So here’s the deal: The first person to rock this cheese trivia can claim the tickets tomorrow and take their seat at the grilled cheese and beer bar. Leave your answers as comments. The first dude with the most right answers, wins. Here we go…

1. Place the following cheeses in order of their fat content (from most to least fatty): sheep, cow, goat.
2. You’ve found mold growing on a piece of cheddar in your fridge, should you a) toss the whole thing out b) cut off the moldy bit and eat the rest c) scarf it mold and all.
3. Which of these cheese is not traditionally made in the town it is named after: Roquefort, Stilton or Gorgonzola.
4. What is the most popular cheese in France (per kilos sold)?
5. True of false, there are cheese produced in Italy, France and Spain whose ripeness is determined by maggots or mites being present?

l’Alt Urgell y la Cerdanya (Urgelia for short)

Like many other types of epicurean ephemera, a cheese ascends the ranks of cool when it is reminiscent of something else. Urgelia is an unpasteurized, washed rind, semi soft cows milk cheese from the Spanish Pyrenees. The cheeses that most people think of when they think ‘Spain’ are harder, drier sheeps milk cheeses, and strong salt goats milk cheeses. Cows are a bit of a rarity.
The pate (the part you eat) on this little stinker is pleasantly elastic, with lots of little eyes (air bubbles). When Urgelia has some age to it, the smell from the washed rind will be a bit pungent, evocative of past prime fruits and rubber boots. Don’t be intimidated: the flavor lies somewhere in between Morbier and Gruyere: sweet, slightly meaty, with a lingering sting.
Grape: Cava, a cheaper than most sparkling wine form Spain.
Grain: St. Barnadus Witte

Hook’s 10 year Cheddar

Americans are turning out more artisinal cheeses than ever these days, and most of them follow a very traceable trajectory in terms of style: the copycat. Not to poopoo the movement, it’s very important for American dariy-people to become cheese makers, but most of the time the cheeses made are not so removed replicas of cheeses from Europe. Is cheese that is “in the style” of Epoisses anywhere near as good as it’s o.g. version? Not really, but at least we can sleep better knowing we’ve reduced our carbon footprint on the world.
Hook’s cheddars are a fantastic example of an outstanding American cheese. Yeah, cheddar came from England by way of France by way of Rome, but American dairy farmers have been making a distinctive version of this ancient cheese for a very long time. Unlike English cheddars which can be much more grainy and grassy, American cheddars have an undeniable sweetness and comforting quality that straddles the entire genre from Tillamook in Oregon to Grafton in Vermont.
Did we mention this one has been babysat since 1997? God. The cheese tastes as epic as the heaven’s gate suicide, the departure of Our Princess, and the heaviest line item veto slick Willy ever conjured post-cigar. It tastes just like Cheddar. To the Extreme.
Grape: Pinot Noir
Grain: Saison DuPont

Pascal Bellevue’s “St. Maure.”

There is a new influx of French cheeses being imported to the states that are all pretty much perfect. If you ever see the words Affineur or Affineuse on signage at your favorite cheese store buy, buy, buy. We briefed you on the logistics of the cheese-ager (Affineur) a few months back when we told you about Chantal Plasse’s transcendental Roquefort, L’Aigle Noir. Basically the Affineur is your absolutel guerentee to perfect cheese thousands of miles from where its produced. Dudes check out the best cheeses, snatch them when they’re young and mature the cheeses to perfection under watchful eyes and lots of turning.
Mr. Bellevue’s St. Maure de Tourainne, is a particular beauty because it’s raw. Any cheese aged for less than 60 days must be pastuerised, according to the dummies at the FDA. Most examples fo goats cheeses like the belle to your right are meant to be enjoyed on the younger side so you’ll probably never find a raw specimen of this type of cheese. Usually the word Raw makes many would be chesefiends freak a little: it sounds strong and dangerous. With younger cheeses like this Loire Valley Goat, the pasteurisaztion robs the milk, and thus the cheese, of its beautiful subtleties. This cheese is very delicate, and you can taste the grass the goat ate, and the dirt that grew the grass.
Grape: Sancerre
Grain: Cantillion Geuze

Bleu De Bocage

The last on the lineup is another from Pascal’s caves. It’s also unpasteurised and it come from a small spattering of blues made with Goat’s milk. The goat milk blue is a tricky subject, and usually the results don’t marry the sting of penecilium roqueforti, with the acidity of an aged french goat’s cheese. This cheese is the perfect conciliation of those two vibes, the mold meets the goat on equal footing with a crumbly ivory pate and a finish with real staying power. This cheese is kind of invincible. In most cases when a blue is turning a little pink around the gills it means it’s walking towards ammonia avenue, but Bocage was totally perfect: tart, salty, vivid.
Grape: Late Harvest Banyuls
Grain: Lost Abbey’s 10 Commandments

While we Hot Knives are mostly proselytizing beer and vegan food, we occasionally regress into fru-fru indulgences on the lactic/enological side. The golden hours portrait above was one of those moments where our collective epicurean id utterly trounced our vegan superego. What you see on your screen is what’s known as a perfect marriage between two fermented fiends. The beverage is a Muscadet produced at the Chateau Mercrediere, a castle in the Loire Valley. The cheese is L’Aigle Noir, quite literally the best Roquefort in the world.
Roquefort, a bleu veined ewe’s milk cheese from Roquefort-suz-Souzon, is widely known as one of the Kings of cheese. Of the 500 plus cheeses made in France, this blue bully is certainly one of the most recognizable to the connoisseur and the layman alike. Unfortunately, as with the other Kings of cheese: Parmigiano Reggiano, Brie de Meaux, and Stilton, Roquefort has been commodified and redefined as tepid sour crumbles that lay atop crappy salads. Like the other big three; it has become a supermarket cheese which obscured its epic history, and its goddamn transcendental flavor.
Like many French cheeses, Roquefort’ origin is tied to a quaint little story involving a shepherd and a lady. The young shepherd, so the story goes, settles down at the mouth of a cave to eat his lunch of rye bread, ewe’s milk cheese and presumably booze of some kind. Between bites he spies a beautiful girl off in the fields. Substituting one desire for another, he runs after her leaving his food to the elements. The elements somehow combined the mold which grew on the bread with the fresh sheep’s cheese and three months later, after botching his new relationship, the shepherd returned to find the first piece of Roquefort.

The wedge gracing our blog has been hand made by the second smallest (of eight) Roquefort collective in France, led in name and blood by Jaques Carles, a 96 year old hard-ass. True to form the rot that impregnates the multitudinal crevasses of this bight white cheese is grown on loafs of rye bread. Every other producer uses lab cultured penicilium roqueforti to make their wheels blue. Carles’ Roquefort is widely know as the best available outside France, the smallest producer Le Vieux Berger doesn’t export, but the one we wolfed down the other day is even more special than his usual fare. L’Aigle Noir is a collaboration between Carles, and another type of French artisan named Chantal Plasse. Chantal is an Affineuse, which means her calling in life is aging cheeses. She selects the cream of Carles’ crop at an early stage, and then baby-sits the cheese to mature-perfection.
The most amazing thing about a great cheese, like a great wine or beer, is when it can occupy your mouth and mind for a significant about of time. A good Roquefort should take a good thirty seconds to a minute to go through the motions in your mouth. This one ranges from sweet and supple, to smokey, to sour, with a long salted butter finish. Unlike most other blues in production all over the world, Roquefort’s power lies in its perfect balance between strength and subtlety.
How does the Black Eagle taste? Platonic.
The wine was good too.
Grain: Three Philosophers
Grape: Muscadet, Sauternes, or Port

SLO Chai Cream Ale

Our last run-in with a botanical infused beer wasn’t pretty, so it was with great skepticism and courage that we plucked this San Louis Obispo Chai Cream Ale off the shelf. One of us was on vacation up the Central Coast and it just seemed wrong not to sample the local goods. This brew comes from something called, quite directly, Central Coast Brewing. With the exception of the exceedingly mediocre brews made by Firestone, California’s Central Valley lacks standouts from anywhere south of Mendocino. So we crossed our fingers and took a sip. Truth be told, the stuff wasn’t half bad — maybe more like 10% bad. The chai absolutely rules; the spicy head on this beer is what all pumpkin-tinged gimmicky fall beers try to be. The mix of cinnamon, mace and chai are followed by a slight acrid bite, tangy pear or apple. It’s the taste of an incredible spiced cider. Unfortunately, it’s not a cider, it’s masquerading as a cream ale, but the watery mouthfeel and light viscosity are off-putting when you expect something frothier, richer. The bubbles taste like a soy latte where they should taste like a buttery capuchino. Still, it beats the pumpkin shit any day.

Dairy Pairy: Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk
Soundtrack: Cornershop’s Hand Cream for a Generation

Oregon Blue

In mapping the human genome, scientists have yet to uncover why humans like smoked foods so damn much. Smoked almonds, barbecue sauce, bacon bits. It’s primordial. We like fire. This partly explains why whenever one of us makes a trip to Northern California we have to buy a hunk of Rogue Creamery’s Oregon Blue and bring it back to the clan. This light, white and only mildy veined blue is supposedly the first artisan blue cheese to be made on the West Coast. It’s also the only fucking cheese we know that gets smoked for 16 hours over Northwest-grown hazelnut shells. The process leads to an excessively soft but crumbly cheese that has less of a mold bite and more of a caramel lick, making it great for folding into hot dishes without destroying any delicate flavors; the funk is kept under wraps. Best of all, like all Rogue creamery products you can rest assured that your creamy craving is being met by sustainable, cow-friendly farming practices. It may not be the stankiest blue in town, but it’s the most bacon-like.
Grain: Rogue’s Russian Imperial Stout 2007
Grape: Cardinal Zin

Gubbeen

Gubbeen was one of those Zarathustras that will forever leave a mark on our palate’s memory. It’s a washed rind cheese, meaning that after its been formed into a wheel it gets dunked in brine and salt over and over again, so it has a discernable stank to it. A relatively young cheese at 2-3 weeks affinage, it has a velvety semi firm pate, and a meaty flavor that packs a serious secondary bite. Starts off gamey ends like a Protestant shepherd’s rubber thigh high in your face: a slight sting, a little sour, but strangely invigorating.
Grain: La Chouffe “IPA”
Grape: Laboure Roi Pinot Noir (2005)

Crozier Blue

One of two prominent blues from Ireland, Crozier is the only sheeps milk blue made in Ireland, or the surrounding U.K. for that matter. It is surprisingly sweet and mild. If you’re a beginner with blue cheese this will be totally doable, and if you’re a lover of brutal blue bite, this one might leave you alone in a cranberry bog. However, there are very nice notes of fresh cream, nuts, and hay in the finish, which emphasizes that this cheese is made by a very small herd of sheep on a very small farm.
Grain: Sierra Nevada Bigfoot
Grape: Meyer’s Family Port