Hook's 15 Year Aged Cheddar comes out of Mineral Point, Wisconsin, where Hook's Cheese Company has been quietly making some of the most serious aged cheddars in the country. Fifteen years of cellar aging is rarefied territory, and very few cheesemakers in the world are even attempting it. The paste is intensely flaky. After that long in the cellar the cheese has lost a serious amount of moisture to the angel's share, so it doesn't slice cleanly, it breaks into sharp little shards under the knife, shot through with tyrosine crystals. On the palate it leads with a really bright acidity, the calling card of a properly aged Hook's, then pulls into toasted hazelnut and browned butter through the middle, and finishes with a long, sharp savory bite that holds on the palate well past the swallow. This is one of those cheeses where the years are doing real work. The concentration, the crystal crunch, the acidic snap, none of it exists in a younger cheddar. If you're chasing the most intense expression of American cheddar, this is right in the sweet spot.
