7 New Year’s Resolutions as Cheese

If you are resolved to eat more cheese in the New Year, good on you. Here at Cheese Professor we fully support this. If you want to use cheese as a springboard for somehow achieving any of your New Year’s resolutions — i.e. getting to know your local cheese makers as a means of reducing your carbon footprint —we salute that as well.

But this isn’t so much about cheese resolutions, that is, New Year’s resolutions related to cheese. No. In the vein of previous Popular Cultures installments — Friends, Taylor Swift Eras, Golden Girls, Beach Reads, and Emily in Paris characters —  this is going to be an examination of cheeses AS resolutions. So in the cheesiest spirit imaginable, I generated a list of the most common New Year’s resolutions and ascribed to them their obvious cheese counterparts.

 

“Eat Healthy” is Piave

There was much rejoicing from both in and outside of the cheese community when The Washington Post announced in January 2023 that “Cheese is Healthier Than You Think.” Given the start-of-year timing, we all immediately resolved to eat more cheese. While cheese is generally a rich product, and healthy eating among the most common New Year’s resolutions, you may be surprised to learn that a number of traditional cheeses from around the world are made with skimmed or partially skimmed milk. (And not just part-skimmed grocery store mozzarella shreds.) 

As cream was often relegated to butter production in many dairy regions, the naturally skimmed milk leftover could still be used for cheese. Even legendary cheeses are often partially skimmed: Parmigiano Reggiano and Gruyère among them, in fact. For the embodiment of healthy eating, and for a sense of newness that defines resolution season, try Piave, a relatively new cheese in the Italian canon, made with partially skimmed milk in a mountain style for a dense, nutty, and delightful New Year snack.

 

“Travel More” is  Meredith Dairy Marinated Sheep and Goat’s Milk Cheese

We’d all like to get away more, and the New Year is a new excuse to commit to that. Sometimes, we’d like to get as far away as possible. To that extent, I’d like to invite you to meet your new favorite cheese, if you haven’t met it already, which comes from about as far away as most readers of this site can get. (With special apologies to any readers who may actually be in Australia.) In the U.S. we don’t see many imported cheeses from outside Europe and Central America, despite cheese being made all over the world. Marinated cheese, however, allows for enough staying power for it to withstand a longer journey. Hence, Australia’s Meredith Dairy Marinated Sheep and Goat’s Milk Cheese is about as well-traveled as a cheese available in the U.S. can get. A true farmstead cheese from Meredith in Victoria and Australia, soft and creamy mixed milk cubes are marinated in Australian Extra Virgin Olive Oil along with garlic, thyme, and peppercorn, resulting in a knockout flavor and texture that is snackable, spreadable, and truly craveable.

 

“Save Money” is Cabot Seriously Sharp White Cheddar

In a perfect world, unlikely to resemble any part of 2025, we would all be able to buy cheeses only from specialty shops, farmers markets, or as directly from the producer as possible. In the world which we actually inhabit, most cheese is purchased from the grocery store. But I am an avid proponent of grocery store cheese, especially when you can find the good stuff lurking among the more industrial blocks of your supermarket dairy department. Cabot is one of the first families in American cheese production, and its Cabot Seriously Sharp White Cheddar is an award-winning, artisanal cheese in industrial cheese’s clothing. Bold and slightly crumbly in the vein of clothbound cheddars, the cheese is also a bargain, allowing you to keep more coins in the piggy bank this year.

 

“Reduce Stress” is Ewephoria

“Be less stressed” is a resolution without an easy action plan, but one that many of us nonetheless make come January. Meditation, practicing gratitude, and good old fashioned exercise can all promote a calmer outlook, but how about tyrosine crystals? These are the crunch bombs that inhabit some of your favorite aged cheeses, amino acids that form during the breakdown of protein and fat. Ewephoria — an aged sheep’s milk gouda so bedazzled with tyrosine crystals that it nearly crunches like butterscotch candy — is clever wordplay, of course, but it goes further than that. Tyrosine is a precursor to dopamine, the body’s natural good mood transmitter. Can Ewephoria promote euphoria? Science says…actually, yes.

 

“Drink Less” is Drunken Goat

Given the excess of the holiday season, it’s no wonder that about a quarter of Americans participate in Dry January, with that number forecasted to grow. Whether you’re going dry for just January or beyond, it doesn’t mean your cheese has to. Drunk cheeses drink more so you can drink less; a fruity wine tang in the cheese can take the edge off without any ABV. “Drunk” or wine soaked cheese has a long history, especially in Spain and Italy, where cheese wheels were cured in wine at the end of the aging process. (Cheese folklore suggests that early drunk cheeses were wheels that were hidden by farmers in wine barrels to prevent theft.) Drunken Goat is one of many drunk cheeses, and among the easiest to find. The pasteurized goat cheese has a mild and fruity taste, amplified by the use of Doble Pasta wine, leaving an attractive purple hue that leaves no trace of wine mouth during your month (or more) of abstinence. Learn more about cheeses under the influence. 

 

“Quit Smoking” is River’s Edge Up in Smoke

We don’t necessarily want our smoked cheeses to quit smoking, to be clear. Smoked cheeses, unlike human smoking, likely began by accident, with cheeses that were aged or dried close to the fire. Let us give thanks then for these smoky cheese treats, for satisfying a particular aspect of the craving when taking on smoking cessation. (Also, try tyrosine crystals, as above.) Oregon’s River’s Edge Up in Smoke  contains smoking times three: alder wood smoked farmstead chevre, smoked maple leaves that enrobe the cheese, and a spritz of bourbon, whose flavor naturally includes a whiff of smoke from charred barrels.

 

“Spend More Time with Family and Friends” is Cheese Plate 

Whether this is a commitment to less screen time, or just an effort to nourish relationships (or both) it’s hard to choose just one cheese to represent the sentiment. Any cheese is arguably a reason to have one or more loved ones over, but with a cheese plate, the more the merrier: both in curd and in human form.