14 Best Dairy-Free Vegan Cheeses, Ranked

With the incredible ballooning of the plant-based milk market of the last few years, one could be forgiven for thinking it’s a modern oddity, but soy and almond milk have been made in Asia and the Middle East for centuries. Mexico’s famous cinnamon-spiked rice drink, horchata, has been around for hundreds of years as well. Still, as the incidence of allergies increases and interest in sustainable, vegan and plant-based diets rises, the options have mushroomed — or rather, they’ve hemped, cashewed and legumed. They’ve come a long way from the hauntingly translucent, watery and nutrient-bare rice milk of the ’90s, too. Many of them now on the market are excellent in flavor, texture and nutritional punch.

Dairy-free cheese, though, has historically been much harder to nail…