28 year old cheddar is pretty sharp!

Cafe Society
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With both children returned (albeit briefly) to stately Mercotan Manor for the holidays, tonight we took the opportunity to open up the official Cheese of Farewell, which this year was a 28 year old cheddar purchased earlier this fall at a meager $6/ounce.

An attempt to obtain some 40 year old cheddar at $10/ounce sadly came to naught. Demand for these extraordinary cheeses was too great. Both cheeses had recently been discovered in Oconto, Wisconsin, in the back of a cooler in a local cheese shop. Subsequent publicity had caused quite the international stir. But my good Mrs. did lay hands on a whole 8 oz. (in two packages) of this 1984 vintage (produced the same year my eldest daughter arrived on the scene!)

We all sampled the cheese plain, slightly warmed up but still with a bit of refrigerator chill on it. No crackers, no accompaniment.

Since there were 5 of us, I created 5 little cubes of cheese. It tried to crumble when you even glanced at it, but the shards were at least large enough to consume separately.

So smooth! So creamy! I was amazed. It just melted in our mouths, leaving behind a few little crunchy protein/salt crystal bits. Yet so sharp, and so full of flavor.

I regularly nosh on 6 and 7 year old cheddar, and I’ve had 13 year old cheddar before, and thought that was sharp. This was a new level. The smallest sliver of this stuff delivered an incredibly tasty mouthful of flavor. Yet the smoothness of the cheese kept the mouth from puckering or drying out, like one can get with dryer cheeses.

The first pass of the cheddar cubes was so well-received that it had to be repeated. 5 more tiny cubes, a bit bigger than your standard dice were cut, and distributed, and slowly nibbled and savored.

What to do with the rest? I imagine sprinkling the crumbles on hot, buttered sourdough bread, spread with some extra old marmite. Or maybe alternating a tiny sliver of cheese with a few pomegranite seeds. My ultimate fantasy would be a grilled cheese sandwich with this stuff, but that seems waaaaay too indulgent to be actually carried out.

4 oz. are still wrapped and unbroken, to be saved for perhaps another few years. But the 2 oz of opened stuff won’t be allowed to spoil or languish. A bit will go back with my eldest daughter to her home, to share with her hub, who couldn’t join us. But I will enjoy the rest. Perhaps on a thin wafer of neutronium…

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Wow. Sounds wonderful. I was going to make a comparison to old Scotch’s or wines, but the cheese sounds better. Good story.

3

I’m prepared to offer $25 for an ounce :slight_smile:

4

I’d be drooling, if my mouth weren’t already full of carne asada. I’m all drooled out! But it sounds delicious!

Was this a cheddar MEANT to be aged, or was this a chunk of generic gummint cheese that was just forgotten about in the fridge for half a decade?
'cause now I have a strong urge to go out and get a chunk of decent cheddar and just start preparing to haul it around for the 20 years, lol.

5

What really are those crunchy bits of pain in a well-aged cheddar?

6

Wow, I guess they really don’t get much call for it round those parts.

7

Cue the bloody bouzouki player!

8

Tyrosine. They’re just byproducts of the aging process.

Delicious, delicious byproducts.

Anyway, I’m pretty jealous of your cheese experience! I love a nicely aged cheddar.

9

Not to ask a silly question, but if older cheeses are all that why doesn’t a market exist for setting aside cheeses long term as an investment and making a killing 20 years or more down the line? Keeping a cheese in cool dry place is hardly a major expense.

10

It was a basic cheddar made by a local cheese factory decades ago, for routine ageing and sale.

The local cheese factories of Wisconsin make some damn fine cheddar.

11

my favorite cheeses are aged 5+ years, especially aged gouda. love it, the rich, unfolding taste is amazing.

12

Perhaps the market for twenty year old cheese has been around for less than twenty years.

13

It’s hard to age a cheese that long without it going completely funky, from what I understand. When found, stashed behind some empty boxes in the back of a huge cooler warehouse, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the cheese had to be cut away and tossed, having gone over. But what was left discovered to be dreamy instead of nasty.

At least that’s what I’ve read about this particular find.

14

Now I want me some apple pie.

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Other (true) Midwest discoveries of aged products I know about:

In high school, my friend Gary got a job in the kitchen of a local Ramada Inn in Illinois. He had to clean the top of the large refrigerators one day and found a container at the top, tucked away. He opened it and proceeded to pass out and fall off the ladder. It was lucky he didn’t break any bones. They had to fumigate the kitchen if I recall - Gary had discovered an air-tight container of tuna fish salad that had probably been up there for over six years, if not more. Lesson; tuna salad does not age well - especially if not cooled properly.

Met up with some old Illinois friends back in my 30’s for an impromptu party. One girl had found a bottle of Ripple wine (remember that?) that she had bought when we were all in high school and had hidden in the back of her closet at home. We unscrewed the lid (yes, Ripple doesn’t have corks) and eagerly poured a bit in all of our glasses. Lesson: 20 year old Ripple tastes kind of like vinegar and kerosene, with just a hint of Pine Sol.

So - kudos to you for even trying the Wisconsin cheese! (I would have waited to see other faces before attempting to take a bite.)

16

Was it Springside Cheese in Oconto? I had some 20-year-old from them last spring, and it was dreaaaammmyy. Really bright and sharp, yet still somewhat creamy even with the crunchy bits.

I really like that place. My aunt from Green Bay turned me onto it; it’s one of the few places that has fresh curds every day.

17

No, it was Z’s Cheese Shop in Oconto.

Article here

18

Wow. If I find a chunk of cheddar (or really, anything else) hidden in the back of my fridge after a couple of years, it goes in the trash. It’s a bit weird to think that milk products can survive for almost 30 years and be edible.

19

Sounds cool. There’s a sub culture for just about everything out there. Cheese agers. Pretty neat.

20

Not much ca–It’s the single most popular cheese in the world! :eek: