When I see a wheel of Harbison at a holiday party, I think: This person knows how to host. Then I plant myself as close to the cheese as is socially acceptable and acquaint myself with it and, ideally, any thick-cut potato chips available for dipping. Often, the cheese stands alone — with sides, but not a lot of other cheeses.
Made by Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, Harbison is a bloomy rind cheese, a category that also includes Brie. Wrapped with spruce and aged, it’s pudding-like in texture and umami-rich and woodsy in flavor. It’s best served at room temperature with its top sliced off to expose its soft insides, which are perfect for scooping with bread, chips, and even fries. It’s a head-turner, like a baked Brie but not quite as basic, and it forms the crux of my fancied-up holiday hosting thesis: Everyone makes a cheese board, but more people should serve a single, showstopper cheese.
As much as I love cheese boards — and I do, with all the zeal of a person who has not, knock on wood, needed Lactaid — the growing complexity of cheese boards has given me fromage fatigue. Grazing tables, with their ever-increasing gluttony, make my eyes glaze over and my hand clutch my wallet. You want me to buy all that in this economy? I’d also argue that when there’s too much of everything, we, as s, tend to appreciate each component less. So if maximalism and minimalism happen in cycles, each a response to the other, perhaps we’re due for a more streamlined approach to cheese.
