Hi everybody! My name is Chris and I write the Artisan & Farmstead cheese blog Wedge in the Round: http://wedgeintheround.com/

Someday I hope to own my own shop. For now I eat, write, eat, eat and write a little then eat more cheese. I enjoy shooting pics of cheese, food and wine in general.

I'll be blogging my impressions of Jasper Hill's new cheese here at Culture. I cannot say thank you enough to Culture and Jasper Hill for selecting me to be a tester this year.

Three generous wedges arrived yesterday and I'm about to dive in for the first time. I'll let you know my first impressions soon.

Cheers!

Chris

Culture's editorial team is in Brooklyn at our designers' office reading over every page of the summer issue to make sure everything is in order before we go to print. Big thanks to Red Herring for hosting us once again, and another big thanks to Monica Byrne, the awesome local chef who made us lunch today (hint: she might make an appearance in the new issue in some form or other...)

Here are some photos of what our day looks like. We're psyched for the new issue and hope you are too!

I'm munching a Trader Joe's cheddar CheeseStick and reading Eric Asimov's article on The Pour (NYT) about tasting 18 Bordeauxs from the magic year of 1982; made so by the perfect storm of Robert Parker's enthusiasm for the vintage, a new parched public eager to learn about wine, and changes in Bordeaux economics that would sweep away sleepy local wine production in France...or so I have recently read!

The wines are 30 years old, and according to those who know, a club you can tell I am not a member of, they are now "in their prime." They have been stashed in a collector's wine cellar, enriching their "opulence" and gaining in value and fame.

Kate and I are on a top secret culture mission. Can you guess where we are from these photos?

Hint....we like it here a lot :)

The culture team is at it again! We're proofing the entire spring issue before it goes to print early next week. Such a hardcore work day requires an epic lunch break, which is happening now, thanks to a local (and wildly talented) chef in Brooklyn - you may know her from her restaurant, Homemade

Here are some pics of what's going on in our design team's office today!

This summer at the Vermont Artisan Cheese Festival I scored the last available Summer Snow from Woodcock Farm. Mushroomy bloomy rinds are a favorite of mine on a summer evening with friends. I brought it home to the Berkshires and that weekend we opened a bottle of wine, plunked the Summer Snow on a cheeseboard, and tromped out to the screen tent in our flipflops and shorts. We live outside all summer in the Berkshires, but barricade ourselves behind screens because it rains often, and the mosquitos, noseeums, and mayflies are ATROCIOUS. We settled in under our flimsy screen tent.

It was a beautiful evening with a cool breeze keeping the worst of the unwanted guests at bay. We were admiring barn swallows swooping, and cedar waxwings appearing to have an allout rave on the blueberries when the first drops of water hit us from behind. What the...? The western sky was black, but summer rain is a passing thing, and welcome. We scooted closer to the cheese.

Brainstormin' takes a lot of energy, and Vignola Restaurant of Portland ME is contributing by cooking us a little lunch...

Hanna White of Vignola and Adeline Druart of Vermont Butter and Cheese. Hanna and her husband Chuck prepared us lunch, while Adeline brought a selection of her creamery's amazing nibbles. Thanks, guys! Click through for more deliciousness...

It's that time of year again. Culture's editorial brainstorm is in just a few days, and we need your brains!

This weekend, culture's writers, editors and assorted cheese people gather again (this time in snowy Vermont) for the annual editorial meeting, where we hammer out ideas and directions for the magazine (& website) for 2012. But we can't do it alone, and I'm not talking about the catering.

Let us know what we should do next. What stories do you want to see more of? What angles haven't we covered yet? It's an open floor, and I will read your comments aloud to the assembled throng. This is your chance to let us know what's working, what's weak, and what you want to see in culture in 2012.

cuke question mark by erix!

I won my football pool (again) by picking based on cheeses and beers I was sampling this week. This is not a scientific method. And the good news is that next week I'll be chomping on new cheeses and sipping new beers, so the ramdom chances for winning are always there. And if I don't win...well, I still got to do the "research".

And for celebration tonight, I will be dining on inside out grilled cheese tonight. Triple the cheese!

When humans want to make an offspring, it’s pretty simple; egg, sperm, nine month incubation. The Accidental Locavore was wondering while tasting the second piece of the new masterpiece from Point Reyes Farmstead, how exactly do you design a cheese? What's the jumping-off point? Does it start with a cow, goat or sheep, or all of the above? Do you just have a flavor profile in your head and work towards making that real? Once you have a starting point, how do you maneuver such fickle ingredients as milk, mold, temperature and time? In cooking, when you have an idea, you assemble ingredients, cook them and see how the results are to your vision… generally not too time consuming. If you screw up, it's time for a quick re-do, or a call for Chinese delivery. With cheesemaking, I imagine there's a lot less instant gratification. So, do you have several versions at various stages of aging?