First of all, please excuse the slower blog posts this month. I work at a wine shop/wine bar. If in, or connected someone who works the food and wine industry, you know that during the winter holidays, we're busier than Fredrick's of Hollywood on Valentines day. But we sell Champagne rather than tiny pieces of hot pink lace (most months of the year, anyway).

After printing out hundreds of shipping labels and helping oodles of customers pick The Perfect Bottle, at the end of the day, I feel less like writing about cheese and more like seeing how many different types of it I can fit into my mouth. So today's post is going to be a quicky, about the holidayest of Holiday Cheeses.

The Triple-Creme.

There's no way around it, triple creme is the world's post popular cheese. It's the Reese Witherspoon of the cheese world, the Harry Potter of fermented milk, the golden retriever of the cheese shop. It's darling, it's charming, and gosh darn it, people like it.

When people ask me which cheese to serve during the holidays, I always go creme. OF COURSE  you want to have other cheeses on your plate, but if for some silly reason you just want one, pick a triple. If you are buying more than one, slip a triple in.

A triple-creme is a holiday no-brainer. Here's why:

1. It's like cheese ice cream. It's lush, creamy, smooth, sweet, fatty and can be eaten with a spoon. Who doesn't like ice cream? Lactose intolerant people perhaps. They also probably don't like my blog. Moving on...

2. Grandmas, little kids, and cheese snobs like triple-cremes. All these people will probably at your holiday function. Let's go back to Reese Withersppon. My grandmother likes her because she's a super mom and acts in those family-friendly romantic comedies that we can watch together without dealing with the eh hm... sensual scenes. Kids like her because she's the voice in some of their favorite animated movies and she smiles a lot and probably gives them candy when their parent's aren't looking. Snobs like her because of Walk the Line and Freeway. No matter how you dish it up, there's reason to like triple-creme. There's the more mainstream, delicious Brillat Savarin, and there's the more dynamic Nettle Meadow Kunik cheese made with cow and goat's milk that always manages to say something witty.

3. Triple-Cremes love sparkling wine. Although we should all be drinking more sparkling wine on everyday occasions, we're still a long ways away from offering a guest a cold sparkling-brewskie when they come over to hang out. We save sparklings for special occasions. And because we don't often have sparklings, when we do the experience, cheese and all, should be exemplary. The bubbles and high-acidity of sparkling cuts through the fat of the triple-cremes and lifts the wine and cheese off to a better place.

Want to read more about triple cremes? Grab the new issue of Culture magazine. It's got the creamiest most decadent cheese you've ever seen on a cover.

What's your favorite triple-creme?