This is it! The greatest gift you’ll give or receive this year! One of our favorite things about finally having a physical storefront is being able to fill it with all of the products we’ve discovered over years in the biz! We’ve amassed the best sellers stocked at our brick & mortar, which all also happen to be incredible, small producer-made consumables (well minus the soap)! Whether you’re sharing it all with with friends/family or showering one person with all of these lovely things, this collection is the answer! What’s in the box, you ask?

• Three third pound wedges of our favorite cheeses of the moment

• A bag of our housemade crackers

• A third pound log of Banner Cultured Butter w/ Sea Salt

• A small format La Salumina Salame

• A bag of My Brothers’ Farm Organic Roasted Hazelnuts

• A tin of Tenorio Tuna in Olive Oil

• A bar of Potomac Chocolate

• A bag of Kolsvart Swedish Fish candies

• A bar of La Salumina Lard Soap

Walden is Sequatchie Cove Creamery’s first foray into pasteurized cow’s milkcheese! Having produced only raw milk cheeses for their first 10 years of operation, they decided to take the plunge and purchase a pasteurizer in 2019, opening up their range of cheesemaking styles to cheeses that can be aged under 60 days.

These little half pound rounds are everything we want out of bloomy rind cow’s milks - a thin, mildly-mushroomy rind encasing a pudgy paste that is not too far off from eating straight-up cultured butter. We’re glad they aren’t any larger because we can take these wheels down like they’re a bite-sized candy bar!

8 oz wheel

Our favorite application: Walden is so deliciously buttery that we can almost hear it calling out for a baguette and some of this ham!

Tastes like: Savory buttercream, sourdough pastry, mild mushroom funkiness.

The Brass Tacks:

• Sequatchie Cove Creamery - Sequatchie, TN

• Bloomy Rind

• Pasteurized Cow

• Animal Rennet

• Milk sourced from neighboring farms

• Season: Year-Round

Words can’t describe the beaming joy on Nora’s face when she found out that Green Dirt Farm were working on a blue cheese. We had been after a non-cow blue for several years when we heard that the team at GDF were releasing their first batch of a Roquefort-inspired pasteurized sheep’s milk blue. And, boy, does this blue deliver! A little younger and more mild than your typical Roquefort, Mount Bethel Blue showcases the the fattiness of sheep’s milk with it’s semi-firm texture and flavors of mellow stone fruit, and just a hint of pepper.

Our favorite application: Mount Bethel Blue is particularly great smeared on still hot baguette. And also benefits from a drizzle of honey and sprinkle of Roasted Hazelnuts.

Tastes like: Forest floor earthiness, scalded milk, vegetable broth.

The Brass Tacks:

• Green Dirt Farm - Weston, MO

• Roquefort Style Blue

• Pasteurized Sheep

• Animal Rennet

• Farmstead Operation with the addition of milk from neighboring farms

• Season: Year Round

A pasteurized cow’s milk blue from the Southwestern tip of North Carolina. Looking Glass Creamery’s new farm and creamery, just a mile from the South Carolina border, is churning out some of our favorite blue cheese in the country! This high moisture blue is reminiscent of the ultra decadent, spoonable Gorgonzola Dolce. Buttery richness and fungal funk is cut by peppery blue piercing. Very few cheesemakers attempt the soft ripened blue style and even fewer do it this well. We’ve been slathering this stuff on homemade Danish rye bread (Rugbrød). Also, we’re pretty sure this blue buddy is an online exclusive to Counter Cheese Caves!

Our favorite application: Green River Blue is definitely a dark bread, dark beer situation, but we love it as dessert. Let a big hunk sit out for an hour then surround it with vermouth-poached pears and spiced nuts before digging in with a spoon.

Tastes like: Barnyard-y custard, Maitake mushrooms, charred fennel.

The Brass Tacks:

• Blue

• Pasteurized Cow

• Animal Rennet

• Farmstead Operation

• Season: April-January

If you’re seeing these, you might want to give them a try, because who knows how long they’ll be around for! After a pretty lengthy mid-pandemic recipe testing period, we seemingly cracked the cracker code and began selling these babies at our regular farmers market to much acclaim! Maybe it’s the nutty sesame seed studdings, maybe it’s the extra crunch semolina flour provides, maybe it’s the cultured Banner Butter (probably this one), or maybe it’s the combination of all of these things. Whatever it is, they are really quite a perfect cheese pairing. Adding insult to injury, they’re very difficult to stop eating just on their own.

3.5 oz bag

As you may know, “-ella” or “-ello” on the end of all sorts of Italian things usually means ‘a smaller version’. So actually, Eric’s last name, Casella (casa + ella) translates to ‘little house’, and in Italy, post office boxes are referred to as ‘casella postale’! Anyway… this little aged pork sirloin (essentially a smaller version of prosciutto) is earthy, fruity, super-special, and quite limited stuff… hence the hefty price tag… But hey, we all know what we’re doing here- enjoying life and small-scale specialty fermented foods! So live a little and have a little prosciutto! (See what I did there?)

Expertly sliced to order.

We’re going ape on this apricot jam from Ayako & Family out of Seattle! We try to keep our producers as close to home as possible, but thoughtfully crafted, exceptional products deserve, well, exceptions! Helmed by Alessandra Gordon, Ayako & Family partners with century-old, regenerative orchards in the Yakima region of Washington to preserve and accentuate perfectly ripe fruit. Along with massive, beautiful apricotiness, this hexagonal jar of bronze beauty has some warm, brown butter notes and citrus florality. It is an absolute legend alongside the tommes of our furthest-flung cheesemaker, Green Dirt Farm, Aux Arcs and Prairie Tomme!

6oz Jar

What is cheese without a cracker? Well, yeah… it’s cheese. But isn’t a cracker such a lovely addition? A lovely little textural treat. These rye crisps are made from a danish style rugbrød that we make in the shop. The rye flour and cracked rye meal comes freshly milled from Anson Mills in Columbia, SC, and is leavened with our sourdough starter (named Levi) along with some dark beer, sunflower, flax, and pumpkin seeds. The baked off loaves then get sliced thinly and baked further into this super savory seeded crackers! They are especially good with stronger flavored cheeses.

3.5 oz bag