SFGate - Cheese Course

For several months now, I've been stalking an Italian cheese called Lou Bergier Pichin. I've purchased it several times, written enthusiastic tasting notes, and then discovered that nobody else carried it beyond the store that sold it to me. Finally,...

The last time I wrote about a cheese from Moliterno, a village in southern Italy, it wasn't from Moliterno. It was made in Sardinia. Moliterno is in the region of Basilicata, on the border with Calabria and Campagna, and has long been known among the area's...

They say that 90 percent of cheesemaking is cleaning up, and I believe it after watching Maureen Cunnie produce cottage cheese. Cunnie is the cheesemaker for Cowgirl Creamery, and I spent a morning with her recently at the original Point Reyes dairy (the...

The Studer family has been making cheese in the Swiss canton of Thurgau, near the German border, for three generations. The dairy initially produced Emmentaler, then transitioned to Appenzeller, both centuries-old Swiss cheeses with tightly controlled...

Fine cheeses from Belgium have made inroads in the Bay Area in recent years, and I've been happy with almost every one I've tried. For years we had only Chimay to represent what Belgian cheesemakers could do. Now we are seeing beauties like the blue-veined...

A new cheese from the Wisconsin creamery that makes Pleasant Ridge Reserve is big news in my world. Pleasant Ridge is a rock star, the only cheese to have won Best of Show three times at the American Cheese Society's annual competition, and probably the only...

A new cheese from the Wisconsin creamery that makes Pleasant Ridge Reserve is big news in my world. Pleasant Ridge is a rock star, the only cheese to have won Best of Show three times at the American Cheese Society's annual competition, and probably the only...

Last fall I had the opportunity to visit a tiny family-run creamery in the Valsesia, a stunningly beautiful valley in Italy's Piedmont region, near the Swiss border, where cows and goats probably outnumber the residents. The dairy I toured - La Giunca in...

Last fall I had the opportunity to visit a tiny family-run creamery in the Valsesia, a stunningly beautiful valley in Italy's Piedmont region, near the Swiss border, where cows and goats probably outnumber the residents. The dairy I toured - La Giunca in...