• Busy chefs, culinary students, and restaurant owners: Ever wanted to start a cheese program at your restaurant? Open your own cheese shop? Become a cheese educator?

• Wine, beer, beverage, mixology professionals: Learn everything you need to know about the ultimate pairing partner

• Serious cheese enthusiasts: You know it, we know it: cheese has arrived. Time to get a crash course on one of food’s hottest subjects.

• Instruction from our in-house experts

• Longer, more in-depth classes

• Murray's Cheese certified diploma

• 10% discount at Murray’s for all purchases made during Boot Camp weekend

• The Murray's Cheese Handbook

• The Boot Camp class binder, chock-full of cheese literature, cheese charts, cheese facts, tasting forms, maps, and more!

• Murray's Guide to NYC: get tips on the best places to eat during your stay in New York. From restaurants and bars to food shops and markets, find our favorite foods all around the city.

Welcome to Cheese U Boot Camp: no ordinary cheese course. Liz Thorpe, Murray's Vice President and co-author of the Murray’s Cheese Handbook, for an introduction to our comprehensive course on cheese. Collect your binders, complete with readings for each session, and get a crash course on the common thread throughout the series: tasting. Beyond Cheese 101. WAY beyond. Just what makes one cheese different from the next? Taste through a bevy of different cheese types and introduce your palate to the flavor characteristics of each and every family of cheese. Learn about flavor profiles and the idiosyncratic elements that distinguish one cheese type from the next and get initiated to the level of tasting that you will "have to" endure for the remainder of the series..

Ah, Affinage: That magical final step in the cheesemaking process, the culmination of every measure taken to ensure a fine wheel of cheese, and the process that can determine whether your cheese becomes nutty and full bodied or rubbery and dry. Affinage can affect the flavor, texture, appearance, and durability of cheese. This session, BE ONE WITH THE CHEESE: Class is conducted in our caves, and you're doing the smelly work, as Zoe Brickley, Murray's very own affineur, guides a tasting and affinage exercise illustrating the integral role that aging plays in the flavor development of cheese. Also in this session, an exploration of tasting cheese. Sample award-winning, defective, overripe, underripe, and perfectly ripened cheese, and learn how to taste and evaluate cheese like a professional.

This week, understand how history, politics, and religion have influenced cheesemaking and cheese styles. How does a country's topography influence its cheese production? What are the origins of cheese? How have cheesemaking methods evolved through time? During an international crash course on the world's greatest cheese regions and the fromage that made them famous, learn about the pivotal elements of history and geography that have influenced cheesemaking styles.

Zoe Brickley, Murray's own science-savvy affineur, cooks up some curd and conducts a vertical tasting of cow, sheep, and goat milks, yogurts, and cheeses. With detailed concentration on the nutritional and chemical makeup of each type of milk, understand, in plain English, the inherent differences between cow, sheep, and goat milks, and how these differences translate to the taste and characteristics of their respective cheeses.

Then Zoe will launch into the world of cheesemaking where you'll learn how terroir, animals' diet, great milk, and a bit of creativity play integral roles in crafting various cheese styles.

Join Chris Munsey, Murray's Wholesale Manager & In-house beer expert, and Amanda Crawford, Associate Wine Specialist at Christie's and frequent instructor at The Cheese Course, for an afternoon of matchmaking. Understand in full the pairing capabilities and fundamentals of both wine and beer with our moldy little friends, and learn for yourself how the unique craft of pairing correctly makes your cheese sing.