Published August 3, 2015

Create a Cheese Board

There are no rules here.  Have fun and choose cheeses that you and your company will enjoy.  A few ideas....

1. Play with textures and milk types 
Creating a variety of flavors and textures makes for an interesting board and often can be quite good looking. 

2. Build a flight of one type of cheese
This is a fun way of exploring the differences between cheeses that usually are considered the same.  Blue cheese is a fun example here.  There are a vast array of cheeses that fall into this category.  Choose three blues with different textures, intensity or milks.

• Dunbarton Blue - cow milk from Wisconsin.  Sweet cheddary taste with a bit of blue bite
• Gorgonzola Piccante - cow milk from Italy.  Nice and moldy with a great fudgy texture
• Avalanche Midnight Blue - goat milk from Colorado.  A very approachable goat blue. Tangy and crumbly.

3. Explore the different cheeses of one country or region. 

CIAO! Italian Cheese Flight
How about an Italian cheese board?  North to south, Italy's cheeses run the gamut.  Any number of combinations would make for a real crowd pleasing and totally interesting spread.
• Parmigiano-Reggiano - cow milk.  Sweet and nutty with a little bit of spice
• Pecorino Toscano - sheep milk.  Quintessential Italian table cheese.  Barnyardy and crumbly
• Taleggio - cow milk from Lombardy. Gooey and slightly funky

Merry Old England

These cow milk cheeses represent three distinct styles and are delicious examples of the great cheese making tradition of Great Britain
• Appleby's Double Gloucester
• Colston-Basset Stilton
• Gorwydd Caerphilly

Cheeses of the Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is home to some fantastic cheese makers representing a vast array of styles.  The choices and combinations are almost limitless.  Here is a great NW holiday board.
• Beecher’s Yule Kase
• Rogue River Blue
• Portland Creamery Cranberry Orange Chèvre