Asher Blue is a raw cow's milk blue cheese made by Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasville, Georgia, and named after the second son of the family that runs it.
It carries a natural rind, which almost no American blue does. Most are wrapped in foil for their whole life.
That one production choice is why the cheese tastes the way it does, and it is the thing worth understanding before you buy a piece.
In This Article
What Is Asher Blue?
Most blue cheese in an American shop arrives wrapped in foil with no rind at all, which makes this one look wrong before you have tasted it. It is a blue made from raw cow milk, aged about ninety days, and sold in pieces of roughly five ounces.
The rind is the first thing to notice and the thing that separates it from almost everything beside it on the shelf.
The paste is creamy-crumbly rather than either wet or chalky, which is the middle ground most blues miss in one direction or the other. It breaks into soft pieces instead of smearing or shattering.
The veining is developed the traditional way. The young cheese is inoculated with mould and then pierced fifty times on each side so oxygen can reach the inside and the blue can grow along those channels.
Sweet Grass Dairy has taken a Bronze Medal at the World Cheese Awards twice for it, in 2009 and again in 2015.
Why Does a Natural Rind Matter on a Blue?
Because foil and a rind do opposite things to a cheese, and nearly every blue you have eaten wore foil.
Foil seals the surface. It holds moisture in, keeps the paste even from edge to centre, and stops anything growing on the outside, which is why supermarket blues are uniformly moist and uniformly white.
A natural rind does the reverse. The surface dries, moulds and yeasts settle on it, and the cheese loses a little moisture across ninety days instead of none.
| Foil-wrapped blue | Natural-rind blue | |
|---|---|---|
| Moisture | Sealed in, so the paste stays wet | Escapes slowly across the ageing |
| Surface life | None, the foil prevents it | Moulds and yeasts settle and grow |
| Paste colour | Bright and uniform white | Warmer ivory, and not uniform |
| Extra flavour | Only what the blue mould gives | An earthy mushroomy layer from the rind |
| Cost to the maker | Cheap, stable, predictable | More handling and a shorter shelf life |
The result is a blue with an earthy, mushroomy layer that a foiled cheese cannot develop, because a foiled cheese has no surface life to produce it.
It also means the wedge is not uniform. The paste nearer the rind carries more of that earthiness, and the centre stays closer to a straightforward blue.
The trade is shelf life and consistency. A natural rind asks more of the maker and of the shop, which is the practical reason so few American blues bother.
Foil solves a distribution problem rather than a cheese problem. It stops weight loss, it stops the surface doing anything unexpected, and it lets a wheel travel and sit.
What it also does is stop the cheese ripening from the outside in, so a foiled blue changes very little after it leaves the dairy.
A rinded blue keeps moving. The wheel you buy in March is not the wheel that was cut in January, and the shop has to know that.
For a buyer the consequence is simple enough. Ask when it was cut, and expect a rinded blue to be more variable and more interesting than the foiled one beside it.
A rinded blue keeps ripening after it leaves the dairy and a foiled one barely does. Ask when it was cut, because the date matters more here than on the blue beside it.
What Does Asher Blue Taste Like?
The smell and the taste of this cheese disagree with each other, and the disagreement is the whole point of it. It reads mushroomy and earthy with a slight pungency, and then finishes far milder and saltier than the nose promised.
Sweet Grass describes it as milder and more approachable than stronger blues, and that is accurate rather than modest. It does not have the metallic bite of a Roquefort or the sweet rot of a long-aged Stilton.
Look at the cut face and you can read the method. The veining runs along the needle channels rather than scattering randomly, which is what hand piercing looks like.
The cocoa note people mention arrives at the very end. It is faint, and it is the reason the cheese works with chocolate stout and with dessert wine rather than fighting them.
If blue cheese has always been too much for you, this is a reasonable place to test that again. Mild is a fair description here rather than marketing.
Is a Raw-Milk Blue Legal to Sell in the US?
Raw-milk cheese carries a rule in the United States that decides which cheeses can exist at all, and this one is built around it. Yes, it is legal, and the ninety days is why.
Cheese made from unpasteurised milk may be sold in the US once it has been aged sixty days or more.
The reasoning is that time, salt and falling moisture together make the cheese an increasingly hostile place for the organisms the rule exists to control.
American rules require a cheese made from unpasteurised milk to be held for at least sixty days before it can be sold. Asher Blue is aged past that mark, so the raw milk is never in question.
The ageing is not done to satisfy the rule. Ninety days is what the cheese needs to develop its rind and its veining, and clearing the legal threshold is a consequence rather than the goal.
Anyone pregnant should still take the usual advice on unpasteurised cheese and blue cheese both, and check with their own doctor rather than with a label.
Who Makes It?
Sweet Grass Dairy, a grass-based dairy in Thomasville in southern Georgia, and the family behind it has been collecting awards for a long time.
Blue was a deliberate choice rather than an obvious one. The dairy is open that blue cheese is among the hardest kinds to make well, and that the difficulty is part of why they took it on.
The name is domestic rather than grand. Asher is the second son of the family, and the cheese is named after him.
That matters for what you should expect. This is a single-dairy American farmstead cheese rather than a regional style with a specification behind it, so the maker is the whole story.
Serve It Before the Strong Blues, Not After
Order matters more with this cheese than with most, because its defining quality is one that other blues destroy. On a board with several, this one goes first.
The dairy points it at Port, Sauternes and sherry, or a chocolate stout, and those all work on the same principle of meeting the salt with sweetness. A strong red like Gamay or Zinfandel is the drier alternative.
| Pairing | Type | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Port | Wine | Sweetness meets the salt head on, which is the classic blue pairing logic. |
| Sauternes | Wine | Same principle with more acidity behind it, so the finish stays clean. |
| Sherry | Wine | Nutty and oxidative, which suits the earthy rind character. |
| Chocolate stout | Beer | Picks up the faint cocoa note at the end of the cheese. |
| Gamay or Zinfandel | Wine | The drier route, with enough fruit to stand up without sweetness. |
In the kitchen it earns its keep more than most blues. It makes a genuinely good wedge salad dressing and it holds up as a dip, because a creamy-crumbly paste breaks down smoothly instead of staying in lumps.
The dairy also suggests it in a cream cheese frosting on chocolate cake, which sounds like a stunt and is really the cocoa finish being used deliberately.
Take it out of the fridge well before serving. Cold blue cheese reads as salt and very little else.
Storing a Natural-Rind Blue Is Not Like Storing Foil
Everything the rind does for the cheese in the shop, it keeps doing in your fridge, and it needs air to do it.
A foiled blue can be pressed back into its own wrapper because the foil was always the barrier. This one has a living surface, and sealing it in film smothers the rind and turns it slick and ammoniated within days.
Wrap the cut face in waxed or cheese paper and leave the rind loose. If you want a container, use one big enough that the paper is not compressed against the cheese.
Keep it in the warmest part of the fridge, which for most people is a door shelf or the top. A blue held too cold goes hard and stops developing, and it will read as salt when you serve it.
Trust your nose over the date. A sharp ammonia smell on opening means the rind has been suffocated, and that is a wrapping fault rather than an age fault.
What Can You Use Instead of Asher Blue?
The instinct with a blue is to substitute another blue of similar strength, which is the wrong instinct here. Match the mildness first, because that is the unusual part rather than the blue.
A natural rind is the second thing to look for and the harder one to find, since most supermarket blues are foil-wrapped by design.
Maytag Blue is the closest American reference point and the easiest to find, though it is tangier and sharper. Buttermilk Blue sits closer in gentleness.
For a European swap, Gorgonzola dolce is milder and creamier still, and it will not give you the earthy rind character. Cambozola goes further in the same direction and is barely a blue at all.
Do not reach for Roquefort or Stilton as substitutes here. Both are excellent and both are considerably louder, so a recipe balanced for Asher Blue will end up tasting of nothing else.
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Asher Blue FAQ
Two questions left over from the rind and the veining.
Yes. It is a real natural rind rather than a wrapper, and the paste closest to it carries the most earthy character. Trim it only if you dislike that note.
Because the cheese is pierced by hand, fifty times on each side, and the mould grows along the air channels those needles leave behind.
