Neil and I have both made cheese before but who would pass up a chance to go to Hawaii for a Cheesemaking Retreat? We first made cheese from a kit we purchased online and it came out great, https://wineandcheesefriday.com/making-goat-cheese/. Our friends didn’t even believe it was handmade. The second time we used the kit, the results weren’t so spectacular so we took time off from making cheese.
When we have visited Costa Rica in the past, we noticed that most of the cheese here falls into the “fresh category” but never really put much thought into why that might be. We usually just chalked it up to which foods are popular here and that a wedge of hard, funky cheese didn’t really fit in. Once we discovered the Monte Azul brand of cheese as something more relatable to our palates and one that was possible to pair with wine, we found out the information we had been missing. Cheese is different in Costa Rica for good reason! It just so happened that Monte Azul was near where we were staying so we arranged for a visit there. Our entry will share the things we learned that day.