This Company Will Let You Taste the World Through Cheese.

Every box is themed around a place or a season, packed with artisan cheeses and cured meats from small makers around the world. Chosen by cheesemongers, with the story behind every bite.

By Tommy, AppyHour Cheesemonger | Updated this week ★★★★★ 1,700+ five-star reviews

If you're the kind of person who plans a trip around what you're going to eat, you know the bite I mean. Something you couldn't pronounce, handed to you across a counter somewhere, that turned out to be the best thing you ate all year. You probably still think about it.

That bite is the whole point. And with this box you can get it without ever leaving your zip code.

I'm Tommy, AppyHour's cheesemonger. Certified Cheese Professional through the American Cheese Society, 18 years behind the counter, and I won the Cheesemonger Invitational in 2021. Choosing what goes in these boxes is my job, and it's the best one I've had.

Here's how it works. The AppyHour Box is a themed spread that arrives as often as you like, monthly or every few weeks, whatever suits you. Spain one box, France the next, harvest flavors when the season turns. Artisan cheeses and cured meats you'd never think to pick yourself, plus the jam, nuts and crackers chosen to go with them, all of it cold-packed with a guide telling you where each item came from and exactly how to eat it.

So you get to try flavors from places you've dreamed of visiting, on a random Tuesday, with nothing booked.

Every box is a different escape

A box isn't a pile of good things, it's a spread with a point of view. Often that's a country: a Spanish box, a French box, an Italian one, with the cheese, meat and accompaniments chosen to sit together the way they would there. Members pour a Rioja alongside the Spain box and make a night of it.

Sometimes the theme is the season instead, because summer picnic flavors are nothing like a fall harvest board. Either way it changes every time, so you're never handed the same trip twice.

You'll know exactly what you're eating, and what to pair it with

Two things enhance the bite, the story and the pairing, and both come written down in the tasting guide in every box. Where each item is from, who made it and how, then exactly what to combine it with and what to pour alongside.

That's the difference between eating something and discovering it. Prairie Breeze isn't just cheddar once you know it's made by a Mennonite family in Iowa with milk from small Amish farms. Manchego Aurora isn't just Manchego once you know that herringbone pattern on the rind is a nod to the woven esparto grass wheels used to be wrapped in.

And when it lands, it really lands. The reviews we get most often aren't about a cheese being good. They're about a bite putting someone back somewhere.

Which brings up the fair question: does this hold up for people who have actually been? Some of our toughest members are the ones who lived there.

Six cheeses from recent boxes

Bregenzerwald, Austria

Alp Blossom

Smooth and buttery, wrapped in cornflowers, marigolds and lavender. An edible walk through an alpine meadow.

Appenzell, Switzerland

Chällerhocker

Its name means "sitting in the cellar." Brine washed for a year, tasting of roasted nuts and caramelized onion.

Australia

Marinated Farmstead Cheese

Sheep and goat milk soaked in olive oil, garlic and juniper. Made daily with milk from the farm's own animals.

Menorca, Spain

Mahón

Hand rubbed with paprika and olive oil on a Spanish island. Buttery, tangy, with a sea-kissed savory bite.

Veneto, Italy

Ubriaco al Pinot Rosé

Bathed in organic rosé until the rind blushes pink, then topped with dried rose petals. Fruity and elegant.

Iowa, USA

Prairie Breeze

An award-winning white cheddar from Milton Creamery, aged nine months to sweet cream, almond and a crystalline finish.

The charcuterie travels too. Jamón Serrano, dry cured for over a year in the mountain air of the Pyrenees, made from nothing but pork, sea salt and time. It was once so valuable in Spain that people used it as currency.

Date night, friends dropping by, or a Tuesday that needed help

Every box arrives cold, cut to order, on the schedule you choose. Board-ready in about ten minutes, nothing to prep. What members do with it from there is the best part.

It rescues the weeknight where nobody wants to cook. It turns friends dropping by into something that looks planned. And it goes where you go, on camping trips and girls' weekends and drives to the mountains. When the calendar gets busy you can move a delivery or skip one entirely.

Why a cheese from the Alps tastes like the Alps

Milk takes on the flavor of whatever the animals graze on, and cheese concentrates it. Alpine herds spend the summer climbing behind the melting snow, eating wildflowers and herbs that bloom for a few weeks a year. Cheese made from that milk tastes like that meadow, in that season, at that altitude. Move two kilometers down the road and the same recipe gives you a different cheese. A cheese is a place you can taste.

Finding those makers is my job, and it doesn't just start accross the border. Some of the best wheels we send come from creameries in Iowa and Vermont doing the exact same thing an alpine dairy does. Small makers don't have the volume or marketing budget the big brands do, so the aisle defaults to the same handful of names. Many of these makers won't be found on a grocery store shelf.

Your grocery run vs. a box curated by cheesemongers

You'll always be able to find cheese. What's harder to find is a different country showing up on a schedule, with the story of where it came from.