When we arrived in Costa Rica, we spent our first week at the beach in Puerto Viejo. The thing about the beach in Costa Rica, or anywhere, is that it’s hot! A little tricky for me to enjoy a nice glass of wine when I’m sweating so I usually seek other options. A great alternative was the box of Sangria that we found with such a fun label. Then as we continued to look in the grocery store, we came across a new brand of Costa Rican cheese. It was settled, we could still do some wine and cheese in more of a tropical way!
I tasted my first blue cheese from Rogue Creamery, back when we lived in San Francisco, CA. There was a terrific corner cheese shop that carried it as well as having events where Rogue’s sales representatives would come in to educate and give out samples. Being new to the West Coast then, I just figured Oregon was close by and I could take a quick trip out to see their facilities. Well time passed and we moved away from CA before I ever had a chance to get out to Oregon. I loved those blue cheeses and had this draw to go see where they were made.
My second class at The Art of Cheese was the Cheesemaking Bootcamp. We covered brining your cheese, piercing a blue cheese, aging your cheese with rubs, washes and leaf wraps, an introduction to alpine and swiss cheeses as well as the process of cheddaring. For your sanity, and mine, we’ll be limiting todays entry to the cheddaring process and the cheeses we tasted that day. Did you know that there’s a separate process involved to make cheddar cheese than other cheeses, well you’ll get to learn all about it today!
We visited Asheville, NC, a few weeks back with our friend Doris. While we were coming up with ideas for the trip, I searched for local cheese shops. We were staying in Fletcher which is about a 20 minute drive outside of Asheville. Imagine our surprise when we found Looking Glass Creamery on that list and it was only a few minutes away from our AirBnB. We chose to go there Saturday in the early afternoon. The timing couldn’t have better as the sky opened up into thunderstorms just as we walked into the shop.
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.
For this week’s Wine And Cheese Friday entry we’ll be featuring our first pairing during this trip to Costa Rica. We love visiting Costa Rica, but have found it challenging to find a wine and cheese selection that coincides with our palates. Wine can be found in local grocery and liquor stores here in Pérez Zeledón, but the selection is usually limited. Sweet wines are more popular here, whereas we prefer something drier and more complex, and most wines we find are from Chile and Argentina. Since we’ve visited three times previously, we’ve found our staple brands to enjoy on a regular basis, but are always hoping for something new and interesting. Imagine our surprise when we came across a Sicilian brand that had been previously featured on #WiningHourChat! We made a mental note and went back a week later to pick up the bottle of Stemmari Nero D’Avola.
Maria and Neil started wineandcheesefriday.com to learn more about wine in 2014. We’ve visited wineries, and creameries across the world to learn as much as we can about these two wonderful delacacies. We❤️🍷&🧀
