Reading Raclette

So many award-winning cheeses are made in Vermont these days that it’s easy to feel Green State envy. One Vermont cheese that’s got cheesemongers buzzing this winter is Reading Raclette. Now, the Swiss make Raclette and so do the French, but until Spring Brook Farm introduced its artisanal version from Reading, no American cheesemaker had come forward with a melt-away Alpine stinker this good.

Reading Raclette has another thing going for it. All of the proceeds go to a Vermont nonprofit called Farms for City Kids that offers urban school children a chance to explore farming and cheese making. To continue reading, please visit the Di Bruno Blog. 


Full disclosure: I am a freelancer for Di Bruno Bros. Twice a month, I select a cheese and develop a post for their blog. This is how I cover the cost of my dairy habit.

Cabot Clothbound Cheddar

For my Di Bruno Bros. column this week, I write about Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, a beautiful mummy of a cheese from Vermont. It's bandaged in cloth and "larded," then cave-aged -- like an Egyptian pharaoh. Whenever I eat clothbound cheddar, my mind flashes to the mummified cats on display at the Penn Museum. 

Sorry, that's a bit ghoulish, but I do find it fascinating that cheesemakers adopted this method of preservation to create wildly flavorful cheeses. This one smells like the woods and tastes like a thousand things. If you want to read about it and try a little clothbound cheddar tasting (highly advised around Halloween), you'll find all the info over on the Di Bruno Blog, where I post twice a month to earn my cheese allowance.

If you're a cheddar head with lofty aspirations of understanding this tricksy style of cheesemaking, check out The Cheese Chronicles, by Liz Thorpe. She writes beautifully and thoughtfully about cheddar in her chapter on "The Amish: Seeking the Roots of American Cheese" (pp. 90-123). I reread it over a nibble of Cabot Clothbound, and as always I fell under Thorpe's spell. She talks about cheddar the way some people talk about craft beer -- with reverence, pop, and understanding.

If you want more juicy backstory about Cabot Creamery and how Vermont became a cheese mecca, listen to Ann Saxelby's interview with Paul Kindstedt on "Cutting the Curd," a Brooklyn radio show all about cheese. Kinstedt has trained many American cheesemakers and is a sort of Gandalf figure in the American farmstead cheese movement. His take on the Vermont cheese scene is fascinating, and you'll enjoy Ann Saxelby's gently probing Midwestern twang. 

Fancy Food Show Cheese Redux

There were so many dairy celebs at the Fancy Food Show in D.C. on Sunday, I found myself gulping for air. While everyone else was crowded around Rick Bayless, who was dousing shrimp in a new packaged sauce, I was holding my breath before one cheese luminary after another. Here are the highlights:

1. I beheld the Cashel Couple.

Here they are, Sarah Grubb and Sergio Furno, makers of Cashel Blue, a cheese so sumptuous it should be called frosting. Sarah's mother invented the recipe, and now Sarah and Sergio have become dairy olympiads; they won gold at the World Cheese Awards in 2006 and 2010. 

Big fat gossip: Cashel Blue has been picked up by Kerrygold, (the Irish butter butter magnate), and I expect there'll be a wild marketing campaign. I hope. If only all the butter lovers would learn to embrace blue cheese. Pssst...Cashel is great for shmearing on bread, on oaty biscuits, even wrists.

2. I tasted the Lord of Hundreds.

My new favorite cheese. Look at the rind. 

This ewe's milk dream is so pretty, it has a manager, the lovely Ann-Marie Dyas of The Fine Cheese Co. in Bath, England (she's also a judge at the British Cheese Awards).

You probably know the crackers made by this company. 

They seem to worship cheese through their very packaging, and Ann-Marie was no different. She had me laughing about a cheese named Rachel -- after the cheesemaker's girlfriend, now his ex. She showed me his picture, then scuttled under a table and dug out some quince caviar for an impromtpu tasting.

3. I glimpsed Paula Lambert.

But I didn't get a chance to chat. She was elbow-deep in fans, sampling her goat cheeses from Texas. Paula is a pioneer. She began making cheese back in the '80s and is known for bringing  the first real Italian mozzarella to Dallas. She simply made it herself.

Look at this spread. I still fantasize about Paula's Hoja Santa, a leaf-wrapped muffin that once appeared before me on the cheese cart at the Four Seasons.

4.  I sampled Sgt. Pepper.

Mary Keehn of Cypress Grove Dairy in California has a new line of "flashback" goat cheeses that call to mind Ben & Jerry's. Rolled in four kinds of pepper, Sgt. Pepper has a trippy look to it and tastes like just the sort of cool, fresh bite you'd want on a roadtrip. It was positioned next to four other flashbacks, including PsycheDillic and Purple Haze.

5. I met a bicycle enthusiast who makes cheese.

Alan Glustoff from Port Chester, NY makes great raw milk cheese with some interesting branding. At 5 Spoke Creamery, he brings together wheels and wheels -- think cheese, then bicycles -- to promote the simple pleasures of eating and sidewinding.

I'd never tried this rustic number (and I'm embarrassed to say, I forgot its name), but I left the booth curious to try more. Luckily, I see its available at Philadelphia's Essene Market.

6. I discovered my first Puerto Rican cheese.

Quesos Vaca Negra claims to be the first company to produce aged artisan cheese from Puerto Rico. I believe it -- I was there in January and couldn't find a single local variety at the market. 

Cheesemaker Wanda Otero studied cheesemaking in the U.S. and now produces 5 cave-aged cheeses. It will be interesting to see how her new business progresses. This is her first year.

7. I tried all of Rogue Creamery's blues. 

I've been such a fan of Rogue River Blue, and I had no idea that this Oregon company produced a whole line. Their newest, Flora Nelle, tastes like pecans. It's sharp, sweet, nutty -- just wonderful. It's also the company's first pasteurized blue. 

This surprised me. Overall, pasteurized cheeses in America seem to be gaining complexity. What's the secret?

8. I spent five hours feasting. 

I couldn't believe the array of cheeses, the coolers full of wheels, the generosity of so many makers. I can still taste some of my favorites. Like Kunik.

And these tiny hand-made cheeses, called Hannahbells. They look like gumdrops and taste like marshmallow morsels.

And these succulent gems, from Vermont Cheese & Butter Co., where I met the oh so lovely Adeline Durant. My photos are a bit blurry. You can tell I was hurrying to maximize every mouthful. 

I was so happy to see Saxon Creamery, too. They make one of my favorite wheels from Wisconsin, Big Eds.

And that was all I could stomach. Now the countdown begins for the American Cheese Society Conference in Montreal, Aug.3-6.

Ascutney Mountain For Spring

I love when the first leaves pop, hot green and feather-tipped. Our North Philly neighborhood awakens. Cats appear. Then teenagers -- warming the walks as they hover in clusters. Soon my neighbors take to their stoops to read the paper and sip coffee or beer.

That’s when I want Ascutney Mountain, a cheese that somehow tastes like spring. Like peas in their pods.

That’s what Zeke told me he tasted when he handed me a sample of Ascutney Mountain several weeks ago at the cheese counter. Zeke has a palate of gold. I go to him as one would go to a guru, not for a mantra but for a tasting lesson. When my palate goes off-key, Zeke helps me find the note.

“Fresh peas, can you taste it?” he asked.

I couldn’t taste peas at first. But I did detect an Alpiney edge, that bell-clear herbiness I now recognize in mountain cheeses. Think of Appenzeller, Gruyere, Emmentaler. They all contain an herbal quality – not as in dill or parsley – but as in herbed spirits (think of Jagermeister or Chartreuse).

Ascutney Mountain, which is made in Vermont, has an Alpine herbiness, but it’s more vegetal in nature, and less bitter and boozey, if that makes sense.

It tastes fresh, I kid you not. Like greens. Like spring seedlings.

I have eaten two wedges of it now, nibbling away through the gray days that haunted April. And now I taste pea pods. I do. Once I could identify it, I tasted it in every bite. Magical, how even taste grows. All it takes is nurturing.

Gail Holmes at Cobb Hill Cheese in Hartland, VT makes Ascutney Mountain. She uses raw milk from Jersey cows, a breed known for its supremely creamy milk. That makes Ascutney Mountain gloriously creamy once it melts on your tongue.

The texture calls to mind a young Gouda, with crispy crystals that pop on the togue – the mark of an aged cheese.

If you like Comte, you will want to seek this out, though it’s rare. Only 45 wheels are made each week – fewer in winter, one assumes. Serve it with spring vegetables (ramps, morels, peas, fiddleheads) and a lush white or a light- to medium-bodied red. Prepare to shiver.

Other notes to look for: fuitiness, nuttiness, a whiff of pineapple.

Oma, Another Little Treasure from Vermont

When summer comes, one of my dreams is to drive to northern Vermont. The state is home to so many of my favorite people and wedges, from the master affineurs at Jasper Hill to the gorgeous wheels of Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, Lazy Lady goat cheese, and Winnemere.

My latest fixation is this little orange brooch, named Oma (“Grandmother”). Dan and Sebastian von Trapp make this raw cow’s milk cheese to honor their gran, who married into the von Trapp family (yes, from The Sound of Music). It’s the sort of cheese that makes you raise your eyebrows and exclaim, “Oh!”

Tiny as it may be, this jewel is pungent, beefy. Think of your grandmother’s thick black shoes, then add the smell of sweating onions. Fans of Red Hawk will find it an interesting foil. The texture is silken, pudgy -- I wanted a little more weepy drape, but the flavors were delightfully beefy and buttery with a resonant barnyard shiver. Add some dark beer, brown bread, and fig jam, and you've got my idea of a stoop-sitter's picnic.

There’s a lovely story about this cheese in the April issue of Bon Appetit (see “A Slice of Vermont”). As a lapsed subscriber, this piece made me want to reconsider reading Bon Appetit again. The pictures were great, especially the photo of Oma von Trapp in her white bun and cardigan.

Winnimere is here!

Ask any good cheesemonger about his cheese of the moment, and he will surely tell you “Winnimere.” If he doesn’t, you can be sure he’s hiding a stash in the back for himself. That’s because it’s Winnimere season, the time of year when the Cellars at Jasper Hill in cold Vermont first release their much-awaited oozer.

Winnimere is one of those legendary artisanal cheeses that people clamor for, and stand in line for; it’s the Harry Potter of cheeses. Mythical. Delightful. A cheese for the imagination.

Why? It’s wrapped in spruce bark, for one thing, which gives it a kind of fairytale quality. And the rind, well, it’s luminous. Imagine a harvest moon, encircled with mist. Are you with me? Are you lusting?

You should be.

Winnimere is a washed-rind cheese that is modeled after Forsterkase, a specialty of Switzerland that, translated, means “Lumberjack Cheese.” Think wool socks, stubble, and the smell of pine.

Winnimere is the twee cousin of Forsterkase. There is less beefiness and more forest magic. Winnimere smells like the cabin before the Three Bears arrived. It smells wild, like damp firewood, and tastes subtly of musk melon, caramelized onions, and toasted nuts.

This is a bold cheese that fires up quickly on the tongue, then dissipates. Etherial. Marvelous. The texture is pudding-like. Imagine a forest custard. If you took the smell of a damp morning hike and asked the Spanish chef Ferran Adria (confession: I am reading his biography by Colman Andrews right now. Delicious.) to infuse the smell into a mousse, that, that (!) would be the flavor.

Cold, it tastes like fairy gelato.

It would be best to eat Winnimere after a sauna, I imagine, peering out at the snow, while a herd of deer nibbled at the bark of nearby trees. Can you see it? Can you taste it?

Formaggio Kitchen suggests pairing this raw-mik dream with Belgian ale. Kirsten Jackson over at the blog It’s not You, It’s Brie suggests throwing a Winnimere party. The ladeez over at cheeseandchampagne.com suggest serving it with an Allagash white, a New York Riesling, or Midas Touch.

Can I recommend that you try it first with a spoon, without bread, without a beverage, wearing nothing but wool socks in bed while someone reads aloud a paragraph or two of Lord of the Rings in your ear? That, I think, completes the experience.

Tip: If you live in Philly, you're in for a special treat. Di Bruno Bros. has ordered a special batch of Winnimere washed in local Root Liqueur, which should arrive later this month. Three special tastings (noted in a previous post) are planned for the public. Don't miss the chance to try this rare combination. I will be there, standing in line, shivering with anticipation.