A Dutch gentleman in the cheese business once told me that the reason his country’s cheesemakers put so many different spices in Gouda—cumin, caraway, fenugreek, mustard seed—was because the Dutch eat Gouda every day. You have to change it up or lunch gets boring. Goat Gouda, which didn’t gain traction in the Netherlands until the 1980s, provides some variety in the modern Dutch diet. But sheep Gouda? “I am aware of no exported cheeses from the Netherlands made of sheep’s milk, nor, to my knowledge, is there any dairying of sheep there at all,” wrote Steve Jenkins in his authoritative Cheese Primer twenty-five years ago. Time to strike that, Steve. A new Dutch sheep Gouda has landed and it’s on the march.
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