Really Gouda Cheese

Just after the place at which State Highway 1 changes from a motorway to a two-lane road south of Auckland is a little hamlet called Mercer. We stopped there for two reasons: first, we hadn’t had breakfast before driving the city streets and highways of Auckland; second, we saw a sign that said "Mercer Cheese." How could a town that advertised its cheese be bad? (I think we had a boost of enthusiasm from Sara’s maternal genetics; her mom’s from Wisconsin.)
So we pulled off and immediately found a picnic table overlooking a quiet stretch of river just out of earshot from the highway. We broke our fast with pain au chocolat, apples, and two pints of fresh New Zealand milk. I gave some dirty looks to the seagull who showed up (there’s no ocean in sight, but there they were, ever present). We pitched our rubbish and crossed the street to the cheese-shop.
I have to admit that the primary reason I wanted to visit this cheese-shop is for the entertainment value of telling people we visited a cheese-shop and giving a wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more to friends who know Monty Python. (If you don’t know it, see the Monty Python Flying Circus sketch about the cheese shop.) But what we received for having strolled across that little street was much, much more.
I expected a small grocery store with an over-sized refrigerator holding an exceptional amount of cheese. What we found was a small shop whose entire back wall was wooden shelves with half-wheels of cheese. You know those little flattened spheres of Gouda you buy in the grocery store? Imagine those without the red wax coating and weighing about twenty pounds each. All of it was Gouda, pronounced "gow-da" by the Dutch wife of the cheese-maker (blessed be he), made by this Dutchman who had come over from Holland more than twenty years ago to bring the flavour of Holland to New Zealand.
And what flavours they were! Wielding her cheese-slicer like a surgeon of fine dairy products, she offered us thin, tasty morsels of any cheese we wanted. Walnut cream gouda, garlic and chive gouda, young gouda, mature gouda, cumin gouda, swiss gouda, sweet cream gouda, the list went on. Wine tasters can have their swishy thin sips of coloured vinegar. Give me cheese tasting! We pointed and she sliced, letting the fine heady flavours roll over our tongues and savouring the milky depth of Holland’s best.
In the end we bought a half pound of walnut cream, garlic and chive, and mature gouda. It’s probably the best value we’ve received for our money so far. Folks have said that New Zealand cheese is exceptional, and I can now agree (though the cheese-maker says true Dutch unpasteurized cheese tastes better, and New Zealand won’t yet allow him to make it). It was well worth getting off the beaten path for a bit of the good stuff.
~emrys