Kokoborrego (say it, it’s lovely to say)* makes cheese in Mt. Gilead, Ohio. But not just any cheese. This isn’t regular cow milk cheese… or goat milk cheese. It’s sheep milk cheese. And unlike its goaty cousin, sheep cheese doesn’t taste so much like the mammal from which it originates.
Actually, Kokoborrego Cheese Company makes cheeses from both the milks of sheep and cows. It’s the sheep milk fare that is particularly word-worthy, as you don’t run into that every day. Kokoborrego has been producing cheese made from raw sheep milk since 2011, in fact, it was the first Ohio Department of Agriculture licensed sheep dairy and creamery in Ohio. With milk sourced from its own Sippel Family Farm (a familiar name), Kokoborrego makes several versions of raw sheep milk cheeses: Morrow, Spotted Owl, Shot Rock, and the version that made it into the trial basket: Owl Creek Tomme.
Owl Creek Tomme has won recognition from the American Cheese Society. It’s aged three to ten months and described on the koko-website as “a bit nutty, sweet, floral and salty” That’s one way to describe it, “mild bleu cheese” is another way to describe it. That’s how the flavor comes across, but it’s not crumbly, it’s a pale, dryer, but still slice-able cheese.
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