cheese

Brick and Colby: perhaps two of the most underrated cheeses in America. Some folks call them boring. Others simply write them off as commodities. After all, Colby is really just Mild Cheddar, right? And blocks of Cheddar sell on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, along with cattle, corn and cotton. So why should these cheeses even be considered interesting, much less blog-worthy? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you three reasons: 1) Joe Widmer,  2) Joe Widmer, and 3) Joe Widmer. Every once in a while, I teach a class on what I call "Wisconsin Classics." Attendance is usually down because people note what cheeses we'll be eating, proceed to yawn, and then wait to sign up for the next month's class on American Originals. But the truth of the matter is that both Brick and Colby are indeed American Originals, as both were invented in Wisconsin in the 1800s. Today, there's no one in Wisconsin making better Brick and Colby than Widmer's Cheese Cellars in Theresa. To the skeptics who call Brick and Colby "bland," I challenge you to taste Joe Widmer's Mild Brick and Authentic Colby and not call these cheeses anything but artisan and full-flavored. Fifty years ago, you might have known more than a dozen Joe Widmer-types, all crafting authentic stirred-curd Colby in little cheese plants across Wisconsin. That's because until the 1970s, by law, Colby was required to have an open texture, meaning the curds could not be tightly pressed. This allowed a more milky, dairy flavor to develop, and depending on the cultures used and cheesemaker who crafted it, a flavor all its own. That all changed in the 1970s, when lobbying from the state's ginormous Cheddar makers resulted in Wisconsin statutes being changed to allow Colby to have "a closed body," the same as Mild Cheddar. That allowed big cheese plants to make more Mild Cheddar and label it as both Mild Cheddar and Colby, thereby accessing two market shares with the same cheese. Two years ago, I did some research on this very topic and wrote a post called The Colby Conundrum, which resulted in a flurry of anonymous hate mail from what I suspect are some of the state's biggest Cheddar makers, and which explains why today, many people unfortunately still consider Colby to just be Mild Cheddar. The USDA doesn't even take Colby seriously. It lumps it with Monterey Jack in the “Other American Types” cheese category when reporting annual production. Luckily, the folks at the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service do appreciate it a bit more. Their stats show Colby cheese production exceeded 100 million pounds for a number of years in the 1970s, and even approached 200 million pounds in the mid 1980s. Joe Widmer is good at putting that number in perspective. During Colby's peak years, Joe says it accounted for almost 20 percent of the state's total production of American–type cheeses, and for more than 10 percent of Wisconsin's total cheese production. That's pretty significant. Colby production has been on the decline since the mid '80s, both in terms of total production and in terms of its importance in Wisconsin’s cheese production picture. In 2000, Wisconsin produced 86.4 million pounds of Colby, or less then half the level of the mid '80s. And today, at least according to my research, there are only three cheesemakers left making authentic stirred-curd, non-pressed Colby: Joe Widmer at Widmer's Cheese Cellars in Theresa; Tony Hook in Mineral Point; and Carr Cheese Factory in Cuba City. Most others are simply making a stirred-curd Mild Cheddar with a closed texture and labeling it as Colby. You can tell the difference pretty easily - the next time you buy Colby in a store, check to see if it has pin-prick holes in the body. If it does, it's authentic. If not, it's likely Mild Cheddar being labeled as Colby. Brick cheese, like Colby, is another Wisconsin Original. It was created in 1877 by John Jossi, a Swiss immigrant who was running his own Wisconsin cheese factory by the time he was 14 years old. Much like Jossi, Widmer, a third generation cheesemaker, has been making cheese since he was a teenager, and Brick is one of his specialties. Widmer crafts about 360,000 pounds of Brick cheese a year, using the same open vats in the 12,000 square-foot facility that his grandfather bought in 1922. And he still uses the same well-worn bricks his grandfather used to press the whey from the cheese. In fact, he's credited as being the only cheesemaker in the country to continue to use real bricks as part of the make procedure of his Brick cheese. After pressing, Joe removes the bricks and places the cheeses in a brine solution to take on salt. He also makes a German-Style Brick, a washed-rind "stinky cheese" soaked in a solution to take on bacterial cultures. This cheese is cured in a "warm room" - about 70 degrees - where the bacteria works its magic and is then “smear ripened” with a top-secret Widmer mixture of brine and whey. "Most people don't even know what real Brick is," says Joe. This alone drives his mission to craft the real deal and share with cheese lovers everywhere - and he does mean everywhere, including his very own dinner table. "A Wisconsin cheesemaker can spend a lifetime perfecting his craft," Joe says,  "much of it spent resisting the urge to eat all the cheese."

There are two types of people in this world: those who like to cook and those who don't. Those of us (like me) who don't particularly enjoy spending time in a kitchen unless it's to lick cookie dough from a beater, tend to seek out people who do. Take my husband, for example. He is a marvelous cook. I'd like to say I sought him out for this particular feature, but it unfortunately took me a while to discover his hidden kitchen skills. In fact, for almost the first full year we were married, I did almost all the cooking, as I was a new wife, a stay-at-home mom, and thought I could pull off the Betty Crocker image. Turns out, not so much. For what had to be 10 excruciating months, my husband patiently suffered evening meals - night after night - from a box. Hamburger helper? Check. Instant potatoes? Check. Just-add-meat Taco Kits? You betcha. Before you judge, let me just say even though I grew up on a farm, I somehow never learned to cook, despite the fact that both my mother and grandmother were amazing cooks. At some point in our early childhood, our parents must have had some sort of late-night huddle and designated my older sister as the house helper. This meant she helped Mom - and subsequently learned - how to cook, sew, can vegetables, tend a garden, shop at a grocery store, and other generally useful life skills. I, on the other hand, was designated as the outside farm helper - a role I relished, because really, who wants to be stuck in a boring old house when you can be outside with crops to plant and animals to feed? Consequently, I helped - and therefore learned - how to do such things as drive a tractor, harvest crops, sort cattle, fix fence and stack a wagon with exactly 92 small square bales of hay. You know - the sort of skills that come in REALLY handy as a city dweller with a desk job. Thankfully for my new husband and daughter, early on into the marriage, I decided to return to work. With both of us now working full-time, cooking became a switch-off duty. Well ... let's just say it was supposed to be a switch-off duty, but after about a week of eating real food prepared with fresh ingredients and watching my husband cook with actual pans - wait, we had pans? -  I voluntarily never entered the kitchen again. These days, our house mostly runs like a restaurant. The hubby asks what I want, I give a suggestion, he gleefully cooks it (and seems to enjoy it) and then calls me from my home office when it's done. It's true, I AM living the dream life. Fast forward 14 years. We now have a teenage daughter, who is showing some interest in learning to cook. So far, I've pretty much exhausted my list of home-cooked specialties, which includes, and I must stress this - IS limited to: fried egg sandwiches on toast, apple pie made with store-bought crust and pre-made apples, and heating up Schwan's frozen hash browns. With no tractor to drive, fence to fix or cattle to sort, it appears my list of pertinent life skills is exhausted. I've come to the conclusion that maybe it's time for both my daughter and me to learn how to cook. Luckily, a copy of Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food arrived in the mail yesterday - a free press copy from the publisher who hopes I'll write about it. Check. Written by Sam Mogannam, second-generation owner of San Francisco's Bi-Rite Market, the book efficiently guides one through the grocery store, one department at a time, and explains how to identify incredible ingredients, decipher labels and terms, build a great pantry, and reconnect with the people and places that feed us (yeah, I copied that right from the book jacket, but in this case, it's actually true). Normally I just sort of scan these types of books and then copy something from the book jacket in a review - um wait - but this time I actually connected with the author when I read this paragraph on page 10: "We have a general idea of what kinds of things we should be eating, but when we're actually standing in the aisles at the supermarket, it's hard to put theory into action. With all this knowledge about the food world today, too many of us still don't know what to put in our shopping carts." Whoa. It's like Sam Mogannam is speaking to me. It's true: I do know what I should be eating, and I do go to the grocery store all the time. But mostly I buy bananas, yogurt, cheese, frozen yogurt and boxes of Wheat Thins. If left to my own devices, this would be pretty much be my diet, because I have no idea how to make actual ingredients become real food. But I have to say - and I am in no way, shape or form getting paid to say this - I've become inspired by this book. With easy tips and logical reasoning on why and what to buy at the deli, meat and produce departments, dairy case, bakery, cheese counter and wine and beer department, I may actually be able to pull this whole cooking thing off. And learning how to cook should certainly be an easier and less expensive way to bond with the teenager than buying a farm, right? Hmmm ... I do remember my husband lobbying to buy a tractor a few years back - though God knows where we'd put it or what we'd use it for on our 1/4 acre lot in suburbia. I'm sure he'd think of something. Because if I enter the kitchen and actually start cooking, anything's possible, right? Someone point me to the pans.

THEN: My parents' card club poses at the farmhouse for a photo on New Year's Eve in front of my mother's groovy macrame lamp and owl wall hanging in our orange-curtained, fake-wood-paneled, velvet flowered-sofa living room. While I'm pretty sure this picture was taken circa 1989, the '70s lived on until the house was torn down a few years ago.

1. An hour before the party starts, my mother unboxes the no-expiration-date-listed The Wisconsin Cheeseman holiday cheese ball, sticks a Santa-handled cheese spreader into it, and tells me to put it on the table. Voila! Instant centerpiece. 2. Dad reaches past the Velveeta on the second shelf of the fridge for the “good cheese” – a Colby longhorn - and slices it for us. Then we kids cut the big circles into shapes of stars, bells and angels, while Mom arranges them on a holiday platter. The best part? Getting to eat the "scraps" the cookie cutters left behind when we thought no one was looking. Thirty years and more than two dozen Wisconsin artisan cheesemakers later, those days seem far behind us. While I must admit I enjoy a good party cheese ball and slab of Colby as much as the next Wisconsinite card club Euchre player, the good news is that our cheesemakers are crafting more original and artisanal cheeses all the time. That means WAY more options for bringing out the “good cheese”, and way more options for assembling a New Year's Eve card club party cheese tray. Option 1: The Wisconsin Cheddar Flight This is perhaps one of the easiest cheese trays to assemble, as all you you need is four differently-aged Cheddars, a package of artisan crackers (I like Potter’s Crackers), and a fruit chutney of your choosing. When serving any cheese tray, I like to include a wedge of the cheese in its original form, along with strips or slices of cut cheese (never cubes), so guests can get an idea of how the cheese originally looked, and then taste it at the same time. If you're not too busy making Brandy Old Fashioneds, then try and guide your guests into eating the cheeses in order of least aged to most aged. This lets your palate adjust and appreciate the differences in taste and complexity as the cheese ages. Here’s a sample Cheddar Flight course, arranged in order, from left to right:

• Two-Year Cheddar from Widmer’s Cheese Cellars in Theresa
• Six-Year Cheddar from Carr Valley Cheese in LaValle
• 10-Year Cheddar from Hook’s Cheese in Mineral Point
• 12- or 15-Year Cheddar from Hook’s (depending on availability)

Even though this is Wisconsin and our natural inclination is to eat every piece of cheese with at least one cracker, see if you can persuade your guests to first try each Cheddar separately, on its own, so they have the opportunity to appreciate the cheese and just the cheese. After the first taste, encourage guests to mix up the tasting with a bit of cracker or chutney, to see how each cheese differs with pairings. If serving wine, consider a Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Sauvignon. A wheat beer also pairs well with a flight of Cheddars. And of course, a Brandy Old Fashioned goes well with just abut anything. Option 2: The Wisconsin Farmstead Cheese Tray Fifteen years ago, arranging this cheese tray would have been impossible, as only a handful of farmstead cheesemakers existed in Wisconsin. Today - lucky for us - more than 20 call America’s Dairyland home. The key to making a Farmstead Cheese Tray special for your guests is knowing a bit of the story behind each cheese. You’ll want to know the cheesemaker’s name, the type of milk used, and the location of the creamery. All of this information can be found by asking the folks at your local cheese shop, or by doing a quick Google search. Again, make sure you leave a wedge of each cheese intact on your cheese tray, along with strips or slices for tasting, as farmstead cheeses are often the most eye-appealing cheeses on the market. A sample Wisconsin farmstead cheese tray might include:

• Evalon, from LaClare Farms in Chilton (goat’s milk)
• Marieke Gouda, from Holland’s Family Farm in Thorp (cow’s milk)
• Ocooch Mountain, from Hidden Springs Creamery in Westby (sheep’s milk)
• Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Extra Aged, from Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville (cow’s milk)

These four cheeses present an excellent cross section of some of the best cheeses made in America, and lucky for us, they’re all crafted by farmstead cheesemakers in Wisconsin. Serve this cheese course with a sliced baguette, honey and fruit – perhaps a few red grapes or strawberries – and let guests mix and match cheese and companions as they wish. I’d recommend serving this course with a crisp white wine, such as a Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, or Riesling. A sparkling wine, such as a Moscato d’Asti, (my favorite) is also fun. Option 3: The Wisconsin Adventure Cheese Tray Sometimes the best cheese courses are the ones that represent different categories – such as a soft, semi-hard, hard, and blue. This type of course can be the most difficult to assemble, as multiple pairings may be necessary. To make it as easy as possible, consider this combination, which involves four cheeses, one type of cracker, a bit of honey and pear:

• Driftless, from Hidden Springs Creamery in Westby (sheep's milk)
• Gran Canaria, from Carr Valley Cheese in LaValle (sheep, goat & cow's milk)
• Mona, from the Wisconsin Sheep Dairy Cooperative and made at Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain (cow & sheep's milk)
• Buttermilk Blue, from Emmi Roth USA in Monroe (cow's milk)

Start with the Driftless, as this fresh, soft and fluffy sheep’s milk cheese is a natural starter for a cheese course. Pre-spread on a Hazelnut Graham Potter’s Cracker for guests, as they may be unfamiliar as to how to go about eating a fresh cheese. Then move on to the Gran Canaria. This olive oil-cured specialty is fruity, nutty, intense, sweet and pungent all at the same time. It would go well with a bit of pear. Next, try the Mona. This mixed milk cheese is made from cow and sheep milk and is mild and pleasant, and provides a nice balance between the soft and blue cheeses on this tray. End with Buttermilk Blue. Serve with a drizzle of honey, Hazelnut Graham Potter’s Cracker and slice of pear. This sweet blue is a nice ending to an adventurous cheese tray. No matter which cheeses you choose, a cheese tray is the perfect addition to a party, as it not only provides amazing tasting cheese, but is a great conversation piece. Mix and match your favorites, and encourage your guests to do the same. It’s hard to go wrong with cheese, especially on New Year's Eve. Happy New Year!

NOW: A 2012 Wisconsin artisan cheese tray, made possible by the dozens of amazing cheesemakers who today call Wisconsin home. Five cheeses, a baguette, a few nuts, Potter's Crackers and chutney. What more could anyone want?

Back in September, Cheese Underground partnered with cheesemaker Brenda Jensen at Hidden Springs Creamery in Westby, Wisconsin to develop a new flavor of her Driftless cheese. Deliciously simple, consisting of just sheep's milk, culture, rennet and salt, Driftless is a light, creamy and spreadable fresh cheese that routinely sweeps (for the last four years running) the Fresh Sheep's Milk Cheese class at the American Cheese Society competition. Available in an ever-evolving blend of flavors, including perennial favorites Basil & Olive Oil, Tomato & Garlic, and Honey & Lavender, as well as seasonal flavors such as Pumpkin, Maple, and Cranberry & Cinnamon, Brenda was looking to develop a new flavor and turned to you, my alert blog readers, for suggestions. Dozens of ideas from across the country poured in, ranging from morel to bacon to merlot and cocoa. But perhaps my favorite suggestion was from David, no last name or address given, who suggested Brenda make a Driftless with marijuana and call it "Cheese Exotica". One gets the feeling that David lives in California, as he suggested that in the Golden State, one must only show a document to freely buy cannabis-infused edible products "which greatly help those who prefer GI ingestion. There are recipes for canna pesto, etc, and cheeses are so varied (blue vs. bland --I very much enjoy strong dessert cheeses that take over your brain) that folks can be creative.  I trust but have not done the research that Wisconsin has humane cannabinoid laws. And, yes, while the market is limited to those who consume the flavorant (perhaps 10% of the population), there are other cheeses favored for artisanal (snob) value.  Imagine the overlap of cheese snobs who distinguish canna cheeses. Just saying. Never seen this. Love cheese. Folks from Wisconsin seem reasonable. Carry on." Sadly, David, the reasonable folks in Wisconsin have no such favorable medical marijuana laws, so Brenda had to choose her top eight favorites that did NOT include weed. Brenda even created prototypes of her top eight non-pot favorites, which were sampled during the Meet the Cheesemaker Gala during November's Third Annual Wisconsin Original Cheese Festival, and let folks vote for their favorite. The winner? Allison Smith from Helotes, Texas, who suggested the completely legal flavor combination of Horseradish, Garlic & Onion. As the winner, Allison received a tub of the new Driftless flavor, made special by Brenda, as well as a complimentary one-year membership to Wisconsin Cheese Originals. Congratulations, Allison, and thanks to everyone who sent in their suggestions for legal and non-legal cheese flavors.

The price of gold may be at a record high, but one new holiday cheese won't set you back $1,700 an ounce. Roelli Cheese introduces its new Dunbarton Gold, a grass-fed raw milk beauty. Just like its sister Dunbarton Blue, this cheddar carries a hint of blue, sports a rustic, natural rind and is cured to perfection on wooden shelves in Cheesemaker Chris Roelli's man-made caves between Shullsburg and Darlington, Wis. "The cheese surprised me," Roelli says of his new Dunbarton Gold. "It's not as earthy as the traditional Dunbarton, and it carries a sweeter flavor from the grass profile." Dunbarton Gold was made this past summer from the milk of a small group of organized Green County graziers. Chris made 71 wheels of the cheese - one day's worth of production - and says it was a one-of-a-kind day, meaning he likely won't make the cheese again. "One of the best parts of being a small processor is having the ability to play with batches of segregated milk and making it into special cheeses," Chris says. "This was an experiment that turned out really well, but because I've got other products under development, likely won't be repeated." Interested in having a wheel of Dunbarton Gold on your holiday table? The cheese is available exclusively through Schoolhouse Artisan Cheese in Door County via mail-order. A half pound sells for $14.49. An entire wheel - 7.25 pounds worth - will set you back $144.95, which is still far cheaper than an ounce of gold! Click here to check out Dunbarton Gold. This is one holiday gift worth putting on your list for Santa!

Nearly 40 years ago, a pair of college sweethearts decided to make a living making cheese. Today, that same couple, Tony and Julie Hook, are still going strong, crafting more than 50 cheese varieties, including a stunning line-up of award-winning blues and aged Cheddars at their Hook's Cheese factory in Mineral Point, Wis. Renown to locals and tourists alike as the super enthusiastic duo who samples and slings cheese under the "Hook's Cheese" tent every Saturday at the Dane County Farmer's Market, the Hooks have developed a first-class model for making award-winning cheese by buying fresh milk from the same group of small, local dairy farmers for the past three decades. "The farmers know what kind of milk we want, and we pay them a good price for it," says Tony Hook. "It's a system that's worked for 35 years." It's also a system that provides the basis for consistent, high-quality cheese. The Hooks know this well, as they started that system back in 1977. That was the year the were hired as cheesemakers at Buck Grove, a factory dating back to 1887, which was rebuilt after a fire consumed the original building in 1925. At Buck Grove, they made mostly Cheddar and Monterey Jack, but it was a 1982 Colby that put the pair on the map. That year, Julie's Colby entry won the "Best of Class" award in the World Cheese Championship, a medal coveted by cheesemakers around the globe. And, as if that weren't enough, her cheese was then judged against the winners of all other classes, and was named the "Finest Cheese in the World." It beat 482 entries from 14 states and 16 countries. Wisconsin Cheesemaker Julie Hook was, and still is, the only woman to win the World Championship Cheese Contest (see the list of world champions). The Hooks continued to make their world-winning Colby and other cheeses at Buck Grove until 1987, when the factory was closed after its patron farmers could not afford the $24,000 to modernize the factory's pasteurizer to meet new state regulations. So the Hooks decided to purchase an idle factory in the village of Mineral Point. Their farmers followed, and continued shipping high-quality milk to the now Hook's Cheese on Commerce Street. Their new factory - well, actually old, as the factory dates back to 1929 - allowed the Hooks to start aging cheese in the facility's three aging caves, one of which is 16 feet underground. "When we bought the plant, one of the things we really liked was that it offered a lot of cold storage," Tony says. "So we started aging Cheddar. We thought we'd go maybe three or five years, which back then, was a good, aged Cheddar. Now we age it up to 15 years, and have some set aside to go up to 20 years." The latest batch of Hook's 15-year Cheddar went on sale in early November at select specialty cheese shops -- click here for the list -- and retails for between $50 and $60 a pound. I've never tasted a Cheddar so aged, yet still a bit creamy amongst its crumbles and flavor crystals. Mmmmm ... I say it's worth every penny. In addition to the couple's amazing aged Cheddars, the Hook's are also well known for their blues, which they developed in the mid '90s after customers at the Dane County Farmer's Market began asking for a Wisconsin blue. Their first result was Hook's Original Blue, launched in 1997, and still considered by many to be THE benchmark against which all blues are judged. In 2001, the Hooks' followed with a Gorgonzola, which won a Silver Medal at the 2010 World Championship Cheese Contest. In 2004, they developed two new blue-veined cheeses: Tilston Point, a drier, washed-rind and some might say a "stinky" blue, and Blue Paradise, a double-cream and sweet, smoothy blue. One of my favorites, Bloomin' Idiot, followed a few years later. I still remember the first time Tony showed me this bloomy-rind, blue-rind cheese at his plant, back in May, 2009, when he let me make cheese with him (read: mostly let me get in his way). Finally, the Hooks' Little Boy Blue, a sheep's milk cheese and a sister to Hidden Springs Creamery's, Bohemian Blue, was launched a couple of years ago. Little Boy Blue won a Best of Class Award at the 2011 American Cheese Society competition. (I let out a "woot woot" for them at the awards ceremony in Montreal). Phew. That's a lot of cheeses, and I didn't even mention their Sweet Constantine, Stinky Fotene, Parmesan or Aged Swiss. Too many cheeses, too little space. Let's just say that from world-renown Colby to record-setting Aged Cheddar to award-winning Blues, the Hooks have seen it all in their 40 years of cheese production. Tony sums it up this way: "In 1970, when I was apprenticing at the Barneveld Cheese plant right out of high school, we were still getting milk in cans - I think we were one of the last factories to do so. Then at Buck Grove, most farmers had switched to bulk tanks, so the milk got delivered in milk trucks. At our factory in Mineral Point, I picked up the milk until 1999, when I finally hired a trucker because I was too busy making cheese." "Too busy making cheese" led the Hooks, in 2001, to make a switch they say is the key to their success today. Ten years ago, they were making cheese six or seven days a week, selling all but what went to the farmers market to a large distributor, where it ended up being sold under a variety of other company's labels. Today, they make cheese two or three days a week and it all carries their label. "In 2001, we put everything under our own label and set our own prices," Tony says. "We always made high quality cheese, at least I'd like to think so. We just decided to pay more attention to each batch and to grow into other varieties." I'd say the Hooks' have accomplished that and much more. At more than 50 different varieties and at least three different walls full of awards, the Hooks are still going strong. They even have a succession plan in place: younger brother Jerry Hook has joined the operation and now has his cheesemaker's license. And then there's the next generation. "The grandkids are coming up, so who knows?" he says with a smile. Yes, I definitely predict there will be more Hook's cheese in the future.

This just in: Sartori will release a limited quantity (read: you're never going to taste it) of its new Cognac BellaVitano for the 2011 holiday season. The latest take on its home-run BellaVitano cheese, an American Original boasting a creamy, fruity taste, the Cognac BellaVitano is pure marketing genius. The cheese itself is extra aged - that means at least 18 months - and after the aging process, is submerged in a premium Cognac. It is removed only when Sartori Master Cheesemaker Mike Matucheski deems it to be just right (read: after he samples it several times - how do I get this gig?). The end result? Sartori says it will be a: smoky, nutty, oaky flavorful cheese with hints of vanilla and caramel. Note, I'm getting this from the company's press release - I'm holding out little hope to actually find this puppy in a store, as only 20 wheels are going on sale, and a limited supply of 4 oz wedges have either already sold out, or are not yet available for sale on the company's website. The price? $75 a pound. Uff da. Can't find the cheese in a store near you? No worries, you'll be able to buy it on eBay. Sartori is putting the first two 20-pound wheels on the auction site, starting today. Each will be signed by Master Cheesemakers, and all proceeds will be donated to local food banks. CEO Jim Sartori, in a very classy statement, says: "This is a challenging time of year for some members of our community. We will be donating 100 percent of the proceeds to the food banks to help out families in need. The Cognac wheels at auction are wheels #1 andf #2, and we are only selling 20 wheels this entire holiday season. We expect the autciton to be very successful." The auction for wheel #1 begins today, with wheel #2 going up for sale on Nov. 26. Each auction will last 10 days. Go wild, kids, and if you're the lucky winner, feel free to send me a wedge.

It may have spent 10 years on the "back burner," but the launch of a new cheese this fall by a Wisconsin dairy family has definitely made the wait worthwhile. Creamy and mild, LaBelle is the fourth child of Oconomowoc dairy farmers John & Kim Koepke. (Their first three children are actually children ages 2, 7, and 10, but anyone launching a new cheese will  tell you it's about as much work as having another kid). LaBelle's official description is a blend between a Gouda and Butterkase, but my official description is "yumtastic." Creamy, flavorful with just the right body and a perfectly clean finish, LaBelle is the kind of cheese that you can sit down and eat an entire package before realizing it. (Don't ask me how I know this). "We wanted to make a cheese that was comfortable in the kitchen but okay to eat while watching the Packer game," Oconomowoc dairy farmers John & Kim Koepke told me last week. Well, folks, I think you can consider that mission accomplished. Made at Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, Wis., LaBelle is enjoying a successful run in local markets and continually sells out special dinners at The Pub in downtown Oconomowoc. The Koepkes are now experimenting with a Foenegreek flavored LaBelle, with other flavors on the horizon. When they're not making cheese, the Koepkes are busy winning awards for their stellar dairy farm, located in Waukesha County. In October, they were chosen as the second-ever recipient of Wisconsin's Leopold Conservation Award, bringing with it a $10,000 cash prize and Leopold crystal. Before that, they scooped up the "Dairy Farm of the Year" at the 2011 World Dairy Expo. The farm is a partnership between brothers Alan, David, Jim and Jim's son John. Kim is in charge of marketing and sales of the farm's cheese venture, and she certainly has an eye for logo and brand development, evident by the cheese's stunning packaging and logo, developed in partnership with consultants at the Dairy Business Innovation Center, a non-profit organization that helps folks just like the Koepkes launch their own value-added dairy products. "The foundation of our business has always been on the principle of great animal care. Everything goes back to the cows," Kim said. "We wanted to show how the love of animals and land can result in a product worthy of having their picture on the label." And while LaBelle is currently made at Cedar Grove, I get the feeling this farm couple will someday build a factory of their own, after the kids are grown and Kim can focus on perhaps getting her own cheesemaker's license. "It's something that's never far from my mind," Kim says of making cheese. "But right now we're running a decent-sized farm 24/7 with three little kids. We try and remember what a vendor told us from the very first Fancy Food Show we attended: 'Don't go faster than it's fun.' So that's what we're doing. And we're having fun."

Image courtesy of Karoun Cheese

Talking about "Mediterranean cheese" as if it's a distinct variety is problematic for two reasons. First of all, almost all of the best cheese-producing countries in the world surround the Mediterranean Sea: Spain, France, Italy. Second of all, cheese originated in the nomadic sheepherding cultures that lived in the region east of the Mediterranean, so to some extent all cheese is Mediterranean.

Still, when we use the term "Mediterranean cheese," we are typically referring to a select group of eastern European and Middle Eastern cheeses, typically made from goat or sheep's milk, typically fresh or pickled (but not aged), and typically really delicious. Here are some of my favorites.

Feta

Feta is probably the most famous of the mediterranean cheeses. It is made from sheep or goat's milk, and pickled in brine (saltwater) for a period of several weeks. The best feta will have a distinct "gamy" flavor, which, in my mind, is offset a bit by the high levels of salt in the cheese. I love cooking with Feta, since it crumbles really easily (no grating!), doesn't really melt, and adds lots of umami to your food. Feta also pairs really nicely with fruit that's sweet and juicy, like watermelon.

String

I've been a big fan of String cheese ever since I was a kid. And I'm not talking Polly-O here, I'm talking about Middle Eastern-style braided String cheese, usually studded with black cumin seeds. The cheese is made in a way similar to Mozzarella cheese, by pulling and stretching the curds like taffy. My favorite way to serve this cheese is to spend wayyyy too much time pulling all the little strands apart and placing them in a serving bowl. Trust me, it tastes better that way.

Pulling String Cheese. Image courtesy of Karoun Cheese

Labne

Labne is a cheese made from strained yogurt, which renders it much thicker, more spreadable, and closer to cream cheese (but without cream cheese's fatty heft). I love serving labne with olive oil and za'atar, and eating it up on a piece of pita. It's also a really good lighter substitute for sour cream.

Thanks to the fine folks at Karoun Dairies for providing samples for me to taste in writing this post.

This November/December, DCI Cheese Company will donate $0.25 from every package of Black Diamond® Cheddar purchased to Action for Healthy Kids! Black Diamond® cheese is high in protein and provides the essential calcium and vitamins required for a healthy diet. Not only are they good for you, they taste great too! Black Diamond® cheeses are renowned for their rich, crumbly texture, classic full Cheddar flavor and trademark sharpness. Black Diamond® is available in retailers nationwide and on our website at www.dcicheeseco.com/purchase. Supporting Action for Healthy Kids was a natural fit for the brand. Action for Healthy Kids is the nation's...

This November/December, DCI Cheese Company will donate $0.25 from every package of Black Diamond® Cheddar purchased to Action for Healthy Kids! Black Diamond® cheese is high in protein and provides the essential calcium and vitamins required for a healthy diet. Not only are they good for you, they taste great too! Black Diamond® cheeses are renowned for their rich, crumbly texture, classic full Cheddar flavor and trademark sharpness. Black Diamond® is available in retailers nationwide and on our website at www.dcicheeseco.com/purchase. Supporting Action for Healthy Kids was a natural fit for the brand. Action for Healthy Kids is the nation's...

Last weekend marked the 10th annual Madison Food & Wine Show, an annual shindig that brings about 6,000 people to town to sample local foods and spirits from 150 different vendors. I am eternally lucky that show organizers ask me to be a guest judge at the show's yearly Dueling Chef competition, pitting seven of Madison's best chefs against each other in dual 30-minute cooking competitions over the course of three days. The competition has become quite fierce with impressive bragging rights, so chefs take it incredibly seriously, practicing extensively beforehand, and bringing in their best sous chef and special equipment to gain an edge over the competition. My assigned dueling chefs were David Heide of Liliana's and Nicholas Johnson of 43 North, two amazingly talented guys running great restaurants. The mystery ingredient - always unveiled with a flourish at the very beginning - was this time a "Breakfast Box," containing boxes of Captain Crunch and Bisquick, a carton of eggs, a container of grits, bottles of maple syrup and buttermilk, as well as packages of English muffins and Black Earth Meats sausage. Oh, and a pineapple, apparently thrown in just for fun. Both judges and chefs are used to a single mystery ingredient - think mushrooms, or swordfish, or pork belly - so a box of random mystery breakfast items threw everyone for a loop. The chefs, however rallied quickly while we judges started drinking wine to prepare for what we could only imagine would be breakfast dishes, and in just 30 minutes, each chef produced two innovative dishes highlighting both their talents and the mystery ingredients. My favorite dish was a trio of breakfast appetizers (pictured at the top of this post), prepared by Nicholas Johnson of 43 North, which included a round of goat chevre, rolled in Captain Crunch and flash fried, served on half of a toasted English muffin drowned in maple syrup. That dish may have put him in the lead, as 43 North edged out Liliana's by just two points out of 200 to win the round. Nicholas and his 43 North went on to the next round only to be beaten by the battle's eventual winner, Jesse Matz of Bunky's, (pictured at left with son Kaden and restaurant owner Teresa Pullara), who with sous chef Peter Lidstrom, pulled an upset and beat reigning champion chef Bee Khang of Sushi Muramoto in a final battle of exotic fruits. After the Dueling chef competition, with my stomach full of non-traditional breakfast food and a half bottle of red wine (did I mention it was barely noon?), I went in search of new cheeses at the show. Lo and behold, I ran into sixth generation dairy farmer Jay Noble, a cowboy cheesemaker sampling his brand new Jalapeno Juustoleipa. With a never-ending line of hungry show-goers waiting in line to taste his toasted cheese, I snagged a bite, snapped a quick photo and waved an enthusiastic hello. It was awesome to see Jay in action, as the last time I'd chatted with him - six months ago on a seven-hour bus ride between Ann Arbor and Madison -- he was just starting his cheese business. I call Jay a cowboy cheesemaker, because even though he wears a baseball cap (not a cowboy hat), he is the kind of man, who when he puts his mind to it, accomplishes the impossible, such as building a dairy farm from scratch, renovating a shed into a licensed dairy plant, and rigging a giant pizza oven into a state-approved cheese baking oven. His venture is called Noble View Creamery, and his cheese of choice is Juustoleipa, a cheese native to Finland that translates into "bread cheese." The Finnish like to eat it for breakfast with toast and jam. It's a unique cheese, finished by baking a crust on it just before shipping, which helps it keep its shape and not melt when heated. It's best served warm to bring out a buttery flavor and squeaky texture. The story of how Noble View Creamery cheese came into being is a long and windy tale of which I learned on the afore-mentioned seven-hour bus ride. So try and keep up - and keep in mind this is the REALLY short version. 2000 -- Jay buys into the family dairy farm. 2001 -- Jay gets married to a woman whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, but whom I can only imagine is a lovely and patient woman. 2003 -- Jay starts his own dairy venture with said lovely and patient wife, raising dairy heifers. 2004 -- Jay buys a 500-cow dairy in Fredonia, Wis., on a foreclosure sale. He starts milking cows. 2006 -- A "guy from California" knocks on Jay's door and wants to buy Jay's farm. The next day, Jay's dad calls and says: "I'm retiring. Do you want to buy me out?" Jay says yes to all of the above. 2007 -- Jay builds a new dairy in the middle of a farm field that's been in the family since 1842. Once again, he starts milking his own cows. Which brings us to present time: with six employees and his own trucking company, Jay is now milking 400 cows, but because milk prices are so unstable, he decides to explore a "value-added" venture for his dairy farm. He settles on cheese - Juustoleipa in particular - and somehow talks super busy Master Cheesemaker Bob Wills at Cedar Grove Cheese into making it for him. Jay then trucks the cheese to his newly renovated and licensed dairy plant in Union Grove, bakes it in an oversized pizza oven, and then packages and ships it for sale.  Boom. Mission accomplished. In addition to Juustoleipa, Jay's also making and selling a line of Hispanic cheeses under his Alqueria label. Queso Tostado is a ready to heat and eat Queso Blanco, while his Queso Quesadilla is a smooth, soft and mild cheese, suited for snacking and melting. All cheeses are available through Noble View Creamery, which I can only guess will soon be coming to a cheese store near you. And knowing Jay, that day will come sooner rather than later.

Seven generations of Marcoot family members have milked Jersey cows on an 1840 homestead in Greenville, Illinois, but it’s the latest crop of Marcoot women: sisters Amy, Beth and Brooke, who are transitioning the family operation into a farmstead creamery. The entire family now pitches in to make a line of farmstead cheeses, all made solely from the milk of the Marcoot's 60-head herd of grass-fed, registered Jersey cattle. The family’s latest creation is Cave Aged Forrest Alpine, a raw-milk, gouda-style cheese aged up to 12 months in the farm’s cellars, modeled after aging caves in Switzerland. I discovered this cheese nearly by accident, after Amy joined Wisconsin Cheese Originals last month. She paid for two memberships: one for herself, and one for her cheesemaker, Audie Wall. This peaked my interest, so I asked what kinds of cheese she was making, and the conversation bloomed. The family's Cave Aged Forrest Alpine is due to be featured in the Winter 2011 issue of Culture Magazine, and Marcoot Jersey Creamery cheeses are gaining traction. The Cave Aged Forrest Alpine is a beautiful cheese with a rich, creamy flavor and clean finish. It has almost what I call a "cultured" flavor - the same kind of sweetness and bite that one finds in Prairie Breeze Cheddar. In Wisconsin, more farm families are transitioning to building on-farm creameries and producing farmstead cheeses. The same is happening in Illinois. A bit of history about the Marcoot family sheds light on how they got to be crafting a farmstead cheese. The Marcoot family came from Switzerland in 1842, and Amy says the story goes the Marcoots brought a Jersey calf with them on the boat from Switzerland. She's a bit skeptical about this legend, but does know that the first Marcoot born in America - Maurice Marcoot - did have a herd of Jersey cows, as the family has a letter from his farm. To date, the Marcoot family has had Jersey cows for seven generations, with Amy and her sisters being the seventh generation. Amy says that as the dairy industry changed during the past 40 years, her dad, John Marcoot, worked hard to change with the industry. About 11 years ago, her uncle left the family farm for a job elsewhere. At that point her dad and uncle were milking 135 Jerseys. Her dad, knowing he needed to simplify things a bit, decided to turn farmland that had traditionally been corn and beans into premium pasture for cows. And with that seemingly simple decision, the Marcoot family farm switched from being primarily a TMR based farm (Total Mixed Ration) to primarily grass fed. In an email interview last week, Amy told me she remembers calling home from college and asking her dad how the cows were adjusting. '"He said, 'Amy, they are happier.' I told him he was going crazy and he said, 'Seriously, they seem much more content.' Sure enough, when I came home from college I could see what he was talking about." "My parents had four daughters," Amy said. "They told us growing up that we all needed to go to college, get our degrees and find a stable job. They also said, 'Give yourself a lot of options.' I can't tell you how many times I heard that! So we did." Amy went to the University of Illinois and earned a degree in Agriculture and physical education and also has a Masters degree in Counseling. Sister Beth got a degree in Agriculture and is finishing her masters degree now. Another sister, Brooke, got her degree in education. The fourth sister, Brittany, who is not involved in the operation, has a degree in accounting. Amy says she was living overseas for a year when her parents called to let her know Dad was considering selling the cows in five to seven years. "At that point my sisters and I started talking about what we could do to keep the farm," Amy says. "After many ideas and thoughts we decided that doing a value added business to sustain our family farm. We considered fluid milk, but quickly agreed that cheese would be the best option for us. We began working with a few different cheesemakers, taking classes, reading books, visiting numerous other creameries, asking annoying questions over and over again. Then we started making cheese. Neville McNaughton is our primary consultant and he has worked with us much over the past year. We are still learning so much!" Amy hired Audie Wall to be the family cheesemaker and today, she primarily works with Neville and other consultants to grow and learn as a cheesemaker. "Audie has done a great job for us," Amy says. "She grew up on a farm about 25 miles north of our farm. She is basically a member of the family as she has been my best friend since we were 10." Audie's undergraduate degree is in Industrial Design and before becoming a cheesemaker, she worked in design engineering. "A few years ago, Audie started looking for something else to do because she was tired of sitting behind a desk. Who knew that meant she'd be making cheese!" Amy says. "She has been able to grasp the concepts and processes of cheesemaking very well. I think much of that is because of her engineering background." Three sisters. One best friend. A mom and dad who were willing to try something new: welcome to a new generation of American cheesemakers. Welcome to Marcoot Jersey Creamery.

All hail American Cheese Month! To recognize and raise awareness of the quality and diversity of American cheeses, the American Cheese Society has declared October as the First Annual American Cheese Month.American Cheese Month. That's good for us cheese lovers, as cheesemakers, retailers and foodies around the country have embraced the idea, scheduling hundreds of tasting events in almost all 50 states. Here's a few events celebrating Wisconsin artisanal cheeses - check them out! October 15: Pinot Noir & Wisconsin Cheese Pairing. Wisconsin Cheese Mart, Milwaukee. Whether you are a foodie or just enjoy an occasional glass of wine, you will enjoy this focused tasting exploring four Pinot Noirs from different regions, expertly paired with four Wisconsin Cheeses. Location: The Wisconsin Cheese Bar, 1048 N. Old World Third St., Milwaukee. Cost: $16 in advance, $20 at the door. Purchase tickets here. October 16: Great American Cheese and the Beverages That Love Them. Kendall College, Chicago. Hosted by Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and Marion Street Cheese Market, this pairing event includes a guided tasting featuring cocktails by Death's Door Spirits, beers by Goose Island Brewery and Wisconsin artisan cheeses. Held at Kendall College, 900 North Branch St., in Chicago from 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. Cost: $20 per person. Purchase tickets here. October 18: Meet the Cheesemaker. Savory Spoon Cooking School, Ellison Bay. The Savory Spoon Cooking School in Door County welcomes Joe Widmer, third generation cheesemaker from Theresa, Wis., for a guided cheese, and salumi tasting. Enjoy a glass of wine and listen to Joe Widmer tell the story of his family's cheesemaking heritage. Cost: $30 per person, sold in advance. Purchase here. October 20: American Cheese, Beer &Wine Tasting. Fromagination, Madison. The folks at Madison's premier cut-to-order cheese shop are hosting a free American Cheese tasting, paired with local beers and wines. The event runs from 4:00 - 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20 at Fromagination, 12 S. Carroll St. in Madison. October 21: Goat Cheese Tasting. Student Center, UW-Platteville. Try nearly 50 goat cheeses from across the nation at a special tasting reception during the annual Focus on Goats Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville on Oct. 21. The goat cheese reception runs from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Pioneer Student Center on campus. You'll taste award-winning goat cheeses, seasonal fruits, nuts and fresh-baked baguettes. A number of cheesemakers who specialize in goat milk cheeses will also be on hand to meet and greet guests. Cost: $5 at the door. Enjoy American Cheese Month!

“And if my humidity is 35 percent different from yours, my cheese is going to taste just as good as yours. It may have a different color of mold on it, but it’ll taste just as good. And yours is going to be twice as expensive, and you’re a highway robber. And you’re contributing to the preciousness and folly of Americans trying to emulate something in France that has nothing to do with quality. It has to do with expedience. Are you getting me here?” - Steve Jenkins, Fairway

Link to the full story from the NY Times. (Read till the end to see the results of the taste test.)

If every day was a 31-hour day like yesterday, I'd sure get a lot more done. You've got to love leaving Paris at 12:15 p.m. and arriving in Chicago after a nine-hour flight, only to have it still be 2:15 p.m. the same day. That's because our group of 20 Wisconsin Cheese Originals members flew home from spending 10 days in France where we toured dairy farms, cheese factories, aging caves and cheese shops in Paris, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Roqeufort, Dijon and Beaune. But France isn't all about cheese. It's about food, too. So here's one last look back at some of the foods we enjoyed while across the pond. Butter: for sale in every specialty cheese shop just like this one. My favorite was the Beurre de Baratte, an AOC cow's milk butter. Eggs: delivered daily to specialty shops, eggs sit out in the open, unrefrigerated, where daily shoppers pick up what they need to cook for the next day or two. Coffee: usually offered with warm milk and served with a cube of sugar. Hello, cafe au lait. Pastries: looking back at all the photos my hubby took on this trip, it's hard to find an intact pastry. That's because I had usually eaten most of it before he could get a shot. One of my favorites: the Napolean. The French refer to it as  mille-feuilles, or thousand leaves. The perfect combination of snowy whipped cream, eggy custard and crisp puff pastry. Ice Cream: the French eat a lot of La Glace: an Italian-style gelato, that history says was introduced in France by Catherine de Medici in the late 16th century, when she married into the French royal family. Snails: offered as a first course in nearly every nice French restaurant, I found they were best when drowned in garlic and butter. If you can get past the fact that you're chewing a snail, they're actually pretty tasty little buggers. Crepes: offered savory or sweet, crepes are served everywhere, but nobody does them like restaurants in Paris. This one boasted the traditional combo of nutella, bananas and whipped cream. Who needs dessert when you can order this as your entree? Seafood: the open air seafood markets in Paris are amazing. Most sell every kind of seafood imaginable, on ice. Pork: the French like their meats roasted. This little piggy never made it home. Chicken: roasted and offered at open air farmers markets in every city in France. My first Boeuf Bourguigon was the third course in an amazing regional dinner at Au Clos Napoleon in the tiny village of Fixin, France. Eaten after scooping the beef, juice and onions and pouring over freshly made pasta. Heaven. Quite possibly the best plate of food I've ever had: Toasted bread with poppy seeds and poached eggs in sauce made with Epoisses. The first course at Au Clos Napoleon in Fixin, France. Mustard: the guys on the trip loved the mustard shops in Dijon, where mustard magically flows from spigots. The wine: thousands of wines to choose from, they all start with a grape. Harvest was nearly completed by the time we arrived, but we gladly enjoyed the fruits of their harvest. And finally, the cheese: you've read many a post on the cheeses of France, but here's a last look at one of my favorites: Epoisses. Dining outside: the weather was amazing while we were in France: 10 days of sunshine with temperatures in the 70s and 80s. This is our group enjoying our favorite appertif: Kir, in the vineyards of the Burgundy region. Parting shot: my family joined me on this tour. Thank you to Uriah for all the amazing photos and to Avery for all of her help. On to Italy in 2013!

You know you're having a good time in France when you forget you're going to tour the only raw-milk commercial cheese factory in the world making Epoisses. Such was the case yesterday morning, as our group of 20 climbed on the bus for another day of cheese touring. After an amazing dinner the night before - and several bottles of wine - I couldn't quite remember where we were headed. So you can imagine my delight when our guide and driver (thank goodness someone is in charge) directed the bus to Gaugry Fromagerie for a tour and tasting of raw milk L'Epoisses. Oh. My. God. I'd forgotten how much I liked this stinky, washed-rind AOC cheese. Traditionally manufactured for centuries by the monks and farmers of the region of Epoisses, today it is made by three commercial factories and one small farmstead dairy in the Dijon region. Gaugry Fromagerie is the only commercial factory making raw-milk Epoisses, and we were delighted to get a tour of the plant and a tasting. When we arrived, Francoise Gaugry herself greeted us at the door. She and her two brothers currently own and run the company, started by her grandfather in 1946 in the city of Dijon. Seven years ago, they built a large and modern factory on the outskirts of town, complete with a long hall of viewing windows, tasting room and retail shop. In her beautiful, lilting and very formal French (one of the pleasantries for me on this trip is listening how people in different regions of the country have different accents and styles of speaking), Francoise explained the make process, which our guide, Catherine, translated. In a nutshell, the milk from local, regional farms is brought to the factory, where it is pumped into vats, with cultures and animal rennet added, and allowed to coagulate for 18 hours. Francoise explained this is the ancestral method of "lactic clotting" practiced by the monks. The clotted milk is then placed into forms. This is the part we got to witness, as workers were filling forms when we arrived. I had not before seen the technology they were using to do this - bringing stainless steel tubs of curd to a machine, placing knives and forms over the tub, inserting into a rotating cylinder, which then turned upside down, cutting and dropping the curd into forms in one fell swoop. Here's a series of photos so you can better see what I mean: Once the cheese is put into molds, it is allowed to drain, flipped twice, and then removed. The cheeses then go through a dry salting machine, which coats the wheels in a "cloud of salt" - we saw a video of this process, as they weren't doing it during our visit. Wheels are then placed in the drying room. Here they are: Then, they are moved once again to the aging room, where workers wash them with a mixture of salt, brine and red bacteria, which gives the wheels they're reddish-orangish final look. Wheels shipped to market have a 10-week shelf life. In addition to AOC Epoisses, Gaugry Fromagerie makes several other types of Epoisses-style cheeses. We had the opportunity to try five of their cheeses in the new tasting room, built beautifully with plates of cheese and wine waiting for us at the bar. Francoise led us through the tasting. The picture at right says more than I could ever say with a few words. I'll just say that each cheese was amazing in its own right, and if there were any way I could get this cheese back to the U.S. in my suitcase without TSA confiscating it, I'd do it. Oh well, that's why we came to France -- to taste and learn about cheeses we're not able to get in the United States. Thanks so much to Francoise and her team at Gaugry Fromagerie for a wonderful tour and tasting. While we can't take their cheese with us, we did leave a bit of Wisconsin behind, in the tasting room's guest book. Au revoir, raw milk Epoisses.

Of all of the cheese shops we've visited in France (and we still have another couple to go today in Dijon), Jean d'Alos Fromager-Affineur in Bordeaux has been my favorite. Home to 150 cheeses from southwestern France, 95 percent of them raw-milk, this highly-respected shop has developed special relationships over the years with many small, local producers to age their cheeses and take them to market. On our visit this week, we were greeted by two lovely women: Patricia Dubourg and Delphine Loriot, who generously provided us with a 90-minute personal tour of the small upstairs shop and the three, 15th-Century aging caves below. Jean d'Alos has just remodeled its street-level shop into a modern, simple-chic retail space, with cutting-edge refrigeration methods that allow cheeses to seemingly float on open shelves, inviting customers to touch, smell, (and in my case, lovingly cradle) before buying. After viewing Jean d'Alos' three different aging caves - one for goat cheeses, one for bloomy rinds, and the largest for cooked and uncooked pressed cheeses, Patricia and Delphine led us through a five-cheese tasting tour, first showing us the whole wheel aging in their caves, and then cutting up a wedge so we could taste with different wines.
Buche de Pussigny: We were delighted to taste this cheese, as it is made by the La Ferme du Bois-Rond farmstead goat dairy in Pussigny, France, where husband-wife team of Dominique and Marie-Therese Guillet provided us with an amazing tour of their farm and creamery earlier in the week. Jean d'Alos works exclusively with this farm to age this particular cheese to market, which is very much the same as the farm's AOC Sainte Maure de Touraine cheese without the AOC label. St. Nectaire Fernier: Earning the first farmhouse AOC designation in France in 1955, this cheese is rightly considered one of France's national treasures. Made from the milk of Salers cows that feed on volcanic pasture lands of France, the cheese is aged by Jean d'Alos on straw mats, covered with breathable sheets of paper. While the rind gives off a pungent odor of straw and mushroom, the paste is soft, creamy and dreamy, with a lush nutty flavor. This could very well be my new favorite French cheese. Tomme d'Aquitaine: Patricia told us this cheese, a recent creation, resulted from the marriage of two traditions: the production of pressed cheese made by migrating shepherds in the Graves region in spring before traveling back to the Pyrenees, and the production of the regional white wine. The rind is washed for at least four months in Sauternes wine to achieve the unique fruity flavor. Ossau de Printemps: A classic sheep's milk cheese made in the French Pyrénées in the Ossau Valley province, this hard, naturally-rinded boasts a beautiful natural ivory paste with hints of hazelnut. One of my favorite sheep's milk cheeses tasted thus far in France. Comte: Jean d'Alos hand selects wheels of Comte, ages the wheels in their caves, and sells between two and three wheels a week. Keep in mind that each wheel weighs about 110 pounds, and you'll understand how much cheese this shop moves. We tried a wheel of this famous AOC beauty from 2009, and after the cave tour and tasting, went upstairs and promptly bought our fair share for a lunch picnic. Near the end of the tour, I caught Patricia's eye and thanked her profusely for all the time she had given our 20-member group from Wisconsin. I asked her how long she had been with the shop and she provided a surprising answer: 17 years. As she didn't look old enough to already have that long of a career, I jokingly asked if she had started when she was 10. She gave one of the most beautiful answers one could imagine: "It's from working so many years in the caves. They have preserved me." Who knew spending your career aging cheeses is the secret to youth? Thanks to all of my amazing Wisconsin Cheese Originals members for joining me on this tour. I am having so much fun discovering France with all of you. Just two more days until we board the plane back to Wisconsin. I wonder how much cheese we can take with us?

Day 7 of the Grand Cheese Tour of France: the Roquefort Caves. Oh yeah, baby. Visiting the caves where the king of cheese is aged was on the bucket lists of quite a few people on this tour. Driving from our hotel in Montpellier to the tiny village of Roquefort was a journey unto itself. A steep ascent up a series of mountain tunnels, picturesque countryside, 17th Century villages and terraces of grape vines and olive trees brought us to the tiny village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. A series of ancient landslides in this "Combalou" plateau generated the unique site of Roquefort, creating the famous first ripening caves, which of course have been enlarged and enhanced by people in the centuries since. The Combalou plateau region is home to seven Roquefort producers, but the largest is Roquefort Société, made by the Société des Caves de Roquefort, which owns several caves and opens its facilities to tourists like us. These folks have invested a serious amount of time and money into giving visitors a unique educational experience with several "wow" factors, such as showing us a brief film in French on the sides of the original caves describing the traditional legend of how Roquefort came into being. Legend has it that the cheese was discovered when a youth, eating his lunch of bread and ewes' milk cheese, saw a beautiful maiden in the distance. Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he ran to meet her. When he returned a few months later, the mold (Penicillium roqueforti) had transformed his plain cheese into Roquefort. Who knows if it's true or not, but it sure gives a romantic start to one of the world's most famous cheeses. Because it's September, and the region's Lacaune ewes are not producing milk, the caves were not filled with wheels of Roquefort. We knew this going in and expected it to be a huge disappointment. It was not. As it's open year round, and the caves are only filled six months of the year, Societe fills the caves with thousands of life-like wheels of cheese to give visitors a sense of how the cave looks when it is full. (You'll notice I don't have any photos inside the caves - pictures are not permitted, and we snapped this one just as we were starting our tour, walking through passageways to reach the caves. In its series of three caves, each with a different natural temperature and natural humidity that can range by up to 10 degrees, (the air in each is naturally renewed by fleurines, or natural faults in the earth), Society produces three types of Roquefort: Societe L'Excellence: probably the best known Roquefort in America, this cheese is exported to more than 100 countries around the world. Societe Caves Baragnaudes la Delicatesse: this cheese is often exported to American in time for Christmas shopping. A creamier, milder blue, it boasts a pleasant lingering flavor. Our guide encouraged us to taste it with a bit of gingerbread, which was an excellent pairing. Cave de Templars: accounting for only 2 percent of the company's production, this little-known Roquefort is distributed locally, which alone might make it worthwhile to move to the South of France. It is incredibly strong and tangy and lingers in your mouth far longer than its better known sisters. It was amazing to try this cheese after the tour, as most of us never even knew it existed. Our guide did a superb job in demonstrating how Roquefort is produced and aged. Roquefort starts with unpasteurized, full fat milk from the region's Lacaune ewes, collected from farms in a 90-mile radius of the village, six months of the year. The milk is taken to neighboring dairies, where it undergoes an 8-day make process. While there are more than 200 strains of Penicillium roqueforti, Societe uses just three different ones to produce its three different Roquefort cheeses. The cheese is then transported to the caves and pierced once with 40 needles. A work force of 30 people - 15 men and 15 women work in the caves. The men place the wheels by hand on salted wooden shelves, where the cheese sits, untouched and unturned, for a period of 14 to 25 days. During this time, the Penicillium roqueforti rapidly develops inside, while the salt melts and is diffused, lending to the the cheese's creamy interior. At some point between the 14th and 25th day, the cellar master determines when each wheel is ready to take the next step. It is then wrapped by one of 15 women, who have been hand-wrapping Roquefort wheels for generations. Each wheel is wrapped in a sheet of tin, which is very malleable, but strong. Each lady wraps 750 wheels a day during the aging months. To give you an idea of how big these caves are, we saw three different levels, and one level alone held 23,000 wheels. Wowza. After the wheel is wrapped in shiny silver tin, it goes to the man-made cold rooms, kept perfectly at 32 degrees F, where it completes its aging process slowly. It is this deep-cold aging process that allows Roquefort to be distributed throughout the year, with masters taking each wheel out when it reaches perfect maturation. The tin is then removed, the wheels are cleaned, wrapped in foil or cut and placed into special plastic containers, and sent to market. The cheese must be packaged in the village to retain its special Roquefort AOC status. An amazing process and experience to witness, the Caves of Roquefort do not disappoint. I have the feeling I'll be smiling every time time I request Roquefort on my salad at a restaurant in the States, remembering the craftmanship that went into the cheese and the beautiful region responsible for its creation.