and Pecorino Romano is one of the oldest and most versatile of these cheeses. Whereas Reggiano and Grana are the favored grating cheese of Northern Italy, Pecorino Romano dominates the southern portion of the country. The original production area of Pecorino Romano is Lazio, the section of Italy that surrounds Rome. The term “Genuino” can only be applied to Romano that is made in Lazio. This special Romano, made from milk taken from a dedicated herd of sheep that live just outside the city of Rome, has a grainy, crumbly texture that is much more flavorful than inferior varieties. A little goes a long way. We enjoy it grated into soups, salads, pastas and gratin casseroles. Sprinkle it over fresh vegetables to add that extra zest.

 

 Pecorino Crotenese

From Calabria in southern Italy comes Crotonese, a pure sheep’s milk cheese made in four pound wheels. Crotonese is produced between the months of January and June when sheep’s milk is the best and most abundant. Crotonese has that famous pecorino flavor and is both sweet and salty. Like most ewe’s milk varieties, its surface is a bit oily due to the natural oils in the milk. Formed in woven molds, the rind takes on a ribbed pattern that makes a nice presentation. Excellent as a snacking cheese, Crotonese is an excellent partner for Brunello wine.ecorino Crotenese

From Calabria in southern Italy comes Crotonese, a pure sheep’s milk cheese made in four pound wheels. Crotonese is produced between the months of January and June when sheep’s milk is the best and most abundant. Crotonese has that famous pecorino flavor and is both sweet and salty. Like most ewe’s milk varieties, its surface is a bit oily due to the natural oils in the milk. Formed in woven molds, the rind takes on a ribbed pattern that makes a nice presentation. Excellent as a snacking cheese, Crotonese is an excellent partner for Brunello wine.

 

Pecorino With Black Truffle

 This young pecorino is studded with flakes of black truffle, which gives the cheese a delicious, resonating truffle flavor. The salty, sharp young pecorino is the perfect contrast to the earthiness of the black truffle. The two flavors harmonize on the palate in a moment of perfection and then fade away, ending with a lingering taste of black truffle.

 

 

 Gruyere

This cheese comes to us from Emmi, master cheesemakers since 1782. They buy full 200 pound of Gruyere from the farming regions in the Canton of Fribourg, then age them in underground sandstone caves in their facility near Lucerne. Made from rich, unpasteurized, Alpine cow’s milk, this Grand Gruyere Reserve has been aged for at least one year, compared with the average four to six months. A rustic, somewhat oily rind gives way to firm, smooth textured cheese which is slightly aromatic with a robust, assertive flavor. Wonderful served unadorned with some dark bread and figs, this is also a great melting cheese, and one that lends itself well to gratins, fondues and soups.

 

 

Havarti Cream

 Havarti About 100 years ago, a farmer’s wife who lived in North Zealand (one of Denmark’s most romantic islands — a trysting place for lovers) became interested in the art of cheesemaking. She traveled through Europe to learn the secrets of this craft. Upon her return, she began to experiment with her newly acquired techniques. She named her finest creation after her farm, “Havarthi”. Today’s Cream Havarti is a direct descendant. It has an ivory interior patterned with a myriad of tiny holes and is mild, creamy and mellow. We are featuring 4 of our favorite varieties: horseradish chive, dill, and  pesto.

 

 

Manchego

 Manchego is Spain’s most famous cheese. Produced in La Mancha in Central Spain, true Manchego is made from 100% sheep’s milk. Cheeses from Spain are commonly made from sheep’s milk because most of the territory is rocky and dry; unfriendly to cows but suitable for raising goats and sheep. The abundance of wild herbs on Central Spain’s grazing lands gives Manchego a special taste and aroma. Its flavor is zesty and exuberant ,while its texture is firm but not dry. Manchego can be recognized by the zigzag pattern etched into its rind. This is created by the rippled surface of the press used in the manufacture of the cheese. Underneath the inedible rind, the interior is ivory colored with few small holes. Taste Manchego for the first time and you will be surprised at how long the wonderful flavor lingers on your palate. It is an experience you will be drawn back to again and again.

 Provolone

Our Provolone Dolce is produced from selected cow’s milk in Italy. It is aged for only a short period of time, allowing it to maintain the delicacy of the milk taste in the cheese. This prized cheese is ideal as a cooking ingredient, especially on pizza, melted on meat, or sliced in toasted sandwiches.

 

 

 

 Smoked Provolone

Our naturally smoked Provolone is unreal! If you like our Mild Provolone you need to try this. This cheese is a great snack cheese that everyone will enjoy.  We suggest you try this with your favorite red wine.  A great mild cheese that has a brilliant hint of smokey flavor.

 

 

 

 

Aged Provolone

If you remember rope-bound cheeses hanging from the rafters in your neighborhood Italian grocers (or if you’ve been to Zabar’s cheese counter), then you are familiar with this traditional Italian cheese. Produced exclusively from full-fat cow’s milk coming from neighboring farms in Pieve, it is a treat for the senses. Beautiful, smooth paste, pale yellow in color. It smells slightly pungent, and its flavor is robust, nutty, and piquant. If all you’ve had is sliced provolone from the deli counter, you are in for a pleasant surprise! Serve with fruit, vegetables, charcuterie, and pickles.

 Smoked Gouda

Eighteen pound logs of Smoked Gouda are produced in Holland in some of the world’s most modern, computerized dairy plants. Yet, the cheese is still smoked in ancient brick ovens over smoldering hickory chip embers. Available natural or flavored, this cylindrically shaped cheese is perfect for impromptu picnics, party platters or midnight snacks. Note: the brown, smoky rind is not only edible, it’s the best part of the cheese!

 

 

  

 Cheddar with Porter

Located in County Limerick and recognized as the originator of fine Irish cheese, Marion Cahill of Cahill’s Farm has developed an interesting range of flavored cheddars. Using a base of tangy Irish cheddar, she has experimented with a variety of flavors and has come up with some very popular combinations. We offer three types of Cahill’s Farm Cheddar: Elderberry, Porter and Irish Whiskey. These semi-soft cheddars are made from pasteurized cow’s milk and vegetable rennet.

 

 Apricot White Stilton

White Stilton, the young, immature cousin to the world famous British blue cheese, is extra creamy and deliciously tangy but somehow unfinished all by itself – much like plain yogurt. Hence the need to introduce a fruit. Available with apricots, lemon, ginger, and several other wicked flavors. Each of these flavorful additions tames the brash White Stilton. After your first bite you will immediately recognize that the combination is a natural fit. The expert cheesemakers have added exactly the right amount of fruit such that the cheese is not overly sweet. Aged for a minimal time period, our family of flavored White Stiltons are fresh tasting products. Owing to their delicious flavors, beautiful presentations and wickedly scrumptious names, they are among the best selling blended cheeses in the U.K.

 

 Sicky Toffee

We’ve always enjoyed cheese as a dessert, whether it’s the traditional pairing of blue cheese and port, or a fresh goat cheese with honey and raspberries. But our new favorite is this Sticky Toffee Cheese from England. Rich and dense, this cheese has the luscious flavors of brown sugar and caramel mixed with the warm spices of cinnamon and nutmeg. Sticky Toffee Cheese is perfect for serving after dinner with hot black tea and cream, but it also makes a fantastic Saturday brunch when toasted on top of raisin bread.

 

 

 Sage Derby

Derby is a yellow cheese with a firm texture similar to that of Cheddar. It is now less well-known than its colorful relative, Sage Derby. Mass-production of this product has led to the deterioration of the quality of most Sage Darby. But our Sage Derby is still the real thing. The coloring is done using spinach juice like most Sage Darby, but this dairy mixes actual chopped sage leaves into the cheese curd rather than mixing sage powder into the milk like most companies do. This results in a fresher sage flavor, and it is this flavor that lends Sage Derby its charm.

 

 Saxon Shire

This layered cheese is also called five counties cheese because of the different cheeses that make up its five layers. These cheeses are: Double Gloucester, Caerphilly, Cheshire, Leicester, and Cheddar. The cheese has a very dramatic appearance and a very pleasing flavor. If you are a fan of any of these British classics, this is definitely a cheese to try.

 

 

 Mahon

Mahon is produced on the Mediterranean island of Menorca in the Balearics. Although it is a small island, Menorca produces enough cheese to make Mahon Spain’s second most popular cheese next to Manchego. A 100% cow’s milk cheese, Mahon comes in large squares of about six pounds. Ripened in underground caves for at least 60 days, Mahon has a bold, magnificent flavor that could never be called mild. The yellowish-orange rind conceals a soft, slightly salty and decidedly spicy interior. This unique cheese is a must try for any cheese lover and an absolute necessity for the true connoisseur.

 

 Tronchon

 Tronchon is a very small village in the southeastern part of Spain’s wild and mountainous Teruel province. The town and its surrounding area has an age-old tradition of raising sheep and goats in mixed herds. This tradition led to the creation of Tronchon cheese, which is made from a blend of goat, sheep and cow’s milk. This uniquely volcano-shaped cheese is beautiful and delicious. With its smooth, buttery, fresh flavor and springy texture, Tronchon is a longtime family favorite in Spain. It goes great with green Spanish olives and a fruity red Rioja

 

 

Red Leicester

Royal George cheese is named after the founder of the cheesemakers’ English dairy. It was in 1957 that George Kenyon started to make his traditional English cheeses in the ancient market town of Garstang, where the ruins of the royalist Greenhalgh Castle (c1490) stand.  

 

 

 

Emmental

This cheese is produced in the central cantons of Switzerland. It is a traditional, unpasteurized, hard cheese made from cow’s milk. It’s hard, thin rind is covered by paper with producer’s name on it. The aroma is sweet with tones of fresh-cut hay. The flavor is very fruity, not without a tone of acidity. Emmental has walnut-sized holes. It is considered to be one of the most difficult cheeses to be produced because of it’s complicated hole-forming fermentation process. The cheese tastes delicious with a glass of wine, for example Jura Blanc.

 

 Farmer Cheese

Farmer cheese (or farmer’s cheese or farmers’ cheese) is made by pressing the moisture from cottage cheese; pressed drier still, it is sometimes rolled in a mixture of herbs and flavorings, or wrapped in very thin slices of flavorful smoked meats. It is a simple cheese often used for fillings in blintzes and other foods. Around the world, farmer cheese is variably made from milk from cows, sheep, or goats, each with its own final texture and nuance of flavor.

 

Garrotxa

 This goat’s milk cheese was once produced solely in the Garrotxa area of Catalonia. This is the area of Pyrenees region of Spain that is farthest to the East, lying right on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Garrotxa has a white interior, with a very creamy texture that is surrounded by a natural mold rind. It has an unusual but mild flavor with a light acidity and a hint of hazelnuts.

 

 

 Idiazbal

This handmade, unpasteurized sheep’s milk cheese comes from the Spanish Pyrenees. Idiazabal is naturally smoked with a hard but edible orange-brown rind. In the old days, Basque shepherds lived in small mountain huts and had no space to store and age their cheeses other than inside their stone chimneys. As it turned out, people enjoyed the smoky flavor that the cheese acquired from aging inside the chimneys, and Idiazabal spread throughout Spain. Today, Idiazabal is produced in more modern facilities, but the process is still all-natural. The cheese is as delicious as ever, and the quality is more consistent. We love its perfumy bouquet, and rich, buttery flavor and enthusiastically recommend Idiazabal as one of Spain’s greatest cheeses.

 

 Piave Vecchio

Created in 1960 by expert dairy master-producers at Lattebusche in Veneto, Italy, this magnificent cheese is well-known and highly appreciated all over the world. Piave Vecchio (meaning Aged) enhances the already sweet, rich flavor of young Piave through the process of maturing. It has the texture of a young Parmigiano-Reggiano, not crystalline yet nor dry enough for grating, but heading in that direction. It has the toasted walnut character of Gruyere and the caramel-like sweetness of an aged Gouda. Produced entirely from milk from the mountainous part of Veneto, this cheese, served as a table cheese or shredded over polenta, is an ideal choice for anyone who enjoys healthy, all-natural, traditional Northern Italian food.

 

Reggianto Argentina

Argentina is home to endless miles of grazing pastures, where pasture fed cows produce 5,100 million liters of milk per year.

During its 50 years of independence, Argentina became a new home to many Italian farmers, who migrated in order to earn extra money for their families during the off-season. Some chose to stay, but missed their precious Parmigiano Reggiano and began making it locally using traditional methods.

Reggianito means little Reggiano because the wheel has been reduced to 15 lbs. from the enormous 80 lb. drum the Italians produce. The Argentinian wheels are smaller because it was too difficult for oxen to move enormous wheels great distances. Reggianito is cured longer than any other South American hard cheese, resulting in a rich, bountiful flavor. This cheese is slightly saltier than its namesake, but the white crystals in the cheese are not salt grains; they are crystallized free amino acids, which give the cheese its lovely grainy texture. Reggianito is perfect for cooking or grating over pasta. If you like Parmigiano Reggiano, be sure to try the Argentinian version.

Salva

Salva comes from the Italian verb salvare, meaning to save. Crema is the name of a town in the Northern Italian region of Lombardy. (This much is true.) Salva Cremasco – the “saved cheese” from Crema – was initially made with excess milk in late spring or summer, when the herd’s output is most abundant. So the cheese salvaged milk that might otherwise be wasted.

Another theory says that the cheese was originally a by-product, made with the skimmed milk remaining after the cream was removed for butter.

A third tale holds that Crema cheesemakers made Salva to preserve the summer milk when the weather got too warm to make soft cheeses, like Robiola, which wouldn’t last in the heat. Being aged and relatively firm and dry, Salva had more durability.

 San Simon

Surrounded in the west and north by the Atlantic Ocean and mountains from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, Galicia has always been a remote region of Spain. This isolation fostered an ancient cheese culture. Here, the Galacia cows graze on the lush green pastures and bear milk that its people have been making into cheese for generations in the town of Villalba. San Simon is aged two to four weeks, lightly pressed, and then gently smoked for two weeks after leaving the mold. Inside its red, polished brown rind, San Simon has a creamy, buttery, smoky flavor that ranges from mild to piquant. San Simon can be enjoyed with fruit and raw vegetables and is also excellent served with fruity desserts like pies and tarts.

 

 

 Malt Whisky Cheddar

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then English Cheddar has been extremely complemented by every dairy-producing country in the world. This particular luscious, tangy, authentic English Cheddar has an additional allure. It blends sweet Farmhouse Cheddar with a whisper of extra fine single malt Scotch Whisky, giving the cheese a slight smoky bite. The two flavors work together so well, you’ll wonder why all Cheddars don’t come this way. Encased in a protective and attractive black wax, this item makes a very presentable addition to the cheese board.

 

  

Oak Smoked Cheddar

A well-flavoured mature cheddar 12-15 months in age is specially selected to be naturally smoked for 3-4 hours over oak chips from the farm’s woodland. The truckles are cut into 1.5 Kg pieces prior to smoking as this ensures the flavour will infuse throughout the cheese. No artificial flavourings are added.

 

Scamorza

Traditional, creamery, stretched, curd cheese made from cow’s milk. It is smooth and shiny, traditionally made in a money-bag shape. This cheese resembles Provolne. It is rubbery, with a stringy texture and is drier than mozzarella. Sold young, within two or three days of making, it has a bland, milky taste. The smoked version, Scamorza Affumicate is more popular than the plain and is often used in pasta dishes. It is also served with ham, mushrooms or vegetables. The name of this cheese has somewhat macabre overtones: scamozza is an expression in southern Italy which means “beheaded”, it is meant here to describe the cheese’s appearance (tied in a rope bag).

 

The sons of George, Neil and John, have since been producing Kosher cheese for the UK market and are now the leading UK Kosher cheese producers under the Chevington label. Royal George cheeses are the first ever English cheeses to be certified Kosher by the O.U. and the varieties available are Cheddar, Red Leicester and Double Gloucester.

The cheese is Cholov Yisroael and is suitable for Passover. It is made to the very highest of standards to be delicious and flavorsome and was available at Kosherfest 2004 for us to sample for the first time. The launch of Royal George label at Kosherfest is the event of the year for this English Cheesemaker.

Red Leicester is a mellow cheese with a hard, granular texture. It gets its bright red color from the addition of annatto, which is ground achiote seed from the annatto tree. Red Leicester is a rather young cheese, as it is only aged for 10 to 12 weeks. As it ripens, it develops a distinct nuttiness and faint lemony finish that separates it from all other English cheeses.

Cheddar and Claret

Claret is a term used by the English when referring to red wines from the Bordeaux region of France. This cheese (sometimes called “Windsor Red”) blends the wine from France with the cheese from England into a beautiful, mottled cheese. The cheese looks similar to Sage Derby, except the veins that run throughout this cheese are a beautiful, dark red rather than the vivid green of Sage Derby. This cheese has the rich, sharp flavor of cheddar with heady overtones of wine.

 

 

 

Strachitunt

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 Caciotta Nero

 A small cheese from Verona is called a caciotta. Made from either cow’s milk or sheep’s milk, caciottas are handmade treasures whose recipes date back several centuries. This caciotta is bathed in olive oil and tree bark, giving it a dark rind. A handmade specialty item that can be enjoyed both before or after a meal.

 

 

 

 

Boschetto Al Tartufo Cheese

The harmony between the pronounced flavor of glorious white truffles and the delicate sweetness of the tender cow and sheep’s milk paste are just two of the reasons why this cheese was voted one of the best in the 1998 Cheese Show in France. Its shape is round and petite, served in a little basket, and its texture is moist and firm. Serve with dry Italian red wines. A tasty gift for any cheese lover!