Cato Corner Cheese

Cato Corner Farm in Colchester is a working farm with a herd of beautiful fawn-brown Jersey cows. They make artisanal raw milk cheese which you can taste and buy in their cheese room Friday- Sunday. I recently visited with my family and left with a selection of 5 cheeses which we enjoyed as a two-part picnic while visiting some local wineries.

At Priam Vinyard we had a sweet course which included the Womanchego, Black Ledge Blue and Hooligan cheeses. The naturally sweet and buttery character of Jersey milk was a nice match for seasonal berries, honey and a plum jam. Their blue cheese is milder than many with only a subtle sharpness making it a great selection for a dessert cheese board. Hooligan is a washed rind (read: stinky) cheese with a sharp bite which might traditionally be served on a ploughman's plate with charcuterie, pickles, and beer; but it's funkiness was also well-tempered by the local honey we squeezed atop it. Womanchego is made in the tradition of Spanish Manchego with the exception that it is made with cow, instead of the traditional ewe's, milk. Like Manchego, this cheese is a great buy because it can be used in both sweet an savory applications. Nuts and cheese are usually a great match, but I especially liked these cheeses with the almonds we had alongside the fruit. They brought out a toasty-note I might have otherwise missed.

The yellow dot is the top of a tiny squeeze-bear of honey

Later in the day, we had a selection of olives, charcuterie a cheese which were a natural match for the Aged Bloomsday and Vivace we selected. The aged Bloomsday might have been my favorite cheese of the day: waxy and just shy of crumbling with toasty, buttery flavors and a decidedly savory finish. The Vivace is in the style of Swiss and Italian Alpine cheeses and has a lipsmacking almost brothy finish which was a perfect match for some marinated olives.