I'd like the world to know the taste of a twenty year aged Wisconsin cheddar. I thought, before visiting Wisconson that I knew about cheese. I had been to tastings in many countries, oh I thought I knew.
In 2003 I visited a friend in Madison, Wisconsin he took me around the town and showed me the sites, the capital building, a Great Lake, a nice records store, and a real Wisconsin cheese shop. I wondered in with an arrogance; being a well traveled individual, I have tasted the cheeses of France, Germany, Mexico, Italy and a cheese made from cats milk in Zambia. Now though I am supposedly in a cheddar mecca, the one the only Wisconsin where even their football team encourages cheers with cheese. I shrug it off, I mean truly this can't be that good compared to countries who have been developing a culinary cuisine for hundreds, some thousands of years. I wander the store petulantly, probing, smelling commenting, yet not yet tasting. The woman behind the counter shows me selections of cheeses with the efficiency of a 40 year veteran of the car selling industry and my resistance begins to waver. My friend prods and nags, " come on man this the best stuff on earth he says like he is offering me aged cured salvation. So I tasted, my mind exploded an ambrosia of cow uttered ecstasy, a beautiful cacophony in flavor texture and human creation. I shuttered as my ego, my judgement and expectations shattered. This is the culmination of human invention and understanding, thousands of years of human ideals and art culminating in one creamy, sensational bit. The world should taste and see that this cheese is good, it will give us something worth living for.
