Clothbound, alpine, dry jack: a plain guide to hard American cheese

You can shop for hard American cheese more easily once you see that these three names mostly describe method. Clothbound tells you how the wheel was wrapped. Alpine-style tells you how the curd was handled. Dry jack tells you what happened when a soft cheese was left to age. All three end up firm, and you can name the reason each one tastes the way it does.

Clothbound is cheddar that is allowed to dry

Almost all American cheddar is made another way, and that is the first thing to know. America's Test Kitchen reports an estimate from Dean Sommer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Dairy Research. He puts block cheddar at 99% of the cheddar made in the country. Block cheddar usually ages in plastic, which holds moisture in and keeps the texture even from edge to center. The University of Guelph's cheesemaking e-book says traditional Cheddar was cloth bound. Commercial Cheddar then went into paraffin, and plastic film took over in the 1970s.

A clothbound or bandaged cheddar is wrapped in fabric, coated with fat and aged where air can reach it. Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont coats young Cabot cheddar in lard and adds a layer of cloth. It then brushes and turns the wheels for 9 to 14 months. Lard is the old way, but Face Rock Creamery in Oregon uses butter and ages its wheels 13 months. Bleu Mont Dairy goes 14 to 24 months in a cave, according to America's Test Kitchen.

Expect a drier, crumblier piece, most of all near the rind. America's Test Kitchen describes more varied and concentrated flavors, with an earthy side toward the edge. It says Grafton Clothbound can taste of mushrooms and lemon, and Bleu Mont's leans toward toasted hazelnut. Jasper Hill calls Cabot Clothbound savory and slightly tangy, with caramel sweetness at the finish. Small cracks and dark spots are normal here. Air gets into gaps in the fabric and causes them. The cheese around them can have a horseradish bite, and some shoppers look for it. Face Rock's cheesemaker says to take the bandage off before you eat.

Alpine-style cheese is cooked, pressed and built to melt

Strictly speaking, Alpine cheese comes from the Alps, and American versions borrow the method. The Institute of Culinary Education says true Alpine cheeses are made in and around those mountains. It names Gruyère, Emmental, Raclette, Comté, Appenzeller and Beaufort among the famous ones. Saxelby Cheese uses the word Alpine for any cheese made by similar methods, which is why you will see Alpine-style on American labels.

The method starts with heat, and most of the style follows from that. Culture magazine explains that the curds are cooked, meaning reheated to a higher temperature, and then pressed. That drives out moisture and lets the cheese age for up to several years. Saxelby adds that these cheeses turn acid slowly and stay less acidic than cheddar, which keeps them elastic and good at melting. They also carry little salt, a habit from when salt was hard to haul up a mountain. The Institute of Culinary Education draws the contrast with cheddar, whose uncooked curd tends to separate and leak fat when melted. Size is the other giveaway. Saxelby says American wheels run 10 to 30 pounds, while Comté averages around 80 and Gruyère around 70.

Pasture sits at the center of the classic style, and the best known American example follows it closely. The Institute of Culinary Education says cows on high summer pasture eat wildflowers and herbs along with grass, and that shapes the flavor. Pleasant Ridge Reserve comes from Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. The Cheese Professor says it is modeled on Gruyère and Beaufort and made from May to October while the herd grazes open pasture. Wisconsin Cheese fills in the rest. Raw milk is cooked and pressed into 10 pound rounds, and the wheels are washed with brine several times a week. They age at least nine months. Its notes run to mango, passionfruit and pineapple, with umami from the brine. It won Best of Show at the American Cheese Society in 2001, 2005 and 2010.

Vermont offers a different model of the same idea, one that looks to Switzerland for its recipe. Alpha Tolman from Jasper Hill takes its cue from Appenzeller. It comes in 22 pound wheels aged 8 to 12 months. The farm says it starts out with butter, fruit and nuts and moves toward meaty, caramelized onion flavors with time.

Dry jack may have started as an accident

Dry jack has an odd story, and it begins with a much softer cheese. Cheesemaking.com describes Monterey Jack as semisoft, with little aging. Its history of the style says that around 1915 a San Francisco cheese seller named D.F. DeBernardi stored and forgot an oversupply of fresh jack. World War I then cut off shipments of hard cheese from Europe. He went back to his forgotten wheels and found them rich and nutty, and his Italian-American customers took to them. LocalHarvest calls this a legend, so hold the details loosely. DeBernardi is also credited with the first coating of oil, pepper and lamp black. Ig Vella of Sonoma later rubbed his wheels with oil, cocoa powder and black pepper.

Cheesemaking.com gives a range of seven months to more than two years. It says older pieces are good for grating or for breaking into chunks, much like an aged Parmesan. The Cheese Professor describes an aroma of roasted nuts with a hint of butter and a slightly sharp, lightly salted finish. It also notes that Vella aged its wheels on edge and turned them often to keep the moisture even.

Finding dry jack takes some effort now, and the reason is partly recent news. About 60 producers once made it, according to both Cheesemaking.com and an older Sunset article. Cheaper imported cheeses pushed most of them out. That Sunset piece named the Rumiano family and Vella as the two left at the time. Vella's own website now says that after 94 years production has stopped and the company has closed, with possible pop-up sales of its remaining aged cheese. Any Vella you see may be the last of it, so ask your counter who else makes the style today.

Telling them apart at the counter

Two questions help when you are standing at the case. Start with how the wheel was wrapped. Fabric on the outside points to clothbound, and a near black rub points to dry jack, which Sunset says you can eat or cut off. Then think about how you plan to use it, because the sources line up well on that. Alpine-style cheeses are the melters, and dry jack is the one to grate. America's Test Kitchen suggests artisanal cheddars for a cheese plate or a special afternoon snack.