culture: the word on cheese just dropped their Best Cheeses of 2026 list, and while there's the usual suspects (Pleasant Ridge Reserve continues its decades-long dominance, Cabot and Tillamook picked up medals for the grocery aisle heroes), one cheese stood out so absurdly that I had to write about it immediately.
Shakerag Blue from Sequatchie Cove Creamery in Tennessee.
Let me describe this thing to you: it's a blue cheese wrapped in fig leaves that have been soaked in Chattanooga Whiskey. The wheel goes through a whole aging arc — starts mild, then the wax comes off, and in go the whiskey-soaked fig leaves. What emerges is described as "over-the-top in all the best ways" by the people who make it. "Basically, this blue cheese is down to party."
That sentence, by the way, is from the creamery's own website. These people know what they have.
The combination sounds like someone lost a bet. Blue cheese is already aggressively flavorful — the veining from Penicillium roqueforti gives you that sharp, salty, almost metallic tang. Fig leaves bring a subtle coconut-vanilla sweetness. Whiskey adds oak, caramel, heat. Three strong personalities in a room together, and instead of fighting, they harmonize. Cheesemongers report "a nearly otherworldly level of fruitiness" when the fig leaf and blue veining interact. The Chattanooga Whiskey tie-in isn't just marketing — it's a genuine expression of Tennessee terroir in a format most people associate exclusively with Europe.
This is exactly the kind of boundary-pushing the American cheese scene needs more of. We've spent decades proving we can make good cheddar and competent brie. The next act is making things that couldn't exist anywhere else. Shakerag Blue is unabashedly, unmistakably Southern — not in the sweet-tea-and-magnolias way, but in the "let's try soaking cheese in whiskey and wrapping it in leaves from my neighbor's garden" way. That's the spirit that built American craft beer, and it's thrilling to see it fully realized in cheese.
If you can find Shakerag Blue, buy it. Put it on endive boats with nothing else — no honey, no nuts, nothing that would compete. Let the cheese do the talking. And if you can't find it, be annoyed. That's the correct response. This is a cheese that deserves national attention, and right now it's only made by a small creamery in Tennessee that probably still sells more at farmer's markets than through distributors.
But hey — that's how the best stuff always starts.
culture's full Best Cheeses of 2026 list also includes Pleasant Ridge Reserve (again, because it's immortal), a bunch of impressive alpine-style wheels from Uplands Cheese, and several surprisingly affordable medalists from Cabot and Tillamook. The full list is worth your time at culturecheesemag.com, but Shakerag Blue is the one you'll remember.