Cheese! Glorious Cheese!

As you could probably tell from my previous beer purchases, I've been hitting the local Whole Foods market quite often. There is one right across the street from the train station I take to work, which makes it easy to stop by on my way home and pick up a few veggies, cheeses, and whatnot. The first cheese I've picked up is this:


Coastal English cheddar (from Ford Farm in Dorset, England)! They had a few wedges out on display and the texture and smell just oozed delicious, so I picked up a small wedge. It's a very mature cheddar that has quite a kick to it, but the most notable thing for me was the fact that it had little bits of crunchy goodness in it! I originally thought this was salt (as the cheese is fairly salty), but apparently it is calcium crystals - an alleged unique property of this cheese.

Very crumbly compared to your garden variety chedder, but the taste has much more impact. It was almost a little too "stinky" for the fiance, so I got to enjoy it mostly on my own (and it went perfectly with a glass of bitter or sauvignon blanc). Out of the cheeses that I've bought myself, it's one of the best I can recall (as I've bought some very crappy cheeses before... other people always seemed to have much better luck than me). Highly recommended if you like the cheddar.

Moscato d'Asti and another beer

So, one of our favorite drinks of late is Moscato d'Asti - it's a carbonated white muscat wine, most suitable for dessert. It's very sweet, though not as syrupy as its carbonation-less cousin. With 7% alcohol, it's about as strong as a strong beer, but given its sweetness (and the relatively small bottles it tends to come in) you'll rarely ever drink enough to get more than a slight buzz (which are both the reasons why my fiance likes it).


We picked up a bottle of Nivole Moscato d'Asti from (yet again) the local Whole Foods market and it was very satisfying. It has a clear muscat flavor that isn't overwhelmingly sweet and the flavor is crisp with only a soft aftertaste. While I generally don't like many dessert wines, I'm finding that the Moscato d'Asti is what wine coolers want to be when they grow up.




In addition to the Moscato d'Asti, there was a bottle of beer that caught my attention, simply because the label claimed it was "The World's Oldest Brewery." I picked up the bottle of Weihenstaphaner (Hefeweissbier Dunkel - it comes in a lighter version, too) and took it home. Lo and behold, according to Wikipedia, it *is* indeed the world's oldest operating brewery. Brewed at Weihenstephan Abbey (established in 1040!!! ...although there are some indications that brewing started as early as 768), it is a Bavarian beer (I'll have to ask my German friend to see what the locals think of it). Personally, I enjoyed it. It wasn't as distinctive as the Franziskaner in my opinion, but was definitely smoother - sweet going in, but leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. Given that it's a dark hefeweiss beer, it's a bit on the heavy side, so a single bottle will likely weigh you down if you are drinking it with heavy foods.