World's best cheese?

Here is a very small piece of Rogue River Blue, the world's best cheese of 2019.

Rogue River Blue cheese

This blue cheese from Rogue Creamery took the top prize at the 2019 World Cheese Awards. I like it though I don't love it, it has a quite dramatic flavour and to me tastes quite strongly of wine, maybe due to the grape leaves it is wrapped in, rather than tasting entirely of cheese. And I am generally a big fan of strong blue cheeses. Clearly the judges at the World Cheese Awards think pretty highly of it as it beat over 3,800 entries from around the world. It is made at a small creamery in Oregon in the USA. I bought it at Neal's Yard Dairy in London, a wonderful cheese shop where I get my cheese whenever I'm in the city. I have bought this cheese from them before, always in small amounts as it is very expensive. This year it was retailing at an eye-watering £98.85 per kilo. That is more than double the average price of a cheese in the shop. It's only a little pricier than previous years, despite skyrocketing interest in the cheese which means that its entire 2019 stock has already sold out and you can pre-order it for September 2020. The cheese is only available in the autumn. Usually Neal's Yard Dairy stock only cheeses from the 'British Isles', though in the past this geographic purview extended to Brie de Meaux, but around this time of year they would make an exception to stock Rogue River Blue. So I have bought it from them before in advance of winter festivities. It's quite a divisive cheese, people tend to love it or hate it - when I bought it last time the cheesemonger described it as the 'Marmite of cheese'. On one memorable year, Neal's Yard Dairy very unusually still had a large piece of this cheese left in the new year, perhaps their delivery had arrived late and they hadn't been able to sell it all. The cheesemonger on that occasion was firmly in the 'hate it' camp, and didn't want this cheese hanging around her shop any longer into January, so when I went to buy my typical just-about-affordable tiny piece, she offered to sell me the entire wedge at a steep discount. Very steep - much less than most of the other cheeses in the shop. I hesitated momentarily and then went for it, returning home with a large lump of a very nice cheese. I'm not sure who was more delighted - me or the cheesemonger when she saw the last of Rogue River Blue exiting her shop, not to reappear for most of a year. The cheesemonger was happy, I was happy, my cheese-eating friends were happy, that was a happy January. And now it's the best cheese in the world. Yeah, yeah, I ate this cheese before it was cool.