{ Janet Fletcher / Food Writer }
No longer raw: Buttermilk Blue from Roth Cheese
International Raw Milk Cheese Appreciation Day is Saturday, October 19. But as our former President might say, “So what?” If nothing else, the occasion is a reminder that the freedom to make and sell raw-milk cheese is not guaranteed. This election year, especially, we’re hyper-aware that laws can change and restrict or retract rights we’ve had forever.
Read more
Drought. Wildfires. Record-breaking heat. Not to mention a pandemic that’s upended the supply chain. For dairy farmers and cheesemakers on the West Coast, this is one tough summer. Triple-digit temperatures and lack of water are stressing pastures and dairy animals. If such conditions are the new normal in California and Oregon, is dairy farming even viable? David Gremmels of Oregon’s Rogue Creamery and Reggie Jones of Central Coast Creamery in California shared their thoughts on these trying times. I have edited their comments for brevity and clarity.
Read more
Perfection. You can’t do better than that. For Rogue Creamery’s Rogue River Blue, the perfect score rocketed it to the top of the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy, earlier this month. A grape leaf-wrapped cow’s milk wheel from Oregon, this luscious blue is now the 2019 World Champion Cheese, the first time a U.S. cheese has earned that honor. Created less than 20 years ago, it vanquished international cheeses with decades of history. Ironically, the winning wheel was not the one that Rogue president David Gremmels intended to enter.
Read more
Rogue Creamery the Oregon producer of some of America’s most acclaimed blue cheeses, has a new partner: the French dairy giant Savencia. Good news? I wasn’t sure. I’ve been a huge fan of Rogue since David Gremmels and Cary Bryant bought it, in 2002, from Ig Vella, whose father founded it. Gremmels and Bryant had zero cheese experience. But Gremmels had the marketing chops and Bryant, who knew microbiology, quickly mastered the cheesemaking. Ig mentored them both until his death in 2011.
Read more
What does it take to get American cheese into a European cheese shop? And will anybody buy it if you do? Raymond Hook, a New York City-based specialty-food broker, is close to someanswers. Working with partners, Hook is attempting to build a global audience for cheeses from Oregon’s Rogue Creamery, Virginia’s Meadow Creek Dairy and Georgia’s Sweet Grass Dairy, among others. The export learning curve has left a few bruises, but Hook is an optimist. Today: London. Tomorrow: the world.
Read moreAcross the country, creative cheese professionals are helping upgrade the image of pub food. Who would have thought you could sell beer without burgers? But in some new beer-centric establishments, artisan cheese platters are getting top billing.
Read moreWhich cheese will take Best of Show in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition this week? We’ll know soon enough (award ceremony is July 31 in Sacramento), but in the interim, I gathered some stats on prior winners. Could the judges’ past preferences help us predict who might get the gold?
Read more