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KIMBERLY OSER Publisher
JULES DENTON-CARD Senior Associate Publisher
Fair Trade Saves 6 Wisconsin
LORRIE BAUMANN Editorial Director
Family Farms ANTHONY SOCCI Associate Publisher
and Wine 10 Cheese Pair Well at Pennyroyal Farm
JEANIE CATRON Associate Editor
YASMINE BROWN Art Director
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Cheese is Blooming at Idyll Farms
SUSAN STEIN Customer Service Manage
TARA NEAL Circulation Director
Milk Cheeses 18 Sheep from the Great Smoky Mountains
JAMIE GREEN Circulation Manager
The Cheese Guide is a product of Gourmet News, published by Oser Communications Group ©Copyright 2020. All rights reserved. Reproduction, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher, is expressly prohibited.
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The Cheese Guide
Saves Fair Trade
Wisconsin family farms
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
Caleb is the newest cheese from Red Barn Family Farms, a brand built around the idea that the best cheese is made from milk that comes from a cow that belongs to a family. Caleb is also the name of a young man whose dream is to become the sixth generation to run his family’s dairy farm. Though it’s getting harder for young farmers to realize that dream, Terry and Paula Homan are hoping that their Red Barn business model will make it a reality for Caleb. Red Barn Family Farms isn’t actually a dairy farm – it’s a brand name for cheese that’s made from milk produced by seven farmers who’ve agreed to follow Red Barn rules for how their cows will be raised and the quality of the milk they’ll supply in return for Red Barn’s promise to pay for the milk with a fair trade price that provides them with a consistent income. Most farmers don’t have that opportunity. Wisconsin, like the rest of the country, has been losing small family-owned dairy farms at an alarming rate due to an economic model that treats dairy milk as a commodity. To understand how this works, you’re going to have to follow along with a short discussion of basic microeconomics. There’s a reason why economics is called “the dismal science,” but hang in there, because the discussion only goes for about three paragraphs and there’s a zinger at the end that’s going to clarify the reason why you care about all this. A commodity is the economists’ name for a product that can be regarded as exactly the same, no matter who made it or where it came from, so that the only difference that matters is how much you’d have to pay to get it. In those circumstances, it’s never the seller who sets the price; the price is set by the market – how much buyers are willing to pay when they know the price that everyone else is paying. Since the buyer can get the same thing no matter where he buys it, he naturally looks to get it as cheaply as possible, which tends to drive prices down. You already know that profit is the difference between what a product costs to make and what the product sells for. In a commodity market, profits depend on being able to make a product for less than anyone else can make it – if this farmer’s milk is no different from that farmer’s milk, and it all sells for the same price, then the only way a farmer can make a profit is by driving efficiencies that aren’t available to everyone. In today’s dairy industry, that can mean figuring out to get more milk out of every cow, at whatever price to the cow that the farmer is willing to abide. This is not good for cows. The average productive lifetime of the dairy cow in intensive milk production is decreasing around the world, with averages like 2.4 lactation cycles in the U.S. It’s not good for small farmers either. Since 1970, the number of American dairy farms has dropped by more than 93 percent. Those
that remain are getting larger. “The way the industry tends to work is that when milk prices go high, the larger farms tend to add more cows, which brings about an inevitable overproduction and a crash, and then there are more small farms swept out again,” said Terry Homan, the large animal veterinarian who started Red Barn Family Farms along with his wife, Paula, around the idea that a fair trade pricing model could break the cycle that treated milk as a commodity, cows as interchangeable factory parts and family farmers as expendable. The Red Barn Domestic Fair Trade Model Red Barn Family Farms is currently working with seven Wisconsin family farmers, paying them for their milk on a scale that rewards excellence in humane animal care, animal health and milk quality. The farmers are certified by the American Humane Association, and herd size is an average of 55 milking cows that live on familyowned farms and cared for by members of the family. The cows spend the majority of their time outside on pasture, when weather allows. In the summertime, pasture grasses are an important part of their diet. In the winter, they’re fed mostly hay and silage, but they still go outside for part of the day when they can, to give their bodies some rest from standing and lying on concrete barn floors all day. That price is independent of what’s happening on the commodity market, so the farmers have a consistent price that they can count on rather than depending on spot prices set by an unforgiving market. That means that farmers like Olivia Hennes, who went to work for Bob Schlimm on his Seymour, Wisconsin, dairy farm while she was still in high school, have a chance at a future as a dairy farmer. She started out as a hired hand and decided that she wanted to become a dairy farmer herself even though she didn’t grow up in a family of dairy farmers. “Bob is a good soul, of course. He went from having Olivia be a hired hand. He became a business mentor, and Olivia now farms on his farm,” Paula Homan said. “He’s been helping her revitalize and upgrade his century-old barn. She’s milking 40 pasture-raised cows.” “Olivia’s cows are getting a significant part of their diet off of the pasture. All of the cows have pasture during the summer, but they also have the ability to get off the concrete during the winter months as well. That access to exercise is important to health,” Terry added. “She’s been farming on her own account for about a year and a half and joined Red Barn in January, 2018.” The Cheese Stands Alone Red Barn Family Farms buys milk from its farmers and delivers it to nearby creameries, where it’s handmade into cheeses that are eventually sold under the Red Barn Family Farms brand. The line The Cheese Guide
7
started with Heritage Weis bandaged cheddars, which are bandaged-wrapped 13-pound midget wheels, and its Heritage White Cheddars, which are made from the same recipe in 40pound blocks. Over the years, they’ve won multiple awards at the U.S. Cheese Championship and the World Cheese Championships. “In 2012 at the World Cheese Championship, our bandaged cheddars actually swept the category for bandaged cheddars,” Terry said. With that success, the Homans asked John Jaeggi at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research to suggest another cheese for the Red Barn milk. “He suggested a New Zealand-style cheddar as a model for the Red Barn,” Terry said. “That style lets the natural grass flavors come through the cheddar. We agreed that was a perfect fit.” The Center for Dairy Research developed a recipe for the cheese that was to be called Edun Raw Milk Cheese. Edun is a true raw milk variety made with a vegetable rennet. Its flavor varies with Wisconsin’s seasonal changes. The Homans asked Jon Metzig to make it for them at Willow Creek Creamery in Berlin, Wisconsin. Metzig is a fourth-generation cheesemaker who grew up working at his family’s cheese plant and eventually became one of the youngest Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers in the state’s history. Jointly sponsored by the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, the University of Wisconsin’s Extension Service and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, the Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program requires its applicants to have held a Wisconsin cheesemaker license for a minimum of 10 years before they can qualify to embark on a three-year training program and apprenticeship that ends in a rigorous written examination and, finally, certification as a Master Cheesemaker for a particular
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The Cheese Guide
variety of cheese. Applicants may certify in only two types of cheese each time they go through the program. Metzig is certified as a Master Cheesemaker for cheddar and colby cheeses. He makes Edun in 40-pound blocks for Red Barn on demand as the orders for the cheese come in. Metzig also makes Red Barns Family Farm Le Rouge, which was introduced in limited release in 2016. It’s a washed-rind alpine-style cheese with a reddish-orange edible rind made from an original recipe and aged eight to nine months before sale. “When you taste it, it’s reminiscent of a French Comté,” Terry said. “It hearkens back to the traditions of our Red Barn Family Farms.” Caleb is Metzig’s most recent undertaking for Red Barn Family Farms. It’s a soft washed-rind cheese made in a traditional Trappist style. It’s handwashed in Scottish ale and aged for 28 days to produce a pungent aroma and savory interior with meaty, brothy flavors and a buttery texture. Cupola, which followed Edun, was also developed by Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research. It has the sweet caramel flavor of a Gouda followed by the long tangy finish of a Parmesan. Cupola was originally made at LaClare Family Creamery, but it’s now being made by Master Cheesemaker Mike Brennenstuhl at Door Artisan Creamery. “Mike has a long career of cheesemaking, and we’re pretty excited,” Terry said. “It’s worked out well for us because it culminated in the gold medal for us last year at American Cheese Society.” Most recently, Red Barn has also entered into some collaborations with other brands that have an interest in helping support Wisconsin family farms through their cheese sales. A collaboration between Red Barn and Equal Exchange, a workerowned food trading company that specializes in fair trade products. “They’ve done some private labeling of our cheese, and they do include our name on the label,” Paula said. “They sell it in their markets.” Red Barns also has a new collaboration with Rochdale Farms on two cheeses, a Colby Jack and a yellow Cheddar, each labeled with both Rochdale Farms’ and Red Barn Family Farms’ names, available through Co-op Partners Warehouse. “They champion local co-ops and producers with a mission to help small producers get their products to market,” Paula said. “We realize that we can’t do this alone. We have a big mission that’s about more than these seven small family farms. This model to help them remain sustainable can be much bigger than these seven farms. Our goal is to add more farms so that we can help keep small family farming a viable business for the future.”
cheese wine and
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
“It’s about tomme!” Pennyroyal Farm wrote in its jubilant announcement on January 20 of this year that its Boont Corners Reserve had won a Good Food Award. Boont Corners is an aged raw mixed milk tomme that’s the flagship cheese of Pennyroyal Farm’s line of farmstead goat and sheep milk cheeses made by Head Cheesemaker Erika McKenzieChapter, who also manages the farm’s herd. The Boont Corners Reserve is aged from nine to 12 months, and it won a best of show award at the California State Fair as well as the Good Food Award this year. The cheese is also sold at younger ages. Boont Corners Two Month is made from the spring milking and aged for just two months and released for sale at two to four months. It’s made from goat milk only. Boont Corners Vintage wheels are released between five and seven months of age. “Depending on the time of year, it can be mixed milk or just goat milk only,” said Pennyroyal Farm Media Manager Joslyn Thoresen of the Boont Corners cheeses. “Erika likes to add sheep milk into the cheeses because it adds more of the umami to the tommes.” Other cheeses from Pennyroyal Farm include two surfaceripened cheeses. Bollie’s Mollies and Velvet Sister. While the Boont Corners is made from the morning milk, which is naturally higher in protein and lower in fat, Bollie’s Mollies and Velvet Sister are 10
The Cheese Guide
pair well
made from the richer high-fat evening milk, mostly in spring and late fall, when the animals produce less volume, but the milk is richer in fat. “Bollie’s Mollies is one of Erika’s specialties, her own recipe. It’s a bloomy rind with a denser texture that has a nice cream line but never gets as gooey as a Brie,” Thoresen said. It has a characteristic blue-gray mold on the exterior. Velvet Sister is a Camembert-style cheese with a mushroomy flavor and a bloomy rind that softens over time like a Brie. Boonter’s Blue is a raw aged blue cheese. “It’s different from a typical gorgonzola in that it’s drier,” Thoresen said. It’s salted in the vat, pressed and aged for a minimum of 60 days. Laychee is Pennyroyal Farm’s fresh cheese, made plain and in flavored varieties that use the herbs and berries picked from the farm’s berry patch and culinary garden. Laychee with blueberries and Laychee with fennel pollen and peppercorn are favorite variations, Thoresen said. They’re all farmstead cheeses, made solely with milk from the goats and sheep raised here and milked just a few hundred feet away from the creamery. The cheeses’ names are derived from Boontling, a local jargon that was invented in the late 19th century. The language, which is disappearing as its fluent speakers die off, is said to have been invented either by youngsters discussing matters that they didn’t want their parents to know about or by parents who didn’t want their children to know what they were talking about. According to a 2001 account written by Vicki Haddock for the San Francisco Chronicle, some of the Boonville residents she interviewed traced the origins of the language to the hops field, “where women first used it to gossip about an unmarried Ukiah girl banished there so her pregnancy would not
besmirch the family name.” Bollie’s Mollies, for instance, is named partly after the creek that runs through the Pennyroyal Farm property, Bolly Creek, a name that refers in turn to the baldness of an early settler along the creek. “Mollies” is the boontling term for that feature of the female anatomy responsible for milk production. The mollies that produce the milk for Pennyroyal Farms’ cheeses belong to just over 100 goats – primarily Nubian, Alpine and La Mancha – and 30 sheep who are bred each year on an annual cycle, so that the animals go on maternity leave from milking from November through January. Kidding season reaches its peak in March, and Laychee starts being made with a two-day lactic fermentation soon after. The first goats came onto the farm in 2009, along with McKenzie-Chapter, who’d met Pennyroyal Farm Owner Sarah Cahn Bennett while Bennett was a student at University of California Davis. Bennett was studying oenology and preparing to become part of her family’s Navarro Vineyards, but she decided to take an animal biology course taught by Professor Jan Pearlson as a bit of a respite from oenology. McKenzie-Chapter was Pearlson’s teaching assistant for that class. “Through her meeting Erika, she [Bennett] started this idea of incorporating more animal husbandry into vineyards to maximize the symbiotic relationship,” Thoresen said. “That led to Sarah coming back and starting a herd of Baby Doll Southdown Sheep and integrating that at Navarro Vineyards, where they graze and sucker the vines.” Roughly around that time, Bennett began Pennyroyal Farm from hay fields owned by her grandmother. With 100 acres at Boonville,
just a few miles down the road from Navarro Vineyards, Bennett first planted 23 acres of vines for Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc wines, and then built a barn for dairy goats and sheep. “Some of the rest is pasture, although there are hay fields, orchard, berry patch, culinary garden and tasting room,” Thoresen said. “It’s an incredible farmstead in terms of how much is produced from this small property.” Bennett is the estate’s winemaker, while McKenzie-Chapter manages the animals and the creamery. Last year Bennett was named one of 40 under 40 tastemakers by Wine Enthusiast magazine, while McKenzie-Chapter is a noted goat breeder as well as cheesemaker. Her Majorca was named a national grand champion as well as reserve champion for best udder and premier breeder at last year’s American Dairy Goat Association’s national show. The estate’s shop and tasting room is open to the public and hosts seasonal evening events and brunch events that celebrate local food and wine festivals and for wine tasting. “The first approach is the wine and cheese tasting. We’re one of the few estates that offer and make cheeses to pair with the wine we produce,” Thoresen said. “It’s a really cool farmstead pairing – we call it a taste of place. We have a full cheese plate and do a smorgasbord, which includes a lot more from the estate, from the garden, and includes preserves and chutneys.” During COVID-19 restrictions, seating is limited to the outdoor patio and the larger seasonal events are in abeyance. “The brunch events generally sell out well in advance, and we have a wait list,” Thoresen said. “We try and keep them small and intimate.”
Cheese is
blooming at Idyll Farms
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
At Idyll Farms in Northport, Michigan, the main ingredient for its cheeses is treated like mother’s milk. It comes twice a day from around 200 of the farm’s 300 Alpine Dairy Goats and is piped directly into bulk tank room and vat pasteurizer that’s just feet away from the milking parlor and then it’s turned into cheese within the next couple of days. It’s never jostled over the highway in a tanker truck. That delicate treatment shows in the cheese, according to Idyll Farms Owner Amy Spitznagel and Cheesemaker Melissa Hiles. “The line that delivers the milk to the creamery goes right through the wall,” Hiles said. “The fat globules don’t break apart because it’s not sloshed. There’s no more than 60 hours without making cheese – that gives us the freshest milk and clean flavors. It doesn’t taste goaty.... Our cheese has a nice, clean taste.” Hiles makes cheese three to four days a week, arriving at the creamery before 6 a.m. so she’s there to be ready for the milk that comes from the 6:30 a.m. morning milking. “If the goats are milking, that milk goes straight into the pasteurizer,” she said. “Pasteurize, cool it, add rennet. The next day is ladling day. The day after that, flip and salt the cheese. Then flipping and salting and adding vegetable ash to the date of packaging of the cheese.” The clean, delicate flavors of Idyll Farms’ cheeses are winning notice. The creamery’s Mont Idyll won a Good Food Award in January of this year, and then in March, Idyll Farms’ Idyll Gris was named best in its class at the World Championship Cheese Contest, organized by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association and held biennially in Madison, Wisconsin. Idyll Pastures Spreadable Garlic and Herb won a second place in its World Championship class for flavored soft goat cheeses. The Spreadable Garlic and Herb is the creamery’s most popular cheese, although Spitznagel prefers Idyll Pastures, a closely related 14
The Cheese Guide
fresh cheese, herself. “It’s a flavor profile, and the fresh cheese that’s so acceptable to everybody,” she said. “I personally prefer the Pastures to the Spreadable. I think it has almost a fluffier texture.” Taking them in order, Mont Idyll is a cheese inspired by Valençay Cheese from France’s Loire Valley. It’s soft ripened with a rind painted with vegetable ash. Fluffy, smooth and citric when it’s young, its paste firms as it ages and develops a cream line under the rind. Idyll Gris is similar, but it has a layer of ash inside its fluffy, light interior. It develops a cream line under its wrinkled exterior, and its flavor is milk with notes of fresh cream, fruit and umami. In addition to its best in class award at this year’s World Championship, Idyll Gris was a gold and silver medalist at the 2016 World Championship Cheese Contest and won two first-place awards at the 2017 American Cheese Society Judging and Competition. Idyll Gris was also named a “2016 Best Cheese” by Culture magazine. Idyll Pastures Spreadable Garlic and Herb is one of a family of spreadable fresh cheeses that Idyll Farms calls its “gateway to goat cheese.” The Spreadables are offered in Plain, Garlic and Herb and Honey Lavender flavors packaged in 5-ounce plastic tubs. The Idyll Pastures that’s sliceable rather than spreadable is a 4-ounce disk that’s sold at four days old in four varieties – the three in which the spreadable version is made plus Fennel Pollen. Idyll Farms also makes a Camembert that has become a local favorite in its corner of the world on Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula, and Idyllweiss, a mixed-milk cheese with a wrinkly Geotrichum rind that’s made with Idyll Farms’ goat milk mixed with some organic cow milk cream. It’s sweet and delicate when it’s young and develops its real personality as it ages. Temptation is Idyll Farms’ raw milk tomme, which is aged for a minimum of 60 days on wooden shelving made from specially aged kiln-dried wood harvested during the last full moon of
December. It’s hand-washed daily with a cider that’s made from apples harvested from the orchard that was on the property before the Spitznagels bought the farm and moved to Michigan from southern California because they wanted a better place to raise their family. “My husband [Mark] had grown up in the area and had spent summers here while he was growing up,” Spitznagel said. Once the Spitznagels had bought the farm, they had to figure out what to do with it. The orchard, with both apple and cherry trees, was there, but they were in an area where conventionally sprayed apple and cherry trees are very common, which encouraged insects that had no difficulty finding the one unsprayed orchard in the area. “We decided that we weren’t up for the fruit business, so we shifted focus to cheese,” Spitznagel said. “We’re making a fun product, and we have fun animals to be around. The sky’s the limit to what you can do with goat cheese. We just thought it was a fun opportunity and venture.” Cheese sounded like more fun than fruit, anyway, and goats sounded like more fun yet. The Spitznagels were sure that their kids would like living among goats. “We considered wine, but we had a two- and a four-year-old, and we were thinking that wine would not be fun for the kids to grow up around,” Spitznagel said. “We really wanted to focus on making a world-class product that reflected the area.... Cheese was a perfect match.... It just kind of all made sense for the area and my family. It all came into place.” The Spitznagels brought in consultants from France to help them start a goat dairy and then more consultants to help them learn how to make cheese. “We hired people locally that had the aptitude to do farming and learn from our consultants the cheesemaking skills,” Spitznagel said. Hiles was one of the first of those local hires. She had worked in the restaurant industry before deciding to change careers and started working construction jobs. She was working with the Spitznagels on their house when they asked if she’d like to come and work on the farm. “I was interested in the cheese, and then I fell in love with the farm – it was something that I’d never done,” Hiles said. “She started with us in the goat farming side and then moved over to the cheesemaking side and has been there ever since,” Spitznagel said. “She’s also our farm manager, so she knows our entire operation.” “When I started, all we had was the equipment barn and a few goats. We were bucket-milking then,” Hiles said. “Then, the next year, the creamery was finished. At that point, I split between farm and creamery for about two years. By my third or fourth year, I started spending the majority of my time in the creamery.” Being both Cheesemaker and Farm Manager means that Hiles has a voice in how the farms’ pastures are managed, and she takes responsibility for ensuring that they’re planted with the right vegetation to give her goats’ milk the fat and protein composition that’s best for the cheeses she makes. “And I’m making sure that the goats don’t eat certain things that can affect the flavor of the cheeses,” she said. “We have a very dedicated staff that makes all this happen. What we do on this farm is special, and it takes a lot of dedication and knowledge to make it all work.” “Idylll Farms practices sustainable regenerative farming such as managed rotational grazing, composting, using the cheese
byproduct whey to supplement their pastures and pasture-fed hogs and collaborating with allowing local bee keepers to keep hives on their pastures, providing food for bees,” Spitznagel added. “The unique geography of the farm, being on Leelanau Peninsula surrounded by Lake Michigan, provides ample fresh water for the pastures, making Idyll Farms one of the most lushest and largest pasture-based goat dairies in the world.” “I’m surprised at how far we’ve come in 10 years, managing the land as holistically as possible, digging into the fields to keep them lush, learning when to move the goats around, the weather changes. There’s still new things happening every year that we haven’t seen in the past,” Hiles said. “My favorite part is to have those perfect bloomy rinds in the cave every day. They’ll definitely make you smile.” The Cheese Guide
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Sheep milk
cheeses from the Great Smoky Mountains
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
In 2015, when Chris Osborne joined the staff at Blackberry Farm, the upscale resort in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains already had an active cheesemaking program. Five years into his tenure as Head Cheesemaker, Blackberry Farm’s sheep milk cheeses won two Good Food Awards and a third-place award at the World Championship Cheese Contest in March, with Blackberry Farms’ Brebis finishing just 0.05 point behind Bellwether Farms’ Fresh Sheep Cheese. Blackberry Farm is located in Walland, Tennessee, where the historic 4,200-acre estate offers luxury accommodations; a handful of restaurants between Blackberry Farm and its sister property, Blackberry Mountain; culinary gardens; gift shops and a wealth of recreational opportunities to go along with all that, including the fine-dining experiences that give the estate and its culinary staff ample opportunities to showcase the excellence of its house-made cheeses and charcuterie. This year’s awards were for Brebis, which won a Good Food Award in addition to the World Championship Cheese Contest award, and for Hawkins Haze, a lactic curd bloomy rind cheese with a layer of vegetable ash running through the paste. Other cheeses made in the Blackberry Farm Creamery include Magnolia, a Camembert-style, and Herbed Tomme, as well as Singing Brook, the first cheese created at Blackberry Farm after its 18
The Cheese Guide
cheese program began in 2007-2008. Singing Brook has gone through a number of evolutions and is currently going through another. Made in the past as a 12.5-pound wheel, it has most recently been made as a 7-pound cannonball shape. “We have adjusted the cook temperature and cut the curd smaller, so it’s almost like a true grana-style cheese,” Osborne said. Making changes in Singing Brook calls for patience, Osborne said, noting that, “With a cheese like Singing Brook, sometimes you have to wait eight months to see the full effect of the changes that you make.” Osborne delivers most of his cheese to the property’s chefs, for their use at The Barn at Blackberry Farm, overseen by Executive Chef Cassidee Dabney; Bonnie Moore, Executive Chef at Three Sisters AM; Joey Edwards, Executive Chef at Three Sisters PM; Josh Feathers, Executive Chef at the Main House; Sarah Steffan, Executive Chef at The Dogwood at Blackberry Farm; Chef Josh Feathers at The Three Sisters Kitchen, and Joel Warner, Executive Chef at the Firetower Restaurant at Blackberry Mountain, which opened in 2019 as an expansion of the Blackberry Farm property. “We know it’s going into some very competent, creative hands with the chefs here at Blackberry Farm,” Osborne said. He himself started his career as a chef before he decided that he needed to find a career where he could see his new bride, Jessica, more often. “I love cooking and getting into the kitchen, but it’s
not conducive to a great family life. I was newly married, and my wife is a social worker who works regular hours. I would go to work at 10 a.m. and get home at 2 a.m., and we never saw each other.” He applied for an apprentice cheesemaker position at Capriole Goat Cheese in Greenville, Indiana. “I took a leap of faith, and they hired me there in March of 2012,” Osborne said. “Within a year, I was running operations. It just came naturally to me. I saw the benefit of somebody who’d been doing it since the 1980s. They had a process in place, and they had figured out a lot of things. I learned as much as I could, as fast as I could.” At Capriole, Osborne didn’t just learn to make cheese; he became a cheesemaker. “Cheese people are some of the best, most awesome people on the face of the Earth,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else... I truly loved Capriole. I truly loved the team we had there.” But in 2015, he was offered the chance to take over the cheese program at Blackberry Farm, and Osborne and his wife decided that they were ready to make the move to Tennessee. The couple became the parents of a son earlier this year. “It was partly about a good place to raise children,” Osborne said. “My dad’s originally from eastern Tennessee, and the opportunity presented itself at a time when it was good for us, mentally and physically.” The switch from the goat milk he used at Capriole to the sheep milk that he works with at Blackberry Farm wasn’t as difficult as he had thought it might be, he said. “I had never worked with sheep milk. Aside from the yield difference, they’re very similar,” he said. “We don’t have to add calcium chloride to sheep milk because it’s so high in solids. When you stick your cheese knife into a vat to cut it and it stands on its own, that kind of blew my mind because that doesn’t
happen with goat milk or cow’s milk.” “The flavor is absolutely beautiful. The sheep milk has a sweetness to it, while goat milk can be a little gamy. We’re super lucky to have this beautiful milk to work with and super lucky to have a farmstead team that works its tail off to produce this beautiful milk for us.” While Blackberry Farm has a flock on the property that produces milk for its cheeses, most of the milk that goes into the Blackberry Farm cheeses comes from the Indian Crest Sheep Farm in New Market, Tennessee, which bought Blackberry Farm’s existing dairy sheep herd in 2008. Then last year, sheep came to Blackberry Farm again with Farmers Ronnie and Daphne Rogers, who are currently milking about 50 ewes. “The thought process is to build the flock back and do more of the milk farmstead,” Osborne said. “The pastures have a lot of slope in the fields, a lot of legumes. It’s really great for grazing. The sheep love it; they really do. It just creates wonderful milk for us.” Osborne’s voice oozes with satisfaction as he speaks about the rewards of his job at Blackberry Farm. “It’s just like with Singing Brook – for me, cheese is interesting in that you can do this for 30 years and still not know everything you need to know. There’s something new to learn every day... For me, it’s day in and day out, trying to learn something new. We’re chasing perfection with every batch we produce. It takes a lot of attention and a lot of work, but at the end of the day, when you cut into it, you can see the hard work put into it by everybody.” “You can’t fake it; it’s either really good cheese or it’s not, and we strive every day to make the best cheese we can possibly make,” he added. “When you taste that perfect bit of cheese, that’s really special for me. And when you hand that directly to our chefs here and let them utilize that cheese, it’s really rewarding.” The Cheese Guide
19
twist a
California
Indian Tradition on
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
Consumers who are familiar with India’s vegetarian cuisine are already familiar with paneer, the creamy fresh cheese that’s essential to dishes like palak paneer and matar paneer, but the paneer they’re finding in their markets is most likely not the authentically creamy product that Tarush and Jasleen Agarwal remembered from their childhoods. “We both grew up in India, and we grew up with how paneer is supposed to taste,” Tarush said. “It’s supposed to be very creamy with a nice, soft texture.” The two are vegetarians now living in the United States and as they tried to maintain the culinary traditions most familiar to them, they were having trouble finding protein options other than tofu. That was particularly important to Jasleen, who had also adopted a keto diet, which emphasizes protein and fats rather than carbohydrates as the body’s fuel source. “There weren’t really any options out there,” Tarush said. They decided to try making paneer. And in the organic way that foodies end up first sharing their creation with others and then deciding that what they’re sharing is good enough to sell, they did some testing in a San Francisco commercial kitchen and trying the results out on consumers. “We started thinking about how to make our paneer more ready to eat. We wanted to create something that people could just snack on. Our goal is to make paneer more accessible to people and that’s how we came up with the idea of flavoring it,” Tarush said. “We did over a hundred or so in-person pop-ups and demos, and we saw that consumers really liked the concept.” The business Tarush and Jasleen started a year ago is called Sach 20
The Cheese Guide
Foods – “sach” means “honest” in Hindi. “We wanted it to be a reflection of what we stand for as a company,” Tarush said. “We realized that the paneer that was available in the market before we started was very mass-produced, very industrial.... Our goal is to really help consumers looking for non-meat protein options have a clean alternative. Everything has four or less ingredients. You understand what those ingredients are – you can look at the back of the label and read them.” The Sach Paneer cheese is made in California from organic, grass-fed milk, and it’s offered in Original, Turmeric Twist and Spicy Habañero flavors. For the retail market, it’s packaged in 6-ounce Cryovac packs that retail for $7.99 to $8.99. The cheese is also available to the foodservice channel in 5-pound blocks. “We are the original artisanal paneer company in the country. Everything is made in small batches,” Tarush said, adding that, as far as he knows, Sach Paneer is also the only flavored paneer cheese on the American market. “We think there’s a tremendous amount of potential in this category,” Tarush said.. He’s already partnered with independent retail stores in California’s Bay Area, he’s selling to Michelin-starred chefs in the Bay Area, and he’s talking to large retail chains, too. “It’s got a lot of different uses and verticals, especially for food businesses that are looking for new organic ingredients that are vegetarian,” Tarush said. “What we’ve been doing is showcasing the verticals that we have and finding partners with whom we can do something interesting and not just take the traditional approach.” For more information, visit www.sachfoods.com.
bursting Vermont Amber Organic Toffee:
the
boundaries
of
Sweet/Savory Flavors
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
Elizabeth Feinberg, Toffee Evangelist, Owner and Founder of Vermont Amber Organic Toffee, won her first sofi Award in 2018 with her Fennel Seed Toffee, which also won a Good Food Award in 2017. She won her next this year with a sofi Award for the best new product in the confections category with her Libity Bits Sesame Snacking Toffee. For the woman who’d left her early career as a veteran pastry chef at high-end hotels like the Arizona Biltmore, The Boulders Resort & Spa and others behind her to become a wife, mother and a kindergarten teacher, the 2017 and 2018 awards were a welcome confirmation that the skilled pastry chef with the adventurous palate that she’d been once still has what it takes to stand with the best in the specialty food world. “I had forgotten what it was like to win awards for my creative endeavors with food,” she said. “The Fancy Food Show dwarfs everything, but the Good Food Award was incredibly gratifying. It confirmed that the toffee is good.... It gave me the confidence that I could sell it more easily, and it gave buyers more confidence that they could sell it.” Feinberg started the company after her job teaching kindergarten came to an end, and while she was looking around for something else to do, she started playing with the toffee that she’d been making for years as a Christmas gift for friends. “I started it, like many of my friends here in Vermont, in my house,” she said. “I rented space for over a year and recently completed building my own commercial kitchen.” She took some of her Salted Sesame Toffee to her local grocery co-op, where she was told that if she could make it organic, they’d carry it in the store. “The toffee proved to be outrageously delicious, and people loved it, so I started selling it,” she said. From Salted Sesame, she started experimenting with other flavors that appealed to her own preference for interesting savory flavors, often finding her inspiration by wandering the aisles of that same grocery co-op. “It just kind of morphed from there. This is good; what else is going to 22
The Cheese Guide
be good?” she said. “I wander through the co-op, and flavors just sort of speak to me.” She’s now making her Organic Toffee in nine core flavors, including the Salted Sesame and the Fennel Seed, as well as a few seasonal flavors, including a Pumpkin Pie Toffee in the fall. Her Mothers Day toffee, Wow, Mom, is a melange of lemon, lavender, rose hips and vanilla wafers, and her toffee for Fathers Day, Roddad, includes pretzels, corn chips, onions and garlic. She didn’t stop with onions and garlic – another of her recent creations includes sundried tomatoes, smoked salt and black pepper. “I was walking through the co-op, and I grabbed a sun-dried tomato, and I thought, I can put this in toffee, so I did,” she said. “It’s out there. It hasn’t caught on in the same way that the Fennel Seed Toffee caught on, but maybe it will.” The tomatoes have a wonderful umami that they contribute an ingredient combination without being too sweet themselves, and surprising as it sounds, they really work in the toffee, she said, admitting that Tomato Terrific, the sun-dried tomato, smoked salt and black pepper toffee, doesn’t sell itself off the shelf – it has to be sampled. “When you see the toffee, you’ll probably buy Coconut because you understand coconut, and then you might buy the Sesame Seed because you understand sesame seed,” she said. “It sells when I’m there.... It sells in cheese stores. It takes a special store to be able to market it in the way it needs to be marketed.” Vermont Amber Organic Toffee is packaged for retail sale in 5ounce and 1.25 ounce packages. The 5-ounce size bag, which retails for around $10, comes in a display box to sit on the store’s counter, while the 1.25-ounce bags, which retail for $3, display well in a basket. Vermont Amber Organic Toffee is also available in bulk for use as an addition to cookies, granola, ice cream and more. Feinberg’s current distributor makes the toffee available to retailers in Vermont, but Feinberg also ships wholesale orders directly to stores.
sweet tradition Boring residents offer
BY LORRIE BAUMANN
The co-Founders of Hip Chick Farms have uprooted themselves from the California company they started in 2013 and embarked on a new venture that will specialize in snack products focused on wellness. A Boring Life, the new company started by Serafina Palandech and Jennifer Johnson, launched its first products last year and is now introducing nuts and fruits preserved in honey to the market. “My family is from Montenegro, and when we go back there, we come back with jars of nuts and fruits in honey, which is a traditional way of preserving the produce for them,” said Palandech, who is Chief Executive Officer as well as co-Founder of A Boring Life. “There’s nothing like that here.” Their new product has already achieved retail distribution in specialty markets, where it’s being embraced as a partner for cheese. “It’s unlike anything out there. Pour it over a piece of brie for a beautiful appetizer,” Palandech said, adding that consumers also enjoy the raw honey products at breakfast time. The company’s name is a reference to Boring, Oregon, a community near Portland where the couple are now making their home after the sale of Hip Chicks Farms, which produced frozen chicken products. With that business behind them, Palandech and Johnson began thinking about how they’d start a new food business in the small Oregon town that offered the benefit of being near where Palandech’s family had been living for the past 15 years. “I love creating companies. I love creating brands,” Palandech said. “Jen [Johnson] is a chef, and she wanted to create snack products focused on 24
The Cheese Guide
wellness.” Those first products, introduced last year, are packaged nuts with enough hemp extract in each blend to offer 25 mg of fullspectrum hemp extract per 1-ounce bag. There are two snack blends: Roasted Almonds with a Hint of Lavender and Roasted Almonds, Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt. The lavender in the blend comes from their new home farm, where Palandech and Johnson grow about 1,000 lavender plants on a couple of acres. “It’s a very popular crop in the area because it grows so well in our little microclimate in Oregon,” Palandech said. “I’m good at making food and making brands. Farming, I don’t think is my expertise, but lavender is very forgiving.” The newest product uses raw honey sourced from hives on their property along with honey raised on another 800 hives around Clackamas County, Oregon. Almonds and walnuts for the products come from a thirdgeneration farmer in California, and most of the fruits are sourced from Oregon growers, Palandech said. “There is a thriving and supportive food and beverage industry here that we’ve been able to tap into, and I love being part of it,” she said. The raw honey products are packed in 7-ounce jars. Boring Bees combines the honey with figs, apricots, dried blueberries, walnuts, pecans, almonds, cashews and pumpkin seeds. Hot Honey is raw honey with chiles and walnuts, and Lavender Honey is raw honey with dried lavender and almonds. The suggested retail price for each 7-ounce jar is $6.99. Distribution for the honey products is through DPI. For more information, visit www.aboringlife.com.
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FEATURED PRODUCTS J&M Foods Offers Family Tradition of Quality
Absolute Authenticity from Le Gruyère AOP
J&M Foods proudly continues its family tradition and passion for good food by providing its customers with the best-tasting cheese straws and cookies in the market. J&M currently offers 21 products as well as additional seasonal offerings. In addition, new products to tickle the taste buds and provide something new for customers’ enjoyment are always being tested in the kitchen. Like its other products, J&M Foods’ Original Cheese Straws are made from the finest ingredients available and are free of trans fats and baked with care. J&M Foods enjoys being flexi-
Real Le Gruyère AOP is the true Swiss classic that makes a cheese flight first class. Real Gruyère has been produced in western Switzerland for more than 900 years. Rich in flavor and packed with nutrients from the milk of cows grazing in pristine pastures, Le Gruyère AOP is versatile – its nutty complexity is delicious on a cheese board, in fondue or in any recipe that needs a great melting cheese. Today, anyone can label a cheese “Gruyère,” but Le Gruyère AOP is the real deal, tightly upholding the tradition of the cheesemaking process, the regions where it is produced and the strict guidelines followed by the dairy farmers, cheesemakers
ble enough to handle all its customers’ needs. Located in a 32,000-square foot facility residing on 21 acres, the company has room to grow along its customers. Centrally located and nationally recognized, J&M Foods is an award-winning market leader within the specialty foods industry. Call for more information about J&M Foods, the Janis & Melanie line of treats or to discuss a private label need. J&M Foods 800.264.2278 www.janis-melanie.com
Fontina Aosta DOP Fontina Aosta DOP is a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese made exclusively within Italy’s Aosta Valley. The area’s particular combination of flowers, herbs and pure water gives the cow’s milk its special fragrance and flavor. Fontina is made from the unskimmed milk of separate milkings. The milk is placed in a cauldron, clotted and processed according to ageold techniques. All thermic treatments aimed at reducing microbes (pasteurization) are excluded to allow for a richer taste, aroma and quality. The cheese is then salted and left to age, maturing at about four to five months. During this phase the cheese is treated daily, almost completely by hand. In the first
three months, the cheese is placed on pine shelves and turned over every other day, as well as being salted and brushed with salty water. Then regular cleaning of the cheese’s surface continues until the product is matured. The result is a cheese that acquires a softtextured paste with the typical sweet and delicate flavor. Fontina is cylindrical and flat in shape. The rind is thin, ranging from reddish yellow to dark brown in color; the paste is soft but compact and springy. The sweet taste varies considerably depending on the degree of aging. Savello USA Inc. info@savellousa.com www.savellousa.com
Hall’s Benedictine Spread Hall’s Beer Cheese launches the newest member to the line of already popular dips and spreads. The Hall’s Benedictine Spread launched in the spring of 2020 to much acclaim from foodies and fans. The Hall’s Benedictine Spread features a crisp cucumber flavor that is paired perfectly with a range of 26
The Cheese Guide
accompaniments from crackers, flatbreads and bagels. Benedictine is currently sold at Liquor Barn locations in Kentucky, select Hy-Vee stores in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and online. Hall’s Beer Cheese www.beercheese.com
and affineurs. Pure, unpasteurized milk is gathered from 170 farms and brought to expert cheesemakers to produce 80pound wheels of Le Gruyère AOP, which are then carefully matured in local cellars. Only the wheels that pass the highest standards set by professional cheese graders are allowed to be sold as “Le Gruyère AOP.” Travel back to 1115 AD with Le Gruyère AOP for an experience of one of the great mountain cheeses of Switzerland – 100 percent natural, 100 percent additive free, and naturally gluten free – just as it has always been. Le Gruyère www.gruyere.com
Gayo Azul Edam Edam cheese is one of the most famous Dutch cheeses, traditionally produced in a ball shape. It is named after the small Dutch town of Edam, where it was first produced. Imported from The Netherlands, Gayo Azul Edam is a young cheese made with part-skim milk for a rich, buttery flavor and a smooth, creamy texture. Edam is a traditional table cheese, and it tastes great in sandwiches or simply as
a snack. Gayo Azul Edam melts beautifully in baking dishes, or serve it cubed in salads and vegetable dishes. Gayo Azul Edam Balls are available in 30-ounce or 4pound balls. It’s also available in 8-ounce exact weight wedges. FrieslandCampina 201.655.7730 www.frieslandcampina.com www.gayoazul.com
Widmer’s Aged Brick Cheese Brick cheese is an American original and is among the first washed rind cheeses produced in the U.S. It was developed in 1877 by John Jossi, a Swiss born cheesemaker. As Jossi did, Joe Widmer uses real brick to press his cheese, the same bricks his grandfather used in 1922. After pressing, the cheese is placed in a salt brine for 11 hours, then moved to a warm, humid curing room where it is washed and turned daily for seven
days. It is then packed in parchment paper and foil. It reaches peak flavor at four to five months. This semi-soft cheese has a pleasant, earthy flavor that intensifies with age. Widmer’s Aged Brick is also available with caraway seeds. Suggested retail price is $12.99 to $15.99/pound. Widmer’s Cheese Cellars 888.878.1107 www.widmerscheese.com
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A SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
FEATURED PRODUCTS Belletoile from Fromagerie Henri Hutin Fromagerie Henri Hutin’s exceptional Belletoile triple crème brie complements any special occasion from big celebrations to intimate tastings – any occasion that can be elevated with indulgent food. Belletoile was first produced by Fromagerie Henri Hutin, master cheese makers from the Lorraine region of France, in 1960. It quickly rose to global acclaim when it became the first triple crème brie exported to the United States of America. Belletoile is recognized for its wonderful creamy and mellow mouth feel and elegant complexity, attributable to a century of cheesemaking know-how and indulgent amounts of cream added in the pre-production process. Because of the rind that protects the cheese while it ripens, Belletoile can be enjoyed for weeks after opening as it softens and ages. Its secret recipe in-
cludes living cheese cultures, so the flavor profile will change as the cheese matures, starting out fresh and mild but turning creamier and aromatic in taste as the cheese continues to age. Ingredients are simple: pasteurized cow milk, cream, salt, cultures, ripening molds and animal rennet. All Belletoile cheese is produced with premium milk from cows in the Lorraine Valley region in northeastern France, which is known for its agriculture and farmland. Notably, Fromagerie Henri Hutin has become the first French Brie manufacturer to be certified VLOG non-GMO for its Brie Couronne and Belletoile brands, paving the way for a new era of non-GMO cheese production. As of January of 2018, Henri Hutin cheeses officially met the VLOG 16.01, a GMO-free production and testing standard developed in Germany and recognized by sev-
Marieke Golden Inspired by the great Dutch cheeses, this creamy, semi-soft American Original boasts a flavor profile rich in nuttiness with hints of sweet fruit. Handcrafted by award-winning Cheesemaker Marieke Penterman and her team, this raw milk beauty is carefully aged for a minimum of six months on Dutch pine planks. Marieke® Golden is crafted with vegetable rennet and farm fresh cow’s milk piped straight after the first milking of the day into the processing vat where it is made into cheese within five hours. Its freshness is unrivaled. This unique Golden cheese is created with both Gouda and Parmesan cultures. Its soft, but-
tery texture, creamy mouth feel and pleasantly sweet aroma result in a new American classic that is sure to be a standout in any cheese department. Pair with cured meats, honey, dried fruits and spiced nuts. Marieke Golden has won nine awards including a best of class award in the World Cheese Championship Contest. Available in 20-pound wheels, pre-cut wedges and exact weights. Marieke Golden is suitable for vegetarians. Marieke Gouda 715.669.5230 www.mariekegouda.com
eral European countries. This distinction is important as the American consumer has become more aware of the value of choosing non-GMO products. In addition to being non-GMO, Henri Hutin’s Belletoile is particularly special because of the heterogeneous texture that is created by ripening the cheese in the same way as raw milk Brie ripens from the outside to the center, creating a cheese with a softer core. The ultra-filtered grade A milk is analyzed by a computer-controlled system that can maintain a consistent fat level throughout the year, ensuring a consistently rich and smooth flavor that pleases the palate. This commitment to quality and consistency through technology supports Henri Hutin’s rich traditions. Many of the same techniques that were used almost 100
The Cheese Guide
Fromagerie Henri Hutin info@belletoile.us www.belletoile.us
Handcrafted European-Style Non-GMO Cheeses from Bunker Hill Bunker Hill Cheese is made in small batches with recipes in the European tradition by a family that came from Switzerland to found an American creamery in 1935. The company’s line of Swiss cheeses includes Baby Swiss, Lacey Baby Swiss, Smoked Baby Swiss and Sharp Swiss Cheese. Bunker Hill Cheese also offers Lactose Free Cheese, which is made using local farm milk and yogurt cultures to produce a cheese that’s also gluten free and
a source of live probiotics. The Yogurt Cultured Lactose Free Cheeses are offered in Original, Jalapeño, Garden Vegetable and Garlic & Herb Varieties. Bunker Hill A2 Cheese, made with A2 milk, is offered in two varieties: Raw Milk Gouda and Raw Milk French Style. Non-GMO cheeses are certified by the Non-GMO Project. Bunker Hill Cheese www.bunkerhillcheese.com
Monte Pollino Organic Italian Cube Wafers These Monte Pollino Organic Italian Wafers are the first 250g cube organic wafers in the country. Made with UTZ-certified chocolate, these wafers are crunchy, creamy and delicious and are produced using only organic ingredients. The organic production method that is used responds to consumer demands for fair trade and organic products and provides a more envi-
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years ago continue to be practiced today, but with modern equipment. Belletoile holds on to its tradition of artisanal craftsmanship in order to bring a flavor that is as sophisticated as its origins. Belletoile is available in Classic Round, Petit Round, and Creamy Wedges and Creamy Slices. Henri Hutin is committed to reinforcing the Belletoile brand in the United States, and to continue to meet wholesale and retail customer demands for high-quality, healthy offerings. The company will continue to support Belletoile Triple Crème Brie throughout the year. Henri Hutin has been a proud and valued member of the Hochland family since 1978.
ronment a l l y friendly product for your customers to enjoy. Available flavors include Hazelnut, Chocolate and Lemon-Vanilla. Lettieri & Co. 415.657.3392 www.lettieri.com
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FEATURED PRODUCTS Fiorucci Old World Salumi for a New Age
A Fresh Look for Classic Oregon Blue Cheese
The Fiorucci brand is the benchmark for Italian deli meats, one which has grown steadily for over 170 years thanks to the authenticity and superb flavor of its products. Using the same, treasured family recipes today, Fiorucci is a leading producer of specialty meats, using Old World techniques in innovative, modern ways to delight families across the world. The story of Fiorucci can be traced back to the 1850s, when Innocenzo Fiorucci, the owner of a small meat shop in Norcia, would visit Rome each winter to sell Norcinetto, a flavor-
Rogue Creamery’s classic, signature Oregon Blue Cheese now sports a new label that pays homage to Rogue’s home, heritage, and tradition of handmade and cave-aged cheeses. The cornerstone of Rogue Creamery’s line of artisan blues, this Frenchstyle, cave-aged cheese was the first of its kind to be produced on the American West Coast. Certified organic since 2016, the recipe remains a classic: approachable yet sophisticated, featuring the creamy, fruity and savory-yet-sweet notes that make Oregon Blue a timeless favorite among chefs and cheese lovers nationwide. The new Oregon Blue label pays tribute to the cheese’s roots
ful dry sausage from his hometown. After many successful years of traveling sales, Innocenzo settled in Rome and opened his own shop that specialized in the traditional preparation of cured meats. Today, Fiorucci specialty meats are now also made in the United States using the family’s treasured recipes, still hand trimmed, seasoned with the finest spices and carefully aged. Fiorucci Foods cfa.marketing@campofriofg.com www.fioruccifoods.com
SnackUps Cheese Dip Snack Packs Dairyfood USA has taken its Cheese Dip & Pretzel Snack Pack concept to another level with a major redesign under the SnackUps brand. SnackUps provide a more elevated snacking experience by combining Wisconsin-made cheese dip and crispy pretzels for a satisfying snack. The eye-catching design now properly reflects the quality of the product inside while allowing the customer to see more of the
product. The new package design has a benefit beyond visual appeal in that it allows retailers to doublestack the product for improved merchandising opportunities both in and out of the cooler. SnackUps provide a robust 8g of protein and 170 mg of calcium with only 210 calories. Dairyfood USA Inc. 608.437.5598 ext. 2245 www.dairyfoodusa.com
The Gold of the Alps: Vezzena Cheese The Vezzena Cheese is often referred to as “the Gold of the Alps” because of its color. Its unique golden color is given by the milk that is collected daily in the mountain farms where cows are free to live outside and graze on grass. In order to reach perfect maturation, the Vezzena Cheese is aged at least six months. If needed, it can be aged more depending on how much flavor and sharpness is desired in the cheese. At six months, the taste of the Vezzena Cheese is slightly sharp with a mid-grainy texture. Its aromatics profile is rich with a scent of roasted cashew mixed with pineapple. If aged over 30
The Cheese Guide
10 months, the taste becomes sharper and recalls roasted nuts. This fall, Monti Trentini renewed the Vezzena Cheese label to give a clear idea of the territory where the cheese is produced. This type of cheese, its color, its taste and its texture go hand in hand with the message of warmth given by the picture. This product is available in whole wheels (18 pounds), quarter wheels (4.5 pounds) and 7-ounce wedges. Monti Trentini info@montitrentini-usa.com www.montitrentini.com
and the place where it has been handmade continuously since 1954: southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley. It features an original character: the “Oregon Black Bear Queen,” guardian of the caves. Surrounding the Bear Queen are symbols of the Rogue terroir: chanterelle mushrooms, pine boughs, acorns, blackberries and Bracken fern – all reminiscent of flavors found in this cheese. Oregon Blue is available nationwide in whole wheel, crumble, and prepackaged, exact-weight wedge formats. Rogue Creamery 866.396.4704 ext. 4 www.roguecreamery.com
I Siciliani Primosale with Pistachio Primosale with Pistachio is a fresh sheep’s milk cheese stuffed with dried and shredded pistachios, which add a slightly salty taste to the primosale’s delicate and sweet flavor. I Siciliani, produced by Biopek, creates authentic and traditional cheeses from Sicily following the centuries-old experience of the shepherds. Thus, the rich gastonomic, environmental and cultural heritage of the region is safeguarded. The company sets itself apart with its enthusiasm and desire to create new solutions by offering experi-
ence in the development of partnership projects to bring value to all of its customers. The company cherishes its products and remains faithful to its standards, while continuously trying to improve. The fresh primosale cheeses combine a delicate taste with a surprising versatility that makes them heroes of the table in all dishes, either alone or in combination with other ingredients. Savello USA Inc. info@savellousa.com www.savellousa.com
Jambon de Paris Fabrique Délices’ Jambon de Paris is made according to traditional recipes to ensure a rich, delicate taste. Lean, low-fat whole-muscle pork is slowly cooked sous-vide, carefully seasoned and perfect for slicing. Enjoy one of the best Parisian style hams available in your favorite sandwiches, croque monsieur, quiches, party trays, antipasto platters, appetizers and breakfast dishes. The large Jambon de Paris is a 10-pound ham
t h a t ’s perfect for slicing in the deli. Jambon de Paris is also sold as three units with 3.3 pounds each. Fabrique Delices www.fabriquedelices.com
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FEATURED PRODUCTS Trentingrana DOP Trentingrana DOP is a 100 percent Italian cheese made using only milk, rennet and salt. It is produced in Trento, a region characterized by immense valleys, vast mountain forests and pure water resources. This mountainous area of northern Italy is known for its great passion for gastronomic culture and the uniqueness of its products. The milk used to produce this cheese comes from cows that are healthy and strong, mainly the Brown Alpine breed. Once processed, the cheese is aged for a minimum of 18 months. During this time, the cheese is ripened in the dairy for the first nine months.
Caprino di Krebs from Lovera’s Market It is a semi-fat cheese and therefore has a reduced lipid content, making it ideal for the modern diet. Only 100,000 cheeses are made per year. Trentingrana is a cheese with a sweetness that is its best-known distinction. It is suitable for every meal, can be enjoyed with cocktails or as an appetizing and nourishing second course. It is also an excellent cheese to be grated, suitable for making refined dishes even tastier. Savello USA Inc. info@savellousa.com www.savellousa.com
Odyssey Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip Klondike Cheese Company introduces a healthier alternative to a traditional sour cream-based dip with its new Odyssey® brand Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip. This is a gluten-free and rBST-free cow’s milk dip that has crunchy cucumbers and a zest of garlic and dill. Odyssey Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip has only 30 calories per serving, two times the protein, and five
live and active cultures compared to traditional sour cream-based dips. The Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip is an addition to the family of other Odyssey Greek Yogurt Dips available in these delicious flavors: Southwest, French Onion and Bell Pepper. Klondike Cheese www.odysseybrands.com
Caputo Crafts Elevated Distinction Founded in 1978 by René and Pasquale Caputo, Caputo Cheese in Melrose Park, Illinois, crafts award-winning fresh Mozzarella and Ricotta cheeses using Old World tradition and recipes. While some things stay constant, Natale Caputo, President of Caputo Cheese, is always looking for new and innovative ideas and has created a new line under the Caputo Cheese umbrella: Elevated Cow. Made with the same high-quality milk, and with the same attention to detail as Caputo’s other 32
The Cheese Guide
cheeses, the Elevated Cow line of fresh cheeses is infused with independently tested and verified CBD. Each batch of Elevated Cow is then sent out to be tested at an independent lab to ensure accuracy in product and to provide accurate labeling for you and your customers. Use the Elevated Cow line of cheeses on pizza, caprese salads, or any dish that highlights fresh Mozzarella. Caputo Cheese 708.450.0074 www.elevatedcow.com
Established in 1946, Lovera’s Market is a family-owned business dedicated to supporting the small community of Krebs, Oklahoma. Beginning as an Italian immigrant-owned market, Lovera’s has expanded from a small grocery store to a tourist destination, focused on handcrafted, Italian style cheeses made with the freshest local milk and shipping products nationwide. Lovera’s Head Cheese Maker, Matteo Lovera, is a fourthgeneration family member who has trained all over the world to perfect his craft and carry on the
family legacy. A customer favorite, Caprino di Krebs is a soft spreadable goat cheese crafted in small batches to provide the creamiest texture and taste. All of the goat milk is sourced from a small family dairy less than an hour away. This Chevre-style cheese is available in Traditional, Peppercorn, and Cranberry varieties as 8-ounce retail packaging or a 5pound bulk case. Lovera’s Market 918.423.2842 www.loverasmarket.com
Le Gruyère AOP Reserve Matured for at least 10 months, Le Gruyère AOP Reserve has the same pedigree as real Swiss Gruyère produced in western Switzerland for more than 900 years. Rich in flavor and packed with nutrients from the milk of cows grazing in pristine pastures, Le Gruyère AOP Reserve has a more assertive and intensely aromatic character than its younger counterpart. It has a complex nutty, buttery taste with a firm, slightly crumbly texture. It’s perfect for everyday eating and at home in fondue or any recipe that calls for a great melting cheese. Today, anyone can label a
cheese “Gruyère,” but Le Gruyère AOP Reserve is the real deal, tightly upholding the tradition of the cheese-making process, the regions where it is produced, and the strict guidelines followed by the dairy farmers, cheese makers and affineurs. Pure, unpasteurized milk is gathered from 170 farms and brought to expert cheese makers to produce 80-pound wheels, which are then aged in local cellars. Only the wheels passing the highest standards are allowed to be sold as Le Gruyère AOP. Le Gruyère www.gruyere.com
Lioni Latticini Truffle Burrata Lioni Latticini Burrata Con Tartufo was awarded first place in the flavored cheese category at the 2019 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition. This cheese features the rare delicacy of the world’s finest Italian black truffles in a delicious creamy panna di latte and pasta filata mozzarella. The panna, imported from Italy, is merged with carefully spun pieces of curd called pasta filata. The black summer truffles add a rich and earthy aromatic flavor to the luscious and creamy filled center.
With its pure flavor and creamy texture blended with Urbani’s imported truffles, this is a supremely sophisticated and indulgent burrata cheese. Lioni supplies buyers with a full product line of fresh mozzarella, burrata and bufala products for both food service and retail demands across the U.S. Lioni Latticini Inc. 718.232.7852 www.lionimozzarella.com
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A SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
FEATURED PRODUCTS Formaggio Brand Artisan Wraps Artisan Wraps, deli-style meats wrapped around sticks of awardwinning fresh mozzarella, came onto the market from Formaggio Brand a few years ago. Initially, this product was presented as a 22ounce tray offering three kinds of meats: prosciutto, pepperoni and soppressata. Since then, demand has grown for different meats and a greater variety of package sizes. Formaggio Brand has answered that demand by offering two new sizes: an 18-ounce version of the larger variety tray and also smaller grab-and-go 5ounce and 6-ounce (depending on flavor) trays that feature an in-
dividual kind of deli meat. The meat choices have grown as well, and now additionally feature Hard Salami, Genoa Salami and Chorizo. A tray with Jamon Serrano is in development. What sets Formaggio Brand apart is not only the wide range of meat choices but also – and importantly – the creamy, silky handmade quality of the company’s award-winning fresh mozzarella cheese from which the sticks are formed. Formaggio Brand info@formaggiocheese.com www.formaggiocheese.com
Buholzer Brothers Slices for the Deli Case Klondike Cheese Company’s new Buholzer Brothers™ slices are crafted by Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers at a family owned plant that has been making cheese at the same location since 1925. The two new varieties of Muenster and Havarti cheeses are available in 7ounce and 8ounce retail peg packages with 10 slices per pack. Adding these two new options extends out the family of the other Buholzer Brothers varieties, which mainly include chunks. Now you can have Buholzer Brothers Brand both in your deli and dairy cheese cases. Havarti is a great melting cheese with its creamy, rich but-
tery flavor, great for a quick charcuterie board or your next sandwich. You can bet the same for the Muenster which has an appetite appeal to a wide range of consumers, as it is a mild and delicious snacking cheese, great for kids and adults of all ages. The secret to Klondike’s exceptional quality is the combination of using state-of-the art equipment, their proprietary recipes and time-honored traditions of cheesemaking. The company sources local cow’s milk and high quality ingredients, and the cheese is made in Wisconsin. Klondike Cheese Company www.buholzerbrothers.com
A2A2 Certified Organic Cheeses from Alpine Heritage Creamery Alpine Heritage Creamery cheeses include a two-year-old Cheddar, Applewood Smoked Cheddar and Paradise Colby along with 10 other varieties, all carefully crafted in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Paradise Reserve is a full-bodied cheddar with a complex flavor. Smooth and buttery up front but with the classic cheddar bite on the finish, all with a tangy aroma 34
The Cheese Guide
that comes from the creamy milk from 100 percent grass-fed cows. Paradise Reserve comes in a 5pound loaf or a 20-pound block. Applewood Cheddar is Alpine Heritage Creamery’s signature cheddar smoked over apple wood for a more robust flavor. The hint of smoke makes this cheese ideal in a grilled cheese sandwich, with cured meats, pickled vegetables or melted over a burger. Apple-
Calabro Introduces Full Line of Formaggi di Bufala New products from Calabro Cheese include Mozzarella di Bufala, Ricotta di Bufala, Burrata di Bufala and Bufarella. Calabro brings in the freshest, never frozen, buffalo milk and hand makes a truly unique line of cheeses in its New England facility. All of the bufala cheeses are made fresh to order, which assures customers a much longer shelf life than the traditional imported frozen product. The Mozzarella di Bufala is made using a natural lactic culture imported from Campania, Italy, and is available in all the traditional sizes including Ciliegine, Bocconcini, Ovoline and 8-ounce. Ricotta di Bufala is delectably rich and creamy and has been
awarded top honors in the sofi Awards by the Specialty Food Association and in the World Championship Cheese Competition. The newest addition to the lineup is Calabro’s handmade Burrata di Bufala, made with bufala cream and bufala mozzarella. The outer shell is soft and smooth, while the inside bursts with fresh crèma di bufala and hand pulled strands of mozzarella di bufala. Lastly, Calabro’s Bufarella is a blend of bufala and cows milk and was formulated specifically for use on artisanal pizza. Calabro Cheese Corporation 203.469.1311 www.calabrocheese.com
A Pasteurized Brie from France Le Chatelain Brie 3kg 60% is made with all natural pasteurized cow’s milk of free-ranging herds from the Meuse region of eastern France. Meuse, with its numerous valleys, rivers and temperate climate, provides an ideal setting for dairies and a perfect environment for the small farms that have traditionally graced its landscape. It is a very green region where cows are on pasture for a good part of the year. The quality of the milk is a big
priority, as the lion’s share of it is used as raw milk for the prestigious hand-ladled Brie de Meaux AOC. That same milk in its pasteurized version is the one that will be used in the prized recipe for Brie Le Chatelain. This recipe that replicates the distinctive flavors of the best raw milk Brie was in fact awarded a gold medal at the prestigious Concours Agricole in Paris in 2010.
wood Cheddar is available in 5pound loaf. Paradise Colby is aged approximately two to six months. This is a classic farmstead Colby with a smooth buttery flavor and grassy aroma that comes from 100 percent grass-fed organic Jersey milk. It’s a classic snacking cheese with a wide variety of applications from mac and cheese to your next cheese plate. Alpine Heritage is a second
generation, family-run dairy farm with an onsite creamery where cheeses are produced and matured for unique flavor and style. The creamery has full control over everything the cows eat, the milking process and then the making, maturing and sale of the cheese.
Lactalis American Group 877.522.8254 www.lactalisamericangroup.com
Alpine Heritage Creamery 717.847.3291 www.alpineheritagecreamery.com
CHEESE LISTINGS PRODUCT NAME
COMPANY
AWARDS
DESCRIPTION
AMERICAN-MADE INTERNATIONAL STYLE —
Odyssey® Traditional Crumbled Feta is a healthy addition to salads and main dishes. The smaller size 4-ounce packaging will allow retailers more shelf space to display a wider variety of flavors that are available, and give the consumer a better price point.
Spring Brook Farm 802.484.1226 sbfcheese@sbfvt.org www.sbfcheese.org
2nd at 2018 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition, 2016 Good Food Award,1st place at 2015 U.S. Cheese Championships
Ashbrook is Spring Brook Farm’s version of the French Morbier cheese, made with natural raw Jersey cows milk with a distinctive layer of vegetable ash running through the center and a natural washed rind. This semi-soft cheese has damp, dark cellar notes with a mild funkiness on the rind and a milky sweet flavor in its paste. It’s offered in 18-pound full wheels or 4.5-pound quarter wheels.
Caciocavera (Caciocavallo style)
Lovera’s Italian Market 918.423.2842 www.loverasmarket.com
World Cheese Award Winner 2012; American Cheese Society Winner 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2018
Lovera’s flagship cheese made with fresh, locally sourced Jersey cow milk. A beautiful cross between a smooth mozzarella and an earthy provolone, great for melting and grilling. Caciocavera is available in traditional, aged, smoked, Italian Herb and Diavolo (spicy) varieties.
Elevated Cow Fresh Mozzarella
Caputo Cheese 708.450.0074 www.caputocheese.com
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Made with the same high-quality milk, and with the same attention to detail as Caputo’s other cheeses, the Elevated Cow line of fresh cheeses is infused with independently tested and verified CBD. Each batch of Elevated Cow is then sent out to be tested at an independent lab to ensure accuracy in product and to provide accurate labeling for you and your customers. Use the Elevated Cow line of cheeses on pizza, caprese salads, or any dish that highlights fresh Mozzarella.
Fiorucci Aged Parmesan and Mild Provolone Cheese
Campofrio Food Group America 800.520.7775 www.fioruccifoods.com
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Fiorucci’s new line of authentic, premium Italian cheeses includes Aged Parmesan and Mild Provolone. Sweet, savory, 10 month-Aged Parmesan adds a punch of flavor to nearly anything it’s added to and the Mild Provolone is aged for more than 60 days, and is full in rich flavor and is gluten-free and rBST-free.
Marieke Gouda Mature 6-9 months
Holland’s Family Cheese LLC 715.669.5230 www.mariekegouda.com
14 National and International awards including: gold, silver and bronze Most notable award to date: grand champion at U.S. Cheese Championship
Marieke Gouda Mature is rich and full-flavored with a subtle bite and caramel notes. Aged for six to nine months on Dutch pine planks, honoring the Old-World cheesemaking methods from the Netherlands. Marieke Gouda is handcrafted by licensed cheesemakers using fresh raw cow’s milk from Peterman Farm. A true farmstead Gouda made in Wisconsin.
Non-GMO Cheese
Bunker Hill Cheese 330.893.2131 www.bunkerhillcheese.com
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Bunker Hill Cheese is made in small batches with recipes in the European tradition. The company’s line of Swiss cheeses includes Baby Swiss, Lacey Baby Swiss, Smoked Baby Swiss and Sharp Swiss Cheese. Bunker Hill Cheese also offers Lactose Free Cheese in multiple flavors, which is made using local farm milk and yogurt cultures to produce a cheese that’s also gluten free and a source of live probiotics. Bunker Hill A2 Cheese, made with A2 milk, is offered in two varieties: Raw Milk Gouda and Raw Milk French Style. Non-GMO cheeses are certified by the Non-GMO Project.
Locarno
Nicasio Valley Cheese Company 415.662.6200 www.nicasiocheese.com
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A uniquely delicious, creamy Brie, Locarno ripens from the inside of the rind through the tangy, chalky interior. Available in 2.5-pound 8-inch wheels or in 6-ounce rounds with a 90day shelf life and newly available in 3-ounce exact-weight rounds.
Premium Italian cheeses
Calabro Cheese Corporation 203.469.1311 www.calabrocheese.com
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For over half a century, Calabro Cheese has been a leader in manufacturing Italian artisanal cheeses, including fresh mozzarella, hand dipped ricotta, impastata, organic cheese and much more. The company is a family of cheese makers that are committed to the highest production standards, resulting in the highest quality cheeses.
Reading
Spring Brook Farm Cheese 802.484.1226 sbfcheese@sbfvt.org www.sbfcheese.org
Multiple national awards, including a 1st place at the 2018 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition and gold medal and best in show awards at the 2018 Big E Cheese Competition
Reading is Spring Brook Farm’s artisan raclette-style cheese. It’s made with natural raw Jersey cow milk and aged at least three months for a versatile semi-soft cheese with nutty, grassy undertones that’s ideally suited for melting. It’s available in random-weight wheels between 18 and 20 pounds or in 4.5-pound quarters for food service and retail applications.
St. Helga’s
Prairie Farms 563.468.6600 www.cavesoffaribault.com
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European-style Swiss cheese with complex nutty flavor and larger holes, cave-aged in the fabled Caves of Faribault.
Tarentaise
Spring Brook Farm Cheese 802.484.1226 sbfcheese@sbfvt.org www.sbfcheese.org
Multiple awards including a best in show for Tarentaise Reserve at the 2017 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition, a bronze medal at the 2018 World Cheese Awards and a 1st place at the 2018 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition
Made from raw Jersey cow milk, Tarentaise is a farmstead cheese made using traditional Alpine cheesemaking techniques. It’s a semi-hard cheese with a natural washed rind that’s been aged at least nine months. Flavor depends on the season, ranging from a complex, nutty flavor for the winter cheese to a bright floral taste in summer. It’s offered as a 20-pound wheel and a 5-pound quarter wheel.
Odyssey 4-ounce Traditional Crumbled Feta Cheese
Klondike Cheese Company 608.325.3021 www.klondikecheese.com
Ashbrook
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The Cheese Guide
CHEESE LISTINGS PRODUCT NAME
COMPANY
AWARDS
DESCRIPTION
Multiple awards including a super gold medal at the 2014 World Cheese Awards
A naturally-rinded blue with hints of vanilla, truffle and savory bacon. It’s made from all natural grass-based organic whole cow milk and vegetarian enzymes.
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A cow milk cheese that’s a cross between gorgonzola and a creamy mascarpone for a very creamy texture. The flavor is intense yet very sweet. This cheese would be perfect for a cheese plate after a meal and in pasta dishes or risotto.
BLUE CHEESE Caveman Blue
Rogue Creamery 866.396.4704 www.roguecreamery.com
Dolce Paradiso
Savello USA, Inc. 570.822.9743 www.savellousa.com
Oregon Blue
Rogue Creamery 866.396.4704 www.roguecreamery.com
Multiple awards dating back to a 1st place at the 1987 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest and up to a 3rd place at the 2017 United States Cheese Championships and a silver medal at the 2013 World Cheese Awards
Rogue Creamery’s signature classic blue, Oregon Blue has been artisan-made since 1955. It’s made from pasteurized organic milk from the Rogue Creamery mixed-breed dairy herd and has Rogue Creamery’s signature sweetness and spice with a regional fruit finish.
Penta Creme
Carr Valley Cheese 608.370.4144 www.carrvalleycheese.com
1st place at 2018 L.A. International Dairy Competition
Blue cheeese with extra cream for a rich, creamy flavor and a texture that’s almost spreadable at room temperature.
Point Reyes Original Blue
Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. 415.663.8880 www.pointreyescheese.com
Multiple awards including, most recently, a 2019 Good Food Award
Classic-style raw cow milk blue cheese that’s rindless, all natural and gluten free. It’s made with microbial rennet and aged 3.5 months to produce a milky white cheese with blue-green veins throughout. It has an ultra-creamy texture with a medium-strong blue mold flavor.
Rogue River Blue Cheese
Rogue Creamery 866.397.4704 www.roguecreamery.com
Multiple awards, including a sofi award in the Specialty Food Association’s 2018 competition
This distinctive cheese has Oregon’s regional flavors of brandy, truffles, butter and hazelnuts, a creamy texture and green-blue veins. It’s made from organic pasteurized milk from the Rogue Creamery’s mixed-breed dairy herd and aged a minimum of nine to 12 months.
Roth Buttermilk Blue
Emmi Roth 608.285.9800 www.rothcheese.com
2nd place in 2017 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, bronze in 2016 World Cheese Awards, best in class at 2014 World Championship Cheese Contest
Roth Buttermilk Blue is crafted with raw milk from Jersey and Holstein cows and cellar-aged for two months or longer. Tangy, yet mellow and creamy, this blue was recently ranked Top Crumbled Blue Cheese by Cook’s Illustrated.
Smokey Blue
Rogue Creamery 541.665.1155 www.roguecreamery.com
Over a dozen awards since its debut in 2004, including a SIAL Paris Innovation Award in 2006 and most recently a 3rd place at the 2018 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition
Playfully inspired by Smokey Bear, this American original blue cheese is cold-smoked for many hours over Oregon hazelnut shells. This process infuses the cheese with unique aromas of barrel-aged vanilla, bread pudding and candied bacon. The cheese exhibits spicy-sweet flavors of honey, apple and nectarine, plus a mild “blue” finish.
Tolman Blue
Rogue Creamery 866.396.4704 www.roguecreamery.com
Silver award for a new cheese at the 2018 World Cheese Awards
Tolman Blue has subtle, rich, buttery and savory flavors with a natural rind and an interesting texture. It’s made from pasteurized organic cow milk and aged a minimum of three months.
1st place at 2019 ACS Competition & Judging
Made from a modern cheddar recipe by Cabot Creamery and selected by Jasper Hill Farm for cave-finishing with a specially calibrated vault. Flavors are characterized by savory depth balanced by lactic brightness and salt caramel sweetness.
CHEDDAR & COLBY CHEESE Cave Aged Cheddar
Cellars at Jasper Hill/ Cabot Creamery
Deer Creek The Carawaybou
The Artisan Cheese Exchange 920.803.8100 orders@cheese-exchange.com www.cheese-exchange.com
Gold medal from the 2018 L.A. International Dairy Competition; silver medal and best USA cheese from 2018 International Cheese Awards
The Carawaybou is an old-fashioned Caraway Wisconsin Colby based on a vintage recipe. The aromatic bouquet of the caraway gives way to a perfumed anise flavor that penetrates the Colby without overpowering it. The slight crunch of the caraway seeds adds a pleasant contrast to the firm, yet openly curdy body of the cheese.
Widmer Artisan Aged Cheddars
Widmer’s Cheese 888.878.1107 www.widmerscheese.com
Multiple awards over the last 14 years
The Widmer Family has been handcrafting Cheddar since 1922. In recent years, these cheddars have been aged longer to satisfy the distinctive palate of lovers of artisanstyle cheeses. Original family recipes and select cultures (with no shortcuts) gives these Cheddars a more sophisticated and complex flavor profile. The super-aged Cheddars have an intense flavor with hints of caramel and are known for being very smooth without the bitterness associated with some aged Cheddars. Also available with added red and green jalapeños. Available in lots of two 5-pound pieces, 10 1-pound pieces or 20 8-ounce pieces.
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The Cheese Guide
CHEESE LISTINGS PRODUCT NAME
COMPANY
AWARDS
DESCRIPTION
CHEESE FOR SNACKING Artisan Wraps
Formaggio Brand 845.436.4200 www.formaggiocheese.com
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Formaggio’s distinctive innovation, Artisan Wraps, is a grab-and-go, snackable twist on classic meat and cheese rolls but with the meat hand-wrapped around a stick of award-winning fresh mozzarella. Meats include: Prosciutto, Applewood Smoked Prosciutto, Chorizo, Genoa Salami, Hard Salami, Jamon Serrrano, Pepperoni and Soppressata. Three sizes.
Buholzer Brothers Slices
Klondike Cheese Co. 608.325.3021 www.buholzerbrothers.com
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Buholzer Brothers™ slices are crafted by Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers at a family-owned plant that has been making cheese at the same location since 1925. The two new varieties of Muenster and Havarti cheeses are available in 7-ounce and 8-ounce retail peg packages with 10 slices per pack.
Cheese Straws
J&M Foods 800.264.2278 www.janis-melanie.com
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J&M Foods’ Original Cheese Straws are a traditional Southern delicacy combining a light crisp texture with just a hint of hot. Serve them anytime as a snack, appetizer or hors d’oeuvre. They’re a delicious counterpart to soups, salads, fruit and wine.
Hall’s Benedictine Spread
Hall’s Beer Cheese LLC 859.396.0220 www.beercheese.com
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The Hall’s Benedictine Spread launched in the spring of 2020 to much acclaim from foodies and fans. The Hall’s Benedictine Spread features a crisp cucumber flavor that is paired perfectly with a range of accompaniments from crackers, flatbreads and bagels.
Odyssey Tzatziki Dip
Klondike Cheese Co. 608.325.3021 www.odysseybrands.com
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Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip is a gluten-free and rBST-free cow’s milk dip that has crunchy cucumbers and a zest of garlic and dill. Odyssey Tzatziki Greek Yogurt Dip has only 30 calories per serving, two times the protein, and five live and active cultures compared to traditional sour cream-based dips.
SnackUPs – Cheese Dip Grab’n Go Snack Packs
Dairyfood USA Inc. 608.437.5598 www.dairyfoodusa.com
Smoked Gouda flavor took 2nd place in the pasteurized process cheese spread category for the 2017 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest
Tillamook Cheeseboards
Tillamook County Creamery www.tillamook.com
Smoked Gouda and Creamy Cheddar Cheese flavors paired with crisp pretzel chips.
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A craveable combination of Tillamook cheese, olive oil crackers and artisanal fruit spreads, Cheeseboards are Tillamook’s solution to a premium snack for the busy individual to savor. Tillamook Cheeseboards will launch in four unique flavor combinations, including Sharp Berry Crunch, with sharp white cheddar cheese, marionberry spread and rosemary crackers; Spicy Berry Bite, with Pepper Jack cheese, marionberry spread and multigrain crackers; Smoky Apple Crisp, with smoked medium cheddar cheese, apple spread and olive oil crackers; and Sharp Strawberry Heat, with sharp white cheddar cheese, spicy strawberry spread and rosemary crackers.
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Made with the same high-quality milk, and with the same attention to detail as Caputo’s other cheeses, the Elevated Cow line of fresh cheeses is infused with independently tested and verified CBD. Each batch of Elevated Cow is then sent out to be tested at an independent lab to ensure accuracy in product and to provide accurate labeling for you and your customers. Use the Elevated Cow line of cheeses on pizza, caprese salads, or any dish that highlights fresh Mozzarella.
FLAVORED CHEESE Elevated Cow Fresh Mozzarella
Caputo Cheese 708.450.0074 www.elevatedcow.com
IMPORTED CHEESE Cabecou
Remond Freres by Le Pic Dairy www.fromages-de-chevre.fr
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Small in size at 2.5 ounces, this lactic goat milk cheese develops a flavor that refines until its crust blooms. Newly available in the U.S. from World’s Best Cheese after the company achieved its U.S. Food and Drug Administration license late last year.
Carozzi Taleggio Naturale DOP
Savello USA Inc. 570.822.9743 www.savellousa.com
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Taleggio Naturale DOP is a typical table cheese made of high quality raw cow’s milk from Lombardia, and is a well-known ingredient of many Italian dishes. Its sweet and delicate taste becomes tangier towards the middle; and its soft, spreadable center is ideal with fresh bread, or as a pizza topping.
Fiorucci imported Italian Cheeses
Campofrio Food Group America 800.520.7775 www.fioruccifoods.com
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Fiorucci’s new line of authentic, premium, Italian cheeses includes Aged Parmesan and Mild Provolone. Sweet, savory, 10 month aged Parmesan adds a punch of flavor to nearly anything it’s added to, and the Mild Provolone is aged for more than 60 days for full, rich flavor and is gluten free, rBST free.
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The Cheese Guide
The Cheese Guide
41
CHEESE LISTINGS PRODUCT NAME
COMPANY
IMPORTED CHEESE
AWARDS
DESCRIPTION
(continued)
Gayo Azul Edam Ball
FrieslandCampina Consumer Dairy US 201.655.7730 www.gayoazul.com
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Made with part skim milk, Edam cheese is firmer than Gouda with a rich, buttery flavor and a smooth, creamy texture.
Gruppo Formaggi del Trentino Puzzone di Moena DOP
Savello USA Inc. 570.822.9743 www.savellousa.com
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Puzzone di Moena DOP is a hard cheese made in the valleys of Fiemme, Fassa and Primiero of northern Italy. The cheese owes its name to its accentuated scent and strong aroma. It is produced using raw cow’s milk, salt and rennet; with no additives or preservatives. It has a creamy, semi-cooked paste and moist rind.
Gruppo Formaggi del Trentino Ubriaco D’Alpeggio
Savello USA Inc. 570.822.9743 www.savellousa.com
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Ubriaco D’Alpeggio is a semi-hard cheese made with raw cow’s milk, salt and rennet and soaked in Enantio red wine. The cheese is immersed for a period of 15 to 20 days and rotated daily to ensure the wine is absorbed evenly. The result is an opaque, purplish rind and a paste that is soft with a fruity and aromatic scent.
Gruyere AOP Classic, Gruyere AOP Reserve, Le Gruyere d’Alpage AOP
Le Gruyere AOP Switzerland +41(0)26 921 84 10 www.gruyere.com
Many International awards, including four times as a World Champion at the World Cheese Awards
Gruyère AOP, a PDO product (Protected Designation of Origin), can be produced only in the Gruyères region of western Switzerland. It has been produced from raw cow milk, with the same recipe, since 1115 AD. Gruyère AOP is 100 percent natural, 100 percent additive free, and naturally free of lactose and gluten.
Içim Labneh
Lactalis American Group 212.758.6666 www.icim.com.tr/EN
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Jarlsberg
Norseland 203.515.6588 www.jarlsberg.com
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A mild semi-soft cow milk cheese, Jarlsberg is known for its sweet and nutty flavor and its large round holes.
Kaltbach Le Cremeux
Emmi Roth USA 608.285.9800 www.emmiroth.com
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Kaltbach Le Cremeux is a smear-ripened semi-firm cheese with a unique, complex flavor and texture that’s reminiscent of a soft-cooked egg yolk. Flavor has a strong, caramelized butter flavor on the front and a hearty finish that’s reminiscent of chicken stock.
Lagorai
Monti Trentini USA LLC 516.507.9658 www.montitrentini.com
Le Gruyère AOP
Le Gruyère AOP 707.321.8094 www.gruyere.com
Rembrandt Aged Gouda
FrieslandCampina Consumer Dairy US 201.665.7730 www.adutchmasterpiece.com
Shaved Goat Cheese
FrieslandCampina 551.497.7300 www.frieslandcampina.com www.frico.com
Ubriaco D’Alpeggio
Savello USA Inc. 570.822.9743 www.savellousa.com
Vezzena Cheese
Monti Trentini LLC 516.507.9658 www.montitrentini.com
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The Cheese Guide
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Its soft and light texture makes İçim Labneh a delightful pair with breakfast toast, either with or without jam. Its superior flavor was certified by the Belgian International Taste and Quality Institute (ITQI), which described it as “remarkable.”
Lagorai has a creamy texture that suggests a fresh cheese but a savoriness that reflects its 90 days of aging. A traditional regional cheese from the Trentino region of Italy, it has scattered holes and a flavor that’s intense but not too strong.
Multiple awards at the World Championship Cheese Contest
Today, anyone can label a cheese “Gruyère,” but Le Gruyère AOP is the real deal, tightly upholding the tradition of the cheese-making process, the regions where it is produced, and the strict guidelines followed by the dairy farmers, cheese makers and affineurs. Pure, unpasteurized milk is gathered from 170 farms and brought to expert cheese makers to produce 80-pound wheels, which are then aged in local cellars. Only the wheels passing the highest standards are allowed to be sold as Le Gruyère AOP.
Overall World Champion – World Championship Cheese Contest, Madison, Wisconsin, 2004
Naturally matured for one year, Rembrandt has a firm texture and rich flavor. Rembrandt is made from the best milk of the FrieslandCampina dairy farms and has its own unique recipe and ripening process. Available in wheels and wedges.
Gold – World Cheese Awards, Birmingham, UK 2016
Imported from Holland. Naturally matured for 20 weeks, this flavorful, distinctive goat’s cheese has a slightly crumbly texture. It’s freshly shaved to enhance salads, soups, pastas and flatbreads. Packaged in a 5-ounce cup.
Gold at World Cheese Awards 2018-2019
Ubriaco D’Alpeggio is a semi-hard cheese made with raw cow milk, salt and rennet and soaked in Enantio red wine. The cheese is immersed for a period of 15 to 20 days and rotated daily to ensure that the wine is absorbed evenly. The result is an opaque, purplish rind and a paste that is soft with a fruity and aromatic scent.
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The Vezzena Cheese is often referred to as “the Gold of the Alps” because of its color. Its unique golden color is given by the milk that is collected daily in the mountain farms where cows are free to live outside and graze on grass. In order to reach perfect maturation, the Vezzena Cheese is aged at least six months. If needed, it can be aged more depending on how much flavor and sharpness is desired in the cheese.