By Michael Hastings
Media General News Service

For anyone who hasn’t noticed, cheese has come a long way in this country in recent years.

Americans not only eat more cheese, but many are eating better cheese, often produced in the United States. And makers of specialty cheese are churning out great stuff from coast to coast in places you might not expect.

North Carolina, for instance.

Liz Thorpe, a vice president for Murray’s Cheese in New York, made a foray into the state to check out some dairies and their cheese, and she liked what she saw and tasted.

It wasn’t long ago that Americans who wanted specialty cheese, the premium or really good stuff, looked to Europe. Until the late 1970s, Thorpe said, cheese in the United States pretty much came out of a factory. Most of it was more serviceable than spectacular.

Then a small number of adventurous Americans, influenced by Europeans, started making cheese. Such brands a Laura Chenel and Cypress Grove have since become famous among cheese lovers. As these companies have grown, a second and third wave of cheese-makers have come along, starting small and usually finding a market for distinctive cheese with character.

“There are so many good cheeses now, it’s hard for us to decide who to buy from,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe cited such cheese from Goot Essa, River’s Edge and Jasper Hill farm as some of her current favorites.

She is working on a book, due out next year, tentatively titled The Cheese and I. It will have a series of essays and tasting notes on different kinds of cheese.

“I’ll have an essay about grass-fed animals and the role that weather plays in cheese making, and that’s totally about my trip to North Carolina,” she said.

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