Cheese: Ewephoria Extra Aged

Ewephoria, not surprisingly made out of sheep's milk, is a gouda style cheese made for Cheeseland, a Seattle importer of Dutch cheese, by a small farm in the Friesland province in northern Netherlands. Apparently aged sheep's milk cheese is "too gamy for American tastes," so Cheeseland worked with the Dutch farm to produce a cheese with "a sweeter and nuttier" taste solely for sale in the U.S. market to focus on the American sweet tooth. The Cheeseland website says, like typical marketing baloney, it "tastes like candy." If that were the case, candy would not be as popular among young children. Ewephoria is aged anywhere from 4 to 12 months (I see aging estimates that vary widely on different websites). I am assuming my "extra aged" cheese was aged toward the end of the longer time frame. I found that it is quite strong and quite dense, and still has a significant sheepy taste to it that I happen to like, although it may be a little more muted. Sweet is not a descriptive term I would have used to describe it, but all of the advertising literature uses the term. It may be a little sweeter than normal sheep's milk cheese, but calling it "candy" goes way, way too far. I'd not heard of this cheese until we saw it at DTLA Cheese in the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. I really like it, but I love all sheep's milk cheese and wouldn't prefer this over many other aged sheep's milk cheeses. Much of the information for this came from an on-line article at SFGate dated March 8, 2014.