If you like salted caramels—everyone nodding?—you will love Stanislaus Caprine. Dense, sweet and salty, this aged goat cheese reminds me of dulce de leche, the concentrated goat’s-milk caramel. The cheese’s name is slightly unwieldy, but Californians will recognize Stanislaus as a county in the state’s fertile Central Valley. Walter Nicolau, the cheesemaker, is a fourth-generation dairyman there who started his own farm and made his first cheese at the age of 20. Nicolau Farms is less than five miles from where Walter’s great-grandfather had his cow dairy.
Read moreRaw Deal
Will you miss them when they’re gone? America’s raw-milk cheeses haven’t been outlawed—yet—but they are definitely under threat. The FDA is currently scrutinizing this tiny sliver of the dairy world and considering heightened regulations. Although an outright ban strikes me as unlikely, the agency may well make compliance so onerous and expensive that many raw-milk cheese producers will toss in the towel.
Read moreIt’s Official: Time for Cheese
Although every month is American Cheese Month at my house, October is officially American Cheese Month. Why October? I have no clue, but your local cheese shop is probably using the opportunity to showcase more domestic selections than usual. Go buy something you’ve never tried.
Read moreNot That Swiss Cheese
Every summer I lead a cheese tasting for the Society of Medical Friends of Wine, a group of Bay Area physicians with a shared interest in fine wine. We have never had a problem filling the seats until this year, when one of the doctors—a Swiss native—suggested a Swiss theme for the tasting. He got no resistance from me: I loved the idea. Some of the most impressive cheeses I’ve had in the last few years have been new arrivals from Switzerland.
Read moreCheesemongers Talk Value
Watching prices for some cheeses top $40 a pound is making me anxious and cranky. I still buy them because it’s my business to taste them, but I worry that many people are being priced out of the experience of great cheese. Of course, a lot of people are priced out of luxury restaurants, too, but it just seems that fine cheese, such a fundamental foodstuff, should not be reserved for the one percent.
Read moreTriple Play
Introduced in March of this year, Tomales Farmstead’s Teleeka is already outselling the four other cheeses made by this California creamery. I’m not surprised. Inspired by La Tur, the wildly popular bloomy-rind cheese from Northern Italy, Teleeka has a luscious factor that’s hard to resist.
Read moreNot a Fairy Tale
The roster of new American creameries willing to work with raw milk and tolerate the heightened scrutiny of the FDA is not long. The search results get even shorter if you add “certified organic milk” to the criteria. Washington State’s six-year-old Cascadia Creamery has chosen this challenging path, and its aged cow’s-milk wheel, Sleeping Beauty, is certifiably delightful.
Read moreYet Another Feta to Love
How can Greece have an economic crisis given all the Greek feta that I buy? I’m never without some in my fridge, but my usage spikes at this time of year, when the deluge of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and peppers makes feta a must-have. At $11 or $12 a pound, it’s the best value at the cheese counter.
Read moreInner-City Cheese
As if Portland weren’t already a hipster haven, the city upped its cool quotient with the opening of Ancient Heritage Dairy early this year. The petite urban creamery—a transplant from central Oregon—now creates its cheeses in a light-filled corner building in southeast Portland, in an area with so many food-focused entrepreneurs that it’s dubbed the Artisan Corridor. Big plate-glass windows invite pedestrians to pause and watch as milk is transformed into curd, and they can purchase the results at a retail counter next door.
Read moreWisconsin Newbie Worth the Splurge
In my dreams, the U.S. will someday produce aged sheep’s milk cheeses that rival the finest from Europe—the Basque cheeses from the Pyrenees; the pecorinos from Tuscany, Sicily and Sardinia; the Manchego, Roncal and Zamorano from Spain. We are getting close on quality, but I’m not sure we’ll ever compete on price. Europe’s cheesemakers typically have lower land and labor costs and fewer costly regulations. In some cases, they benefit from government-funded marketing support and operate at a volume that makes for efficiencies.
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