Animals are classy too. A deckle edge on both the cards and the matching envelopes gives this set a homegrown feel.

Caitlin Hatch, wife of cheesemaker Andy Hatch of the venerable Uplands Cheese, creates these detailed watercolor note cards depicting scenes from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London and her rural Wisconsin home.

Made with 100 percent reclaimed and recycled cotton, these brightly colored letterpress cards are printed with an all-purpose greeting.

These matte-finish thank-you cards sport a fondue in the corner. Each one is made from 100 percent recycled paper; with every order, a tree is planted in a national forest.

In the annals of weird wines, Madeira is way up there. Produced on a tiny island some 320 miles off the coast of North Africa, the wine gets its characteristic caramel hue and flavors from a long, slow heating process, followed by a lengthy sleep in oak barrels. It’s a recipe for disaster for most wines, but for some reason, it turns the juice from Madeira’s tough, acidic grapes into liquid bliss that lasts for decades, or even centuries.

I was re-reminded of this one rainy, cool autumn afternoon when I slipped into a seat at The River Café in Brooklyn. (It had been a hard week, okay?) There, Madeira has its own list, with bottles dating into the 1800s. I asked Joe DeLissio, the wine guy who assembled the collection, what attracts him to the wines. “Here’s a wine that breaks all the rules,” he said.

Buying Madeira

What do French Mimolette, British Red Leicester, and certain Wisconsin cheddars have in common? Besides being cheese, that is.

Different as they are, all these cheeses have a deep orange hue. And all share the same coloring agent: annatto, a tropical plant whose seeds have been used to color everything from Aztec paintings to cosmetics and food.

The story of La Fromagerie began more than 20 years ago with a skiing holiday in the French Alpine resort of Méribel. Worn down by a long day on the slopes, Patricia Michelson took a little respite and happened to taste the local cheese,

A new batch of perfectly ripe cheeses is set out for sale

Cheese board selections in the cafe change daily

The cafe inside La Fromagerie’s flagship store on Moxon Street

We recommend this unusual mix of components as a salad course. It’s an elegant winner, especially for a brunch menu accompanied by a sparkling rosé or crisp white wine such as Sauvignon Blanc. Coupole is a rich and delicate bloomy-rind goat cheese from Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery; if unavailable in your market, you can substitute a creamy, dense chévre.

Think of crème fraîche as the perfect love child of conservative, stodgy sour cream and plain ol’ whipped cream. It has the tanginess of one with the lighter creaminess of the other. And you can make it at home easily!

While the literal French translation means “fresh cream,” crème fraîche is actually a soured or cultured cream—originally made with fresh, raw cream naturally ripened to a thick, tangy, spoonable loveliness. Devonshire clotted cream, American sour cream, Italian mascarpone, and even cultured butter are all relatives of crème fraîche (though the French might dispute this).

When I was growing up in the 1970s, there was always Ski Queen gjetost [YAY-toast] on the table at my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn. She was from Norway, where this sweet, firm brown goat cheese is made by adding cream to a boiling kettle of goat’s milk whey and cooking it for hours and hours. When it has cooled, it is formed into cubes that look like old-fashioned laundry soap or peanut butter fudge.

Gjet in Norwegian means goat; ost means cheese. Most gjetost tastes a lot like caramel, from the milk sugars. To slice it you need a cheese plane, another Norwegian invention. A slice of gjetost, planed, is thin and elastic. It stretches and wrinkles and has a tendency to curl. There is nothing else like it at the grocery store. When checkout clerks see the package, they often wonder aloud what it is. Lots of people buy Jarlsberg (the other Norwegian cheese), but hardly anyone takes a chance on gjetost.