Profile: Ihsan Gurdal
		Profile: Liam Callahan
		Cheese Main Page

Debra Dickerson claims she has the best job in the world. As a traveling saleswoman for Neal's Yard Dairy, in London, she flies around the United States promoting some of the world's most powerful and compelling cheeses -- fudgy Beenleigh blue, buttery Kirkham's Lancashire, dense and golden Appleby's Double Gloucester -- which she lifts out of insulated bags in town after town for grateful chefs, restaurant fromagers and fancy-food retailers. "And when I'm in London it's just heaven," she enthuses. "I can just munch my way through the whole shop."

Neal's Yard Dairy is truly a destination. Lining the counters in both London stores (in Covent Garden and Borough Market) are dozens of the very finest farmhouse cheeses from all over England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, all expertly aged and finished on the premises. Many of these would have gone extinct were it not for Ralph Hodgson, who helped establish the Dairy in 1979 and rekindle Britain's interest in handcrafted traditional cheese. Neal's Yard has also paved the way for a number of artisan inventions, including a favorite of Dickerson's called Ticklemore, a tangy, delicate semihard goat cheese.

Dickerson first set foot in Neal's Yard Dairy in 1990. It was then just a vest-pocket of a shop, though already something of a mecca for aficionados. Dickerson, then 35, had never been abroad before. She went to London not for the palaces or the theater, but for the cheese. "I used to plan all my vacations around visits to cheesemakers," she laughs.

A college graduate with a degree in international relations, Dickerson says she got her "real education" at Zingerman's Delicatessen, in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she managed the store's celebrated cheese counter and state-of-the-art storage cave. Zingerman's was the first importer to bring Neal's Yard cheeses to the United States, and once Dickerson tasted them she was hooked. She became the Dairy's full-time American representative in 1996.

When Dickerson talks about British cheeses, her words are almost as appetizing as the funky barnyard aromas that penetrate the wrapping of every Cheshire and Wensleydale that she sells. Scottish Cheddar from the Isle of Mull is "wild and raging, much like the island where it is produced." Stilton from producer Colston-Bassett is "lovely, balanced, creamy, melt-on-your tongue. They're the only Stilton makers left who still hand-ladle the curd. That preserves the integrity of the cheese curd and retains tons of moisture and all that fat, which translates into flavor. They also do less piercing, so it's a much more gentle, slow aging, and the blue is very, very subtle."

She pauses, then adds lasciviously, "I wouldn't mind a piece of that right now." Storage and handling of such sophisticated cheeses is a challenge. That's why Dickerson travels. Every one of her customers gets hands-on guidance on how to keep these temperamental wares at their peak. Cheeses are living, evolving things, she insists -- except those rendered supermarket-shelf stable through vacuum packaging and refrigeration, that is. "When you bring a slow-aged, cloth-wrapped Somerset Cheddar to America and it's faced with the American style of retailing -- precutting, plastic wrap, cold display cases -- it couldn't be more of a shock to the cheese."