This cheese-blog’s featured item was a bit of an impulse buy for me. I was in Brennan’s to pick up some sundry cheese to go along with various meals, and I decided that I should get something new to experiment with, and put the results up here. I narrowed it down to two cheddars, actually, a new 12 year version of the standard 4 year cheddar that I’ve previously reviewed on the HCT Cheese Blog, and a new cheese they were pushing, an organic cheddar infused with various carribean spices. In the end, I went with the carribean cheese.

As it turns out, that was probably a mistake.

Biographical Information:
Brennan’s Organic Carribean Cheddar
Purchased at Brennan’s Market, Madison West Side
Price: 11.99/lb

As you can see, this is a slightly pricey cheddar, most likely due to the organic certification and spices, though still a lot cheaper than some of the truly rarefied cheese that I’ve purchased since moving to Wisconsin. (I’ve also decided to note the price of cheeses for the blog from now on, not just when they’re exceptional in some particular way).

As you can see this cheese is quite heavily spiced, though I would classify it less as Carribean and more as a peppery cheese. The black pepper in particular, along with the cumin, predominates the flavor, and the abundance of fairly coarse spices makes the texture of the cheese slightly gritty on the tongue. While highly visible in the cheese, the red jalepeno is barely noticeable on the tongue, and the cheese has no heat, compared to a pepper jack. As for the cilantro, could have sworn that there was none in the cheese whatsoever. Overall the spices don’t contribute much to the flavor of the cheddar. They neither mix with nor complement the underlying cheese very well, and they are as mentioned not very balanced.

Even more unfortunately, the cheddar that serves as the base for this specialty item isn’t fantastic either. Dry and crumbly, it’s neither creamy enough to slice nor flavorful enough to stand out on its own. It has some of the acrid undertone of an aged cheddar, yet lacks the mellow, sour quality of your really nice aged cheeses. It’s bitter, and the bitterness inherent in pepper and cumin only makes it worse.

As a standalone item, perhaps on a sampler plate or as an hors d’oeuvre, this particular cheddar would not hold up very well. When eaten by itself, the most noticeable quality is the aforementioned grit, and other WI cheeses would easily overshadow it. The odd half-sharp quality makes it hard to pair with food as well, and using it as a component in a meal doesn’t work especially well. (For example, we here at the HCT Cheese Blog tried using it with scrambled eggs and found it, unlike a standard sharp cheddar, particularly underwhelming.)

So this I’m afraid is our first negative review of a Wisconsin cheese. By the standards of the outside world, I suppose, the Organic Carribean Cheddar would pass muster. After tasting it one comes away with the impression that the cheesemakers used high quality ingredients, and were striving toward a novel concept, but ultimately it’s undeniable that they fell short.

Final Scores:
Me: C-
Roomie: C-

P.S. It is with great regret that I must post about the first correction in the HCT Cheese Blog. Upon inspecting the archive, it appears that I may have been mistaken about the origin of a previously reviewed cheddar, which I labeled as being from Hook’s; I now can say with certainty only that it is labeled as being the Brennan’s store brand. The HCT Cheese Blog regrets the (possible) error.