The Cheesehaven       

 Port Clinton, Ohio       Date of Visit  07/17/13       http://www.cheesehaven.com/

For years I have passed the sign for the Cheesehaven in Port Clinton, aint never gone, love cheese, they got lots, what’s going on? You can either mope over what was or do something about it and in this case it’s pretty easy to do something about it, so we went. A huge space isn’t actually predominated by cheese, there is a long cheese cooler but there are loads of other little treats spread throughout.
 

Place Is Huge
 

Taffy, chocolates, meats, smoked fish, old world candies, jerky, weird wines, condiments and so on. The staff is about as far from friendly as you’re going to find, brusque would be descriptive but we did find some treasures.

Many of the cheeses are familiar but I found something I hadn’t seen in years and a couple of new options. The Irish porter cheddar are curds of cheddar bound together by the lovely bitterness of veins of set porter. This stuff is delicious.

Our new options were a goat cheese with wine and a Cheddar aged 17 years. The goat cheese also had a health number of days on it leaving it more the consistency of a 2 year cheddar but it retained its tangy chevre bite and finished with a warm light red wine note. The Cheddar was a crumbly delicious mess, as expected. Take everything salty you expect from the cheese and ramp it up more for every year it matured.
 

Beyond sharp and intense, the cheddar might be a bit much for many but the Haven has something that can cut across such concentrated cheesiness, their house made mustard. I like all kinds of mustard and enjoy cracking new jars or bottles having only found a few that I didn’t at least manage to enjoy. The Cheesehaven’s is jagged with bite and noticeable vinegar along with the mustard itself. I knew it would be great with the Cheddar but it turned out to work well with all of the cheeses in different amounts. I was sad we only picked up one jar.

We supplemented our cheese and mustard finds with a menagerie of taffy, some mixed chocolate treats and only managed to avoid some cured meats or jerky or vino or more cheese. There were a couple of nice gems in the cases at the Cheesehaven and likely several we passed over. It ain’t cheap but the good stuff is at a pretty fair number, I think its probably supplemented with a wider margin on the run of the mill stuff. If we ever do make it back to the lake, I’m certain we will be searching for more treasure and stocking up on mustard.
 

Smoked Fish