This Gooey Cheese Will Save Your Awkward Family Holiday Gathering

Oh the holidays. The wondrous apex when winter becomes real; a time when fleeting sunlight brings on seasonal depression; when the only solace one can find is inside a brown-tinted bottle.

Well don't I just sound like the ultimate cynic. A lot of people love the holidays. Don't you just love that time of year when families congregate in uncomfortably intimate settings—perhaps your childhood home or the renovated apartment of your new step mom? Regardless of whether you believe that Christmas is a mass-marketed attempt to get sales up at the end of the year or not, or if you are into the saintly remembrance of the birthday of an inspirational Jew, December 25th has become a time of triumph and celebration. And what's a better form of celebration than consumption?

As a cheesemonger, the holidays are an especially harrowing time of year. When the line of customers stretches out our door, our hands ache and burn. We're riddled with dozens of knife nicks, and Saran-wrap scars. We wade the tides of party-goers who are too stressed out over last minute shopping and the occasional drunk who falls into the case too many times.

We stand ready to dispense the tasty wonders of the hard-working farmers and producers to those who are celebrating with their own family traditions. And one of the best things about this time of year is the oozy, gooey, stinky indulgence known as Vacherin Mont D'or. Exclusively made in the winter months (starting in October until the end of January), these little tubs of pure cow's milk heaven hale from the mountainous border between Switzerland and France. It's very close to the mountain of D'or, thus the name.

The full fatty milk was traditionally made from the same cow's whose summer yield is added to the famed Gruyere wheels, but the smaller amount of milk—due to the natural waning quantities in the colder months when calves are no longer abundant—is better suited to become a gooey, more fatty treat.

After the milk has been heated, doused with rennet, and all the cheesemaking wonders have begun, the curdy soup is ladled into round spruce vessels where the cheese is washed and aged, taking on a woodsy, sappy quality. And when it's perfectly ripe, these mind-blowing stunners should have the rind pulled back to reveal a cradle of quivering lactic perfection that's waiting to be dipped in to. There is, quite literally, nothing better in this world, unless you can imagine being dipped into a warm vat of chocolate pudding while naked. That might come close.

Vacherin Mont D'or should be consumed with copious amounts of funky, bubbly booze like a bio-dynamic Cava. It has an incredible ability to numb the pain: physical, familiar, and emotional.

Happy holidays y'all.