How to buy cheese on the internet 🧀

A web guide for the cheese curious

Hi readers!

Thanks for sticking with me last week during Richmond’s water crisis. I’m happy to report that our boil order was lifted on Saturday afternoon, and a few loads of laundry later, things are back to normal in our cozy apartment.

I actually received some lovely feedback on my “Completely Different” newsletter, and it inspired me to launch a second venture here on Substack — Sealing Wax, Cabbages, and Kings.

As the name suggests, this newsletter will be a bit more free wheeling than Curd Culture — where my focus is on American artisan cheese, animal welfare, and cheese history.

Sealing Wax, Cabbages, and Kings will be a fairly random series of essays on things I find interesting — from the history of Hollywood Cemetery to the Victorian language of flowers.

I’ll also write more personal essays about my life and experiences growing up in the Deep South and my years living (and waitressing) in Washington, DC.

I suspect that as you get to know me the subject matter may feel a little less random and a little more Holli.

As the Walrus says, “The time has come to talk of many things.”

Join me on this new adventure.

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Now, back to the subject at hand: how to buy cheese on the internet.

A few of you have expressed that the cheese selection isn’t so hot in the town you live in — or that you had never met or had access to a cheese monger.

That makes a lot of sense. Most of the country isn’t the Northeastern I-95 corridor.

In fact, I had never experienced an old world feeling cheese shop until I visited England in 2005 and fell in love.

I was lucky that after my Medieval Studies summer school ended and I returned to DC that there was a cheese shop for me to find a job in.

Shoot, when I lived in Missouri we had to drive to St. Louis to go to a proper mall and hit The Limited.

Today the world of online shopping is vastly different than it was in the late 90’s. You can get almost anything delivered to your door within a few days, wherever you live.

Including cheese.

Believe it or not, I get some of my cheese directly from the creamery via UPS.

Take advantage of the internet and try some new cheeses this year!

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Jasper Hill Farm — which you know is one of my fave producers — has lovely boxes of different cheeses for you to sample from their extensive collection. Some also include yummy accompaniments.