Rogue River Blue is an organic cow's milk blue from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon, in the Rogue River Valley. It's the wheel that beat every European cheese for top honors at the World Cheese Awards in 2019 and became the first American cheese to do it. The wheels are aged for nine to eleven months, then wrapped in Syrah grape leaves from the same river valley that have been soaked in locally distilled pear brandy. The paste is dense and semi-soft, closer to dense than crumbly, and the veining is even because the curd is pierced during aging so the Penicillium roqueforti can breathe through the wheel. When you open a fresh piece, the blue looks quiet at first because the wheel has been in cryovac, and then the veins slowly deepen and turn properly blue as they hit the air. On the palate it opens sweet and chocolatey, moves into a confident blue bite in the middle, and finishes long and rich in a Stilton direction rather than a sharp Roquefort one. This one is worth the splurge, right in the sweet spot where fruit, cocoa, and blue all sit down together.
