4 best bets at the Atlanta Cheese Festival

The festival is set up like a farmers market, with cheese and other food vendors hosting booths throughout the Atlanta Botanical Garden
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Atlanta Cheese Festival
Photograph by Caroline C. Kilgore

Curd it get any better than this? The Atlanta Cheese Festival comes to the Atlanta Botanical Garden for the third year on October 9 from 5:30 to 10 p.m. “Our company’s mission for a long time has been to promote artisan producers,” says Natalie Scott, marketing assistant for Gourmet Foods International, the Atlanta-based specialty food distributor organizing the event. The festival is set up like a well-landscaped farmers market, with cheese and other food vendors hosting booths throughout the garden. Ticket holders can taste and vote for their favorite restaurants competing in the Grilled Cheese Meltdown and Mac and Cheese Macdown. In addition, VIP guests score entry to either a wine and cheese or a beer and cheese pairing. This year’s participants include Georgia’s own Many Fold Farm, High Road Craft Ice Cream, and Savannah Bee Company, as well as Oregon’s Rogue Creamery, Utah’s Creminelli Fine Meats, and Vermont Creamery.

(Clockwise from top left)

Cypress Grove Chevre
Pick Truffle Tremor
Why Because truffles. (See also: Humboldt Fog.)

Cowgirl Creamery
Pick Mt. Tam
Why The rich, smooth triple cream is butter’s brother from another mother

Many Fold Farm
Pick Condor’s Ruin
Why Rich and velvety; made in Chattahoochee Hills but winning awards across the country

Jasper Hill Farm
Pick Moses Sleeper
Why From Vermont’s best creamery, a more seductive Brie

This article originally appeared in our October 2015 issue under the headline “Cheese, please.”

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