Best-Selling Cheeses

Where to Start With Gourmet Cheese

With more than 550 cheeses on the site, the hardest part is often just knowing where to begin. That is what this page is for, gathering the cheeses igourmet customers buy most, the proven favorites that have sold steadily for years, so you can skip the guesswork and start with what already works. The exact lineup shifts with the season and with whatever people happen to be ordering, but the character holds steady — these are famous, well-made wheels that suit almost any table, from someone's first cheese board to a regular's standing reorder.

None of these are difficult or acquired tastes; they are the cheeses that have stayed popular for decades, even centuries, and they travel well, which counts for a lot when they are coming to you by mail. Most hail from the classic cheese countries of Europe, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and England, with a handful of American favorites in the mix, and igourmet cuts and wraps each one to order, as it has with imported specialty cheese since 1997.

The Most Popular Cheeses, and Why

Ask around for the best-known gourmet cheeses and the same handful keeps surfacing. Parmigiano Reggiano usually leads, the hard, savory grating cheese Italians call the King of Cheeses, with Gruyère never far behind, as happy melted into a fondue as it is sliced for a snack. From France come the soft, bloomy pair of Brie and Camembert; from Spain, sheep's-milk Manchego; and cheddar, shared by England and America, outsells nearly everything else on the planet. Round things off with a wedge of sweet Dutch Gouda and a blue like Stilton or Gorgonzola, and you have the short list most people picture when they hear the word cheese.

There is usually history behind that staying power. Many of these cheeses have been made the same way for generations, and most carry a protected-origin mark, the DOP, AOP, or PDO seal that legally ties a cheese to one region and one method, so a real Parmigiano Reggiano puts a recipe roughly eight centuries old on your plate. Fame compounds, too, since a cheese almost everyone already enjoys becomes the obvious choice for a dinner party or a gift, and every order keeps it selling and keeps its name in front of the next shopper.

Building a Board From the Bestsellers

A board made from the bestsellers is hard to mess up, since the favorites already cover the main styles between them, from something hard and grating to a soft bloomy round, an alpine for melting, a sheep's-milk wheel, and a blue to finish. Three to five is plenty; just spread your picks across the textures so no two taste alike. Pull everything from the fridge about forty-five minutes ahead so the flavors come back to life, slice the firm cheeses, leave the soft ones whole with a knife of their own, and round out the plate with crackers, fruit, a handful of nuts, and a drizzle of honey. Whatever you do not finish will keep best wrapped in breathable cheese storage bags, which let a cut wheel breathe instead of sweating in plastic, with the firm, aged cheeses holding for a couple of weeks that way.

Also Worth Exploring

Ready to range wider? The gourmet cheese collection holds all 550-plus wheels, sorted by style, region, and milk, while the award-winning cheeses collection makes another solid starting point, narrowed to the wheels that have taken ribbons at competition. When you are ready to build the board itself, the crackers and crisps collection gives any of these cheeses a crisp base to sit on.