Late last year, Jennifer Bice announced the sale of Redwood Hill Farm, her goat milk products company in Sebastopol, California. The purchaser? Emmi, the Swiss dairy giant, which also bought Cypress Grove Chèvre, makers of Humboldt Fog, from founder Mary Keehn five years ago. With the sale of Laura Chenel’s Chèvre to a French firm in 2006, the country’s pioneering producers of goat cheese are no longer American owned. Recently, I spoke to Bice by phone about the sale and its ramifications.
Read moreCheese(s) of the Year
So I asked a dozen retailers to name their top cheese of the year—the one that sold best for them or that their customers loved most. It didn’t have to be a new cheese, just new to their counter. Did I get a dozen answers? Are you kidding?
Read moreHigh Spirits
I know I’m late to this party, but I’m just learning how appealing a fine brandy can be with cheese. Not every cheese, of course, but many firm aged cheeses have roasted nut, caramel and brown-butter notes that complement the heady aromas in a brandy glass.
Read moreStrong Bread
I’ve never met a fruitcake I didn’t like, but panforte is first among equals. I only make it at Christmas time for some reason, although it’s a nice companion for cheese year round. I’ve tweaked this recipe over the years to get the spicing just where I want it and the right proportion of fruit to nuts. (Lots of nuts.) It keeps a long time, but not at my house.
Read moreAuthor, Author
For Berkeley software engineer Anthony Kosky, cheese is a recurring theme in life. Without cheese, he might not be married. Without a wife, he wouldn’t have two young daughters. And without the daughters, he wouldn’t have written The Mouse and the Moon, an adorable new children’s book starring cheese.
Read moreOpen Adoption
When a merchant raves about cheese made in the Alps from summer milk, I tend to imagine cows knee-deep in lush pasture. I rarely think about the people who led the cows up there, milked and managed them and lived in isolation in the mountains, sometimes in primitive conditions, for months. Yet that’s the back story to Switzerland’s alpage wheels. A few rugged folks endure a lot of hardship to make these distinctive cheeses happen.
Read moreSchloss is Boss
With immigration such a hot-button issue, it’s worth pondering what the American cheese industry would look like if “secure the borders” had been the policy in the past. Immigrants were this country’s first cheesemakers— British, Dutch and Germans in the East and Midwest; Italians, Swiss Italians and Portuguese in Northern California. These European transplants didn’t just make our cheese; they were the customers, too, especially for smelly cheeses like Marin French Schloss.
Read moreI Scream, You Scream
San Francisco’s Fancy Food Show is always an over-the-top experience, with so many new products and competing tastes that it’s hard to focus. When a cheese stands out in this cacophony—so much that I recall it months later—it’s a good bet that the cheese isn’t speaking to me alone.
Read moreWas Cheddar Ever Better?
It’s the people’s cheese, an item on grocery lists everywhere every week. Cheddar makes the ooze in mac-and-cheese and the molten blanket on many a burger. But that’s the cheap stuff. The other Cheddar, made by hand in clothbound wheels, is cementing America’s reputation for craftsmanship.
Read moreIt's a Whopper
This cheese is big. No, it’s ginormous. It’s Edelweiss Creamery’s Emmentaler, one of only two Swiss-style cheeses still made in the U.S. in the traditional massive format.
I learned a few things about Emmentaler recently from Bruce Workman, a Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker and owner of Edelweiss: