Plan B Forum

This 40-year-old block of cheddar cheese is being sold for $10 per ounce, after being discovered in a Milwaukee grocery store refrigerator where it had lain about forgotten for decades.



73-year-old Edward Zahn was making preparations to close down his Z's Cheese Shoppe, when he came across some abandoned crates in the back of the walk-in cooler.

Within the wooden boxes he found a stash of old eastern Wisconsin cheddar cheese, aged 28, 34 and 40.

'It just got overlooked,' Zahn said of the 40-year-old variety. 'It looks just like the others except it's just a lot sharper. It's got character.'

Zahn sold his lucrative find to Ken McNulty, who owns the Wisconsin Cheese Mart in Milwaukee, for an undisclosed price, along with the rest of his inventory.

McNulty now plans to offer up the 40-year-old block at a tasting event dubbed the 'Ultimate Cheddar Flight' on October 6, in which cheeses aging from one-year-old will be sampled.

Believed to be the oldest of its kind to ever go on sale to the public, the cheese is likely to be the star of the show and has a price tag to match - McNulty is demanding $10 per ounce.

Cheese is often sold by the pound, but McNulty plans to sell the oldest cheese by the ounce so more people can get a taste.

'Because there's so little, we didn't want to sell blocks of it on the Web,' he told The Associated Press. 'We just wanted people to sample it.'

He said an ounce would be just enough for two people to nibble on. He suggests sampling the vintage cheese by itself, not with a cracker or other food that would compete with the flavor.

McNulty said he has around 20 pounds of the heavily aged cheese, meaning that he stands to make $3200 from it if he manages to shift the whole lot.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z25Gdja8KS

My Vast Cheese Knowledge (More here)

1. My favorite grocery store joke goes like this. A man walks up to the register and unloads his basket. He slaps down some Hungry Man TV dinners, single serving ice cream tubs, a toilet paper four-pack, a single serving of macaroni salad, and one apple. The cashier looks at his groceries and says, “You must be single.”

The man looks up and says, “Can you tell because of what I’m buying?”

“No. I can tell because you’re ugly.”


2. We sell the most string cheese on Sunday nights.


3. Because of their longer commutes, suburbanites have less free time. They’re also more likely to have expensive nail jobs that they don’t want ruined by crumbling up Gorgonzola. The store will charge them on average about a dollar extra per pound to pour Gor gonzola from a five-pound bag into small tubs so that they don’t have to touch the cheese, so that all they have to do is open the plastic container and pour it into their salad bowls, dress the salads, toss, and consume. A dollar per pound so that besides the cow’s in testinal and mammary parts, not to mention the liberal amount of microorganisms in the blue cheese mold, the only things that will touch their Gorgonzola will be made of steel and plastic.

The company we buy the crumbled Gorgonzola from charges us about 50 cents extra a pound. Sounds like a bum deal until you remember that the cows work for free.



4. I am working in the cheese department with my back to the counter. I hear a man and a woman talking about cheese at the cheese case.

“Do you want to get a Camembert?” the man asks.

“No.”

“How about some Oregon Blue?”

“You know what I like?” she says. “I like the Gorgonzola that is already crumbled.”

Silence.

The woman speaks again. “By the look on your face I can tell that you think that’s not very good.”

“It’s just that what I like isn’t the same as what you like. It’s not better or worse, it’s just taste.”

From this I can tell that the two of them haven’t been dating very long.



5. A man walks up to the cheese case and says, “I was in Spain a month ago and I had this really good cheese called Queso. Do you have it?”


6. A woman walks up to the case and says, “I was in France a year ago and we had this really good cheese called Fromage. Do you have it?”


7. Women say, “I can’t find the cream cheese.”

Men say, “If I were looking for the cream cheese, where would I find it?”



8. Three men walk up to the counter. One of them points to the Flora Nell blue cheese and says, “Look! That cheese is named after me!” He looks up at me. “Is this good?”

“The Flora Nell? Yes, it is good.”

“Oh. Flora Nell. I thought it was Flora Neil. You should have said Flora Neil. You could’ve gotten a sale.”

“I thought your name was Nell,” I say.

“I am looking for an Italian cheese,” says one of the other men. “It was creamy—”

“Fontina?” I ask.

“No.”

“Was it a brie?”

“No.”

“Taleggio?”

“Yes! Fellatio!”

“Taleggio?” I say again.


9. I am trying to sell goat cheese with Oregon hazelnuts and Frangelico. I offer two women small samples. Their eyes close and their heads tip back slightly. “Oh my God! It’s like cheese ice cream! Where can I find it?”

I show them where it’s located in the case. Both of them pick it up and put it in their baskets.

A man walks up and is browsing the cheese case.

“Do you want to try something fabulous while you’re browsing?” I ask. The man nods and I hand him a sample of the Frangelico cheese.

He puts the sample in his mouth as I describe the cheese to him. His face suddenly turns sour. “It’s sweet,” he says, as if I’ve just given him a sample of his own semen. He spits the cheese into his palm and walks away in disgust.


11. I offer the old woman with the mustache a sample of the French triple cream Delice de Bourgogne.

“I love this creamy cheese,” she says. “Hard cheese really stops up my bowels.”

I don’t think I’ve heard her right. “I’m sorry. Hard cheese what?”

The woman licks the taster spoon and smiles at me. “IT STOPS UP MY BOWELS!”

“Oh,” I say. “Interesting.”

“After World War Two,” she continues, “I went out and bought a huge block of Tillamook cheese. During the war we couldn’t buy that stuff without stamps. Anyway I ate the whole thing. I’ve never been the same since.”

Two hours later an old man walks up to the case and I give him a sample of the Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. “That is so good,” he says.

“Isn’t that amazing?” I say.

I give him a sample of Shaft’s Bleu Vein.

“This is so tempting,” he says as he puts the cheese in his mouth. “But I shouldn’t be eating cheese.”

“Why not?” I ask. Why do I always ask?

“Because it makes my skin break out right here.” The man points to the space between his very bushy eyebrows.

Two women approach the cheese case with two children. They taste some eight-month Manchego from the counter and I offer them some Delice de Bourgogne. The older woman loves it. “This is so good!” she says. “Where is this in the case?”

I point it out for her.

“Boy, that is good cheese. How much salt is in that cheese?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably a lot. You know, your best bet is Swiss cheese or a reduced sodium cheese.”

“I’m a diabetic and on chemo,” the woman says. “I’m not supposed to have a lot of salt. Those reduced salt cheeses are usually pretty awful.”

“I know,” I say.

For a cheese-lovers, a Somerset cheddar or a variety made from donkey milk may not hold as much appeal as a mature brie.





But in fact both have found their way onto the world's most expensive cheese board.

It costs £841.10 and includes cheese made from Serbian donkeys, and a cheddar contained gold leaf and French truffles.

But the real cost of the curdling culinary extravaganza is more than a £2,000 once the price of the board it is served on and all the accompaniments, including jellies and preserves, are totted up.

That breaks down to a £50 a mouthful.

The board was revealed at the Frome Cheese and Agricultural Show in Somerset today, which showcases the best cheeses from around the world.

The recession-busting platter is served on a solid silver cheese tray, worth almost £600, and a handcrafted wooden cheese board costing £120.

A £445 solid silver cheese knife and scoop will help the smooth delivery of £32 of ash-encrusted goats’ cheese onto a £10 artisan Swedish crispbread.

Abbaye de Belloc, an unpasteurised sheep’s cheese traditionally made by Benedictine monks in the Pays Basque region of France, is also included on the platter.

Chairman of the Global Cheese Awards Nigel Pooley is not expecting a rush of takers for the expensive platter. But he does hope it will showcase the art of cheesemaking.

Mr Pooley said: 'We had initially thought of camel, horse and moose cheese, so we could aim for the World’s Most Expensive Cheese from around the Globe in a whole new sense. Maybe that’s one for next year.'

This 40-year-old block of cheddar cheese is being sold for $10 per ounce, after being discovered in a Milwaukee grocery store refrigerator where it had lain about forgotten for decades.

It costs £841.10 and includes cheese made from Serbian donkeys, and a cheddar contained gold leaf and French truffles.

I remember reading a few years ago about a 1400 year old piece of cheese being found in Ireland, and wondered if anyone had actually tasted it.. I started researching and learned a little bit about old cheese, but i learned far more about "Bog Butter" , which was made and stored in Scotland,and Ireland from about 2000 years ago until the eighteenth century.

Peat bogs, due to their acidity, cold temperatures,and anaerobic conditions,are excellent for preserving, not only butter and cheese, but also human remains.

It turned out that the cheese may actually have been butter; no one is really sure. Helen Lucy Burke tasted the cheese at the Roscrea Heritage Center, located in an old castle in Tipperary, which stores old cheeses. She described it as cheesy, having an unpleasant but not revolting taste, granular, and like a dried out Wensleydale cheese. I've never had a Wensleydale cheese, but they are described as crumbly, and only good when moist. The aftertaste was described as a "sour cloying,sensation".

Bog butter is waxy,hard, and yellow-white. It's described as rancid tasting - not very surprising.
Approximate dates of burial are determined by the container the butter is buried in. Analysis of the 'butter has shown that while some"butters' are made from dairy products, others are made from animal fats.

There are several theories as to why the butter was buried. Theories include general food preservation, preservation as a means of enhancing flavor, and protecting valued food supplies from invaders. Much of the butter was flavored with garlic, and garlic butter was a special food, usually eaten during Lent.

There are several theories as to why the butter was buried.