Saturday, September 1, 2012

$3,200 for 40 year old cheese



  
It's a 40-year-old block of cheddar cheese, and it is being sold for $10 per ounce.
It was discovered in a Milwaukee grocery store refrigerator where it had been about forgotten for decades.
It was when Edward Zahn was closing down his Z's Cheese Shoppe, when he discovered some abandoned crates in the back of the walk-in cooler. 
Within the wooden boxes he found a stash of old eastern Wisconsin cheddar cheese, aged 28, 34 and 40.
'It just got overlooked,' Zahn said of the 40-year-old variety. 'It looks just like the others except it's just a lot sharper. It's got character.'

Believed to be the oldest of its kind to ever go on sale to the public, the cheese is being sold at $10 per ounce.
Cheese is often sold by the pound, but the plan is to sell the  ounce, just enough for two people to sample.

There is also 120 pounds of the 34-year-old batch but that will be saved for a later date. That could sell close to $20,000.

Both the 40-year-old and 28-year-old blocks have been sampled and surprisingly, the milk in the cheese hadn't soured. 

So, if you wondering what cheddar cheese taste like when it's been sitting around since 1972, the outside is all crystallization, so it's crunchy like Corn Flakes.
Apparently it's the sharpest cheese ever, but very creamy.
As you get closer to the interior, it's creamier and overwhelmingly sharp.  While the exterior is unbelievably grotesque, the inside is OK.