I am someone who loves celebration. I love the big ones like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Olympics, but I take any excuse to be festive. St. Patrick’s Day is on its way, and while I’m not Irish, I happily hop on the St. Paddy’s bandwagon, wear my green, cheers my Guinness, and crank my appreciation for all things Irish up to twelve. And that includes, most importantly, Irish cheese!

Coolea is the Irish cheese that we almost always have in our case. It is a gouda style cheese made by Helene and Dick Willems, transplants from the Netherlands to the Derrynasaggart Mountains (say that ten times fast) of West Cork. They use milk from a local herd of Holstein-Friesian cows, and the wheels we carry are made between April and September when the milk is most flavorful. 

Coolea, at around a year and a half old, is almost flaky straight out of the fridge but smooths into fudgy goodness once it is at room temperature. It is absolutely best at room temp, so if you can remember to bring your piece of Coolea out about a half hour before you eat it, you will be rewarded! It has a toffee sweetness, with flavors of toasted hay, hazelnuts, and dark butterscotch. Rich, dark beers are perfect with a piece of Coolea, but if you have a bit of whiskey at hand, I like that even better!

We’ll head a bit north with our next cheese, to the county of Tipperary and the cheesemakers at Cashel. When Louis and Jane Grubb inherited Beechmount Farm in 1979 from Louis’s father, they decided to invest everything they had into buying ninety cows, changing it into a dairy farm. Soon after this purchase, Jane started experimenting with cheesemaking, and in 1984, created Ireland’s first homegrown blue cheese, Cashel Blue. Jane and Louis named the cheese and their creamery after a local historical landmark, the Rock of Cashel, where legend has it, St. Patrick began turning Ireland towards Christianity. Just another reason why this cheese is perfect for the celebration! It also happens to be friggin delicious, with a buttery yellow, creamy paste and round flavor. It tastes of sweet cream, earth, leather, and dark chocolate, with a bit of a tang from the pockets of blue. Crumble this gentle blue over a burger, fold it into grits topped with savory mushrooms, or slice a piece onto a cracker with a dab of jam and a cup of tea for a SNACK.

More recently, Cashel added a sheep’s milk cheese to the lineup: Shepherd’s Store. If you are a part of our monthly cheese club, you received a piece of this staff favorite in your March bag! We’ve really been on a Shepherd’s Store kick recently – I mixed it into a batch of pesto, Liz grated it over her most recent mac and cheese, Susan keeps a wedge in her fridge at all times … we can’t get enough! It tastes like brown butter, pine nuts, and toasted bread with the gentle sweetness of warm spices. If you’re in the mood to cook any traditional Irish dishes this St. Patrick’s Day, add chunks to Irish soda bread, grate over shepherd’s pie or colcannon, or boxty or really anything with a potato, or just eat the cheese alone and cheers yourself for being so good at buying cheese.

For the love of cheese,
Kiri

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