Course Spotlight: Artisan Cheeses of the World
A course centered entirely around cheese? You aren’t dreaming, it’s real! Taught by Kimi Ceridon, Instructor for the Artisan Cheese Program at Boston University and owner of Live Love Cheese, this class provides an in-depth exploration of the styles and production of cheeses from local to far-reaching regions worldwide. The class is a blend of tastings, experiential classwork, discussion and lectures on cheese, the cheese industry, and cheesemaking. Successful completion of the course will result in a Certificate in Cheese Studies from Boston University.
With an emphasis on understanding the production of cheese, you’ll learn about everything from culturing to affinage, and how variations in each process (and those in between) affect its organoleptic properties. You’ll also use cheese as a case study in historical and cultural contexts to better understand the relationship and connections between people and food. As an experiential class with hands-on classwork and in-class tastings, each day of class will be exciting, challenging and different, from the cheeses of Southern France one day to a guest panel of cheese experts the next. And later in the semester, you’ll take part in a full-day ethnographic tours of cheesemaking farms in New England. You’ll visit farms in Vermont to meet with cheesemakers and staff, tour the farm dairy and cheesemaking facility, and observe the cheesemaking process.
Running again in Spring 2025, this course is open to both BU Gastronomy students and non-credit students. Learn more and register here.
We caught up with Kimi for a deeper look inside the program:
I initially entered the Gastronomy program because I was interested in local food systems. While earning my MLA, I took the Artisan Cheese Program, and I was immediately excited about how artisanal cheese was. This product encompasses so much about local food systems, from ecology to small family farms to the circular economy to consumers connecting with local foods and makers. There’s also the nerdy part of me that loved cheese. I have a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. While I left the STEM field, I still loved science and cheese is this awesome intersection between science and food. It takes science and craft to turn milk, enzymes, molds, cultures and salt into thousands of distinct varieties of cheese. Cheese is magical like that. And, of course, cheese is also super yummy.
In 2024, Kimi Ceridon, the founder of Life Love Cheese, made Culture Magazine’s Hot List of Cheese Professionals for her work educating people about the magic of cheese. Kimi received her MSME from MIT in 2001. She spent over a decade in tech before saying “Goodbye” to the cubicle and starting culinary school. She has an MLA in Gastronomy and an Artisan Cheese Certificate from BU. She’s also trained in cheesemaking at Sterling College alongside Jasper Hill. Now, she is an artisan cheese instructor at BU. Her company, Life Love Cheese, focuses on highlighting American cheese makers and artisans with a special emphasis on the Northeast. Look for her new store opening in Wakefield this Winter.