What makes sharp cheese sharp?

We're at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vermont.

And this is where cheese making magic happens.

I'm here with Zoe Brickley, who's basically the chief storyteller and taster at Jasper Hill.

That can't be your official title, though.

I am technically the director of communications and e-commerce, but... Chief taster sounds better to me.

Yeah, that's my dream job.

So when someone says I love sharp cheddar, what does it mean for a cheese to be sharp?

So the words that we use to describe food and cheese are really personal.

And with sharp that word it kind of means something different to different people.

There is a technical definition of it though.

Yeah?

What is it?

So sharpness is about how intense the cheese is.

It's about the volume of flavor more than it is any one particular flavor or texture that we experience when we try it.

Okay, so if I put a bite of cheese in my mouth and I think that's cheesy.

It's not very sharp, probably.

But if I put a bite of cheese in my mouth and I go, whoa, that's cheesy.

That's what sharp means?

That's sharp!

So it's not anything to do with a specific title that has to do with organisms and bacteria.

It's more just a sense of how you're experiencing flavor.

Yeah.

It's how big that flavor is in our mouths.

Is cheddar the only kind of cheese that we ever call sharp?

I've never heard anybody talk about sharp anything other than cheddar.

When I worked as a cheesemonger.

That means a cheese seller.

Exactly.

Somebody who works behind a cheese counter and helps you find a cheese you love.

Customers would come in and ask for sharp cheeses that weren't cheddars and it took a little bit to figure out what they wanted.

So we taste through cheeses, and sometimes it would be a sheep's milk cheese that was very stinky.

And for them, they just really wanted a cheese that made you knew you were alive, right?

other times they might want something that's very sour and that acidic that kind of makes your mouth water.

And sometimes they want that classic kind of bitter edge.

Because cheddar is the, the place that has coined that word sharp, it is often used to describe cheeses that kind of make us think of a cheddar in certain ways.

So really it's just cheddar.

But then we borrow that word to describe something that's actually different for everyone.

Yes.

And you know, unless you're a cheese professional, you don't have a lot of words to describe cheese just up your sleeve.

So it's okay to use words like sharp to just describe a big So now you know what makes a cheese sharp.

And I bet we've made you hungry.

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