MOLI VIEW™

I work weekends at Bedford Cheese Shop, one of the best emporiums in New York City for handcrafted cheese. Sticker shock is common; whether you are making sweaters or spices, the small productions result in higher costs. In contrast to large scale producers of cheese who might make several thousand pounds a week, most of the cheesemakers we work with, make at most a few hundred pounds a month.

However, lately, a new villain has crept onto our landscape: the exchange rate. The Euro is just clobbering the dollar, and it's having a profoundly desultory effect on cheese prices. For instance, one of my favorite new Catalonian washed rind cheeses is called Pau. It has a semi-soft texture, slight aroma, and an elegant balanced flavor that ends with little hints of vanilla and fresh herbs. It sells out quickly every time we get it in, even though last year, the price rose to $29 a pound, near the high end of the spectrum for many of our clientele.

Now, the price on Pau is $41 a pound. Recently, a woman came in to buy a small piece. She brimmed with enthusiasm as I cut it. Then we arrived at the register and she saw the expense, she slowly and sadly backed out of the sale. Normally, once a counter person cuts a piece of cheese, it's yours unless you run away from the counter really fast, but this woman stood there in shock, looking as if she'd just lost a good friend. It's a scene that is being repeated all too often these days; so we let her go; I put the cheese back in the case.

With cheese prices skyrocketing both due to the exchange rate, and very high oil prices, what's cheese lover to do? Reverting to middle brow or even industrially-produced cheese would be a disappointment; it would be like giving up your iPod, web radio and XM/Sirius and only listening to broadcast stations for your music. But if Pau is $41 a pound and many other fine cheeses are now tipping the economic scales at similar prices, how can you have great cheese without going into debt?

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