This Purple Cheese Lets You Drink Your Wine and Eat It, Too

Winemaker Tom Caruso moved his winemaking facility, Pray Tell, from Oregon back to his hometown of Philadelphia in 2024, he surveyed his new neighbors.

A block away from the Olde Kensington winery space sat Perrystead Dairy, a renowned and award-winning urban creamery led by owner and head cheesemaker Yoav Perry. Caruso and his girlfriend and business partner, Sydney Adams, became regulars at Perrystead, frequenting the creamery’s cheese-vending machine. Perry became a fan of their wine. Collaborating felt natural—nothing goes together better than wine and cheese.

“We both thrive on the ‘what does this button do?’ attitude,” Perry says of himself and Caruso, “and we love to play with new ways to express otherwise traditional agricultural products.”

This past Valentine’s Day, the businesses introduced Pray Tell cheese, an aged, moist, semi-firm cheese soaked in the winery’s 2022 Gamay Noir, giving it a purple hue.

“We used about a gallon and a half of wine to wash the cheese over the aging period,” Caruso says. “A little bit tends to go a long way.”

The cheese pairs the last of fall’s grass-fed milk with Pray Tell’s energetic and fruit-forward red, which earned a 93-point rating from Wine Enthusiast.

“I have played with wine in my cheeses over the years and there are many ways to do it,” Perry explains. “We chatted a bit about a pairing, but when I tasted the Gamay Noir I knew we had to bathe cheese in it.”

Pray Tell’s large industrial space in North Philly is part tasting room, part playground. Caruso and Adams work with grapes grown on both coasts of the country as they explore what winemaking in the city looks like.

“We make everything from grape to bottle, right here in the winery in Philadelphia,” Caruso says. That includes their lively Gamay Noir.

“The goal with our Gamay Noir is to look to Cru Beaujolais as our guideposts and inspiration as it has historically been one of my favorite wine regions in the world,” Caruso gushes. “That means capturing all of the inherent fresh fruit and vibrancy of the grape variety, while building enough structure for longevity.”

To execute this successfully, Pray Tell uses varying degrees of whole cluster inclusion during the fermentation process, keeping some stems on and removing others depending on the nature of the harvest year.

Caruso and Adams also play with the wine’s maceration time to limit flavor extraction and use neutral barrels to develop a softer, rounder texture and avoid oaky flavors that could overshadow the fruit profile.

From there, Perry’s cheese is bathed in the Gamay Noir for nine days in a series of washes and aged in a vacuum for 14 weeks. The result is a buttery and sweet cheese that delivers a hint of hay blended with warm spices. In place of a traditional rind, the wine-soaked edges contribute a fresh and punchy fruit profile.

“We really wanted to marry a remarkable Gamay Noir wine with the superb milk from grass- and hay-fed Guernsey cows,” Perry says. “It’s essentially a union of two distinct terroirs and vintages, but like any good marriage, both parties need to allow each other to individually shine in their element and be appreciated individually or as a whole.”

Pray Tell cheese is available at its tasting room and the Perrystead 24-7 cheese dispensary in Philadelphia. For a limited time, it is also available for nationwide online shipping.

“While this is a limited batch, I have a feeling more batches will follow with our spring and summer milk,” Perry says.

This article originally appeared in the May 2025 Film issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!

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