Helen and Rick spent the early part of this week in New York as part of Murray's Cheese and Olive Oil Tasting at Fig & Olive, where they had a wonderful time catching up with old friends as well as seeing some new faces.

In the meantime, our cheese was round and about the city making some positive impressions of its own:

- Check out Nora Singley's post on The Kitchn about the Appalachian.

- And here's the Grayson appearing at Per Se's Brooklyn Brewery Dinner, as written up in Wined & Dined.

Grayson and Appalachian are both undeniably rectangular cheeses. This presents a challenge when you are cutting the cheese into wedges or piecing it for a cheese plate: How to keep the unlucky few from getting more than their fair share of the rind?

Taylor Cocalis, Director of Education at Murray's Cheese, has the solution, in video form. Better yet, she uses the Grayson to demonstrate the proper cutting approach.

Click through for cheesy goodness!

Virginia Dairy Takes First Place

Galax, Virginia (July 28, 2008) - Meadow Creek Dairy's Grayson cheese was awarded first place in the Farmstead Cheese category at the 25th Annual American Cheese Society Competition and took second place for Best of Show.

"Like all good washed-rind cheeses, Grayson is really made in the cellar," says cheesemaker Helen Feete. "While we've been making Grayson for eight years, it took several trips to Europe as well as the completion of our new cellar before I could confidently say we had the Grayson where we wanted it." Grayson is the dairy's best selling cheese, available in shops from New York to San Francisco.

The American Cheese Society is an association dedicated to promoting artisanal and farmstead cheeses. This year's competition, held in Chicago, Illinois, featured 1,150 cheeses from  North American cheesemakers. The Farmstead Cheese category, which is limited to cheeses produced from the milk of a single farm, is one of the most competitive and sought-after awards at the competition. The Best of Show cheeses are selected from the first-place winners in each of the competition's 22 categories.

Meadow Creek Dairy is a family run farmstead operation located outside Galax, Virginia which specializes in aged raw milk cheeses. They established their grade A dairy in 1988 and began making cheese in 1998. Along with Grayson, they make Mountaineer, an alpine-style cheese; Whitetop, a bloomy rind cheese;  and Appalachian, the cheese which took third place in the American Cheese Society's Farmstead category in 2006. Grayson had previously taken third place in the Farmstead category in 2007.

For more information on the dairy, visit their website www.meadowcreekdairy.com.

(Download a pdf version of this press release here.)