>>>Young cheeses are a completely separate category. I was actually missing all the variety while I was in the US - there was only cottage, ricotta and sometimes queso fresco and that was it. Here we have at least a dozen of those in any place; if you drive just 20 minutes away, at least four of these are different. And no skimming, most of them are full fat.
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>These days I go to US supermarkets and find really good cheeses out of Wisconsin as well as OK cheeses from Europe for the snobs.

Wisconsin... there's a name I learned to avoid. But with the quantity I guess the quality must appear somewhere, but we never met. But I did meet the quality of the other end of the curve - my worst, pardon my redmondese, cheese experience was something with blue cheese I tried to eat on the last Whilfest. It got me into a dilemma within seconds: did I puke already or am I about to?

Let's just say our cheese cultures (pardon the pun) are very different.

>>>Once in Germany I tried a slice of cheese which stank of... manure. I almost wanted to return it but they goaded me into eating it. Two days later I didn't want to eat any other cheese.
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>I haven't found those in the US yet and it really is an acquired taste. Worth noting that In the post War period, smelly French cheeses were a well-known theme in the US presumably as servicemen reported their experiences. There's an old joke in the fridge in Mickey's kitchen in Disneyland: there are two cheese rounds, one labeled "Gouda" and the other "not so gouda."

And Disney is an acquired distaste :).