Tales from the Cheesemonger

May 2005

 Goat and Sheep Cheeses

Spring has arrived full force as Pike Place Market fills up with people looking for first-of-the-season’s flowers, berries and mushrooms, as well as goat and sheep milk cheeses. These ruminants (animals able to convert low-nutrient grasses and hay into high-nutrient milk for humans) still adhere to breeding cycles that have them bearing offspring from about December through April. After producing milk for their newborns, they soon produce perfect milk for cheese making. Pasturage has a huge influence on cheese - at its height of quality in the spring, with new grass growth, and in the autumn, with good rainfall and mature pastures. So the goat and sheep cheeses returning to market are high-quality, generally fresh, and worth the winter-long wait.

New Cheeses

 Although Beecher’s artisan cheese selection is primarily focused on the U.S. West, we were so impressed by a few cheeses we encountered at the Fancy Food Show gathering in San Francisco a few months ago, that we’ve let our tendrils grow out as far as Texas and Louisiana. You might say that our cheeses now encompass the entire Louisiana Purchase. Bittersweet Plantation Dairy is based in Gonzales, Louisiana, and owned by John Folse, a chef specializing in Cajun cuisine. The Kashkaval from Bittersweet is a Bulgarian-style mild cheese. Their fabulous Fleur-de-Lis and Fleur-de-Teche are triple-cream cow’s milk cheeses that are extremely creamy and change radically with age from a firm, almost chalky, paste to a molten aged cream. The Teche (pronounced ‘tesh’) has a line of ash through it like Cypress Grove’s Humboldt Fog, creating a very decorative presentation on a platter.

We also have recently picked up an unusual goat cheese from the Mozzarella Company out of Dallas, Texas, called Hoja Santa Goat Cheese Bundles. This soft goat cheese is wrapped in a macerated leaf that imparts a sassafras, or root beer-like, quality to its contents. The same company also provides us with Blanca Bianca, which is a raw milk cow’s cheese bathed in white wine. It’s fruity, slightly stinky but mellow.

We like Juniper Grove goat cheeses so much, as trumpeted in an earlier Tales posting, that we’ve also picked up their Buche and Pyramids. The Buche, or chevre log, is mold-ripened, fresh-tasting, slightly creamy under the rind and sports a wheat straw through its middle. The Pyramid has a delicate, mold-ripened rind and a body that is somewhat denser than the Buche. Both are very attractively packaged and made to look wonderful on any cheeseboard.

Industry Notes

On St. Patrick’s Day, I attended an afternoon seminar called Best of the Northwest Palate sponsored by DPI Northwest (Distribution Plus, Incorporated). DPI is a major distributor of cheese and fine foods, including Beecher’s products. They’ve done a spectacular job over the past year presenting seminars on cheese-oriented topics often featuring interesting speakers. David Gremmels, president of the Rogue Creamery, spoke eloquently about his historic dairy and his relationship with the venerable Ig Vella who sold the dairy to David and his partner. There’s a lot of history there. Ig is a kind of godfather to artisan cheesemakers in the States, and certainly on the West Coast. His family’s historic Vella Cheese Company in Sonoma, California, is renowned for keeping the spirit of handmade artisan cheese alive at a time when industrial cheesemaking put many small makers out of business.

The final speaker, and by far the most entertaining, was Beecher’s founder, Kurt Dammeier. Drawing on his years of association with the craft beer industry, Kurt spoke about similar roadblocks facing the growing artisan cheese industry. He touched on problems the craft beer industry faced with distribution monopolies in the 1980’s as well as struggles surrounding the success of the new brews. Kurt noted, as craft beer took off, many makers had trouble accommodating the new scale. I’ve witnessed this with up-and-coming cheesemakers who get good some press, suddenly ramp-up production to meet demand, and then have issues with quality control.

Legislation in the Northwest in the early 80’s made it possible for breweries to serve their product on-site, thus opening up a revival of small brewpubs. Similarly, the artisan cheese business must contend with strict federal controls on milk, including government-sanctioned regional monopolies and somewhat antiquated laws regarding pasteurization and handling that can make entry into the business to capital-intensive for small-scale cheesemakers. In addition, packaging and shipping are also major hurdles the artisan cheese industry must contend with before the category can really flourish. The end message was that the artisan cheese industry should look to the artisan beer industry for guidance to overcome obstacles and anticipate quickly-evolving consumer demands.

A Final Note

Please be aware that The Seattle Cheese Festival, co-sponsored by Beecher’s, will be held May 14 th and 15 th in the Pike Place Market. This is the first of a planned annual event that is already creating a buzz in the cheese community. Hope to see you there.

Bon Fromage!