Who's afraid of raw milk?

Raw milk, the unpasteurized dairyland goodness that is the basis for most of the world's great cheeses, is becoming a political issue.

In Pennsylvania, farmer Mark Nolt is being harassed by state agriculture officials for the crime -- yes, crime -- of selling unpasteurized dairy products to consumers who want them.

Earlier this month, state officials seized some $25,000 worth of supplies, equipment and products from Nolt's farm in Newville. Nolt told reporters that the state threatened him with arrest and imprisonment if he tries to sell again without a permit.

The issue is more than just about a missing permit, however. While Pennsylvania does grant permits to allow sales of unpasteurized milk, the state expressly bans farmers from selling raw-milk products like cheese and yogurt. Nolt has sound-minded customers interested in buying, yet the state says no, and is willing to use its law-enforcement powers to block him.

Raw milk is an issue in states across the country. The New York Times recently reported on the rising controversy pitting raw-milk advocates against agriculture bureaucrats.

As the Times story notes, interstate sales of unpasteurized milk are forbidden by the federal government. In 15 states, any sale for human consumption of raw milk is banned, and another 26 states put various restrictions on its sale.

In San Francisco, where I live, raw milk is legal, widely available, and delicious. (I made some ice cream with it recently, which was out-of-this-world tasty.)

But in places like New York City, where it's much, much harder to come by, black markets thrive. According to the Times, Amish farmers are shipping up to 200 cases a month of the stuff to buyers in the Big Apple.

My view? Banning this milk is ridiculous. Sure, consumers should know that bacteria may be present in unpasteurized milk. Sure, farmers should be required to take care in handling and distributing the stuff. But ban it? The Nanny State needs to back off on this one.

Read more about it:

Should this milk be legal? New York Times story.

Raw milk rally. Cumberland County Sentinel (PA) story.

Farmers fight back. Lancaster Farming (PA) story.

Jasper Hill Shoots for the Stars

The boys at Vermont's Jasper Hill Farms -- the Kehler brothers, cheesemakers and entrepreneurs extraordinaire -- aren't content just to make and sell their own wondrous varieties of cheese.

Those who have tried Jasper Hill's own cheeses, such as the lush and luscious Constant Bliss, know that the Kehlers already run a mighty fine dairy. But they have even larger ambitions. They've embarked on A Mission.

With investments from some of the biggest names in European specialty cheese (Neal's Yard Dairy and the French cheesemonger Herve Mons), Jasper Hill is transforming itself from a well respected small producer to something grander.

The Kehlers are installing state-of-the-art equipment, building five massive caves for aging and finishing cheese, and are cutting deals with other producers all over the country. The goal is to help other cheesemakers turn out finer cheese, and to help them sell more of it.

Here's a description from Condé Nast Portfolio magazine:

The Kehlers want to be all things to all artisanal cheesemakers, offering everything from starter recipes to sales and marketing expertise to a facility for finishing cheeses—an aging process that, for some products, means months and even years of rind-washing, turning, testing, and careful monitoring.

If all goes as planned, Jasper Hill will go from a boutique cheesemaker that turns out 75,000 pounds and grosses $800,000 annually into a multimillion-dollar juggernaut with its name on 20 times that amount of cheese by using a model that’s totally new to the American cheese industry. (Click here to read the full article.)

No doubt about it, the Jasper Hill project is further confirmation that big things are happening within the U.S. specialty cheese business.

In the last few months, an important specialty cheese distributor, Artisanal Cheese, was bought, and one of the largest U.S. supermarket chains, Kroger's, announced a partnership with influential cheesemonger, Murray's.

It all adds up to good news: Better cheese, and more of it, is on its way.

The Fight for Tilsit

There may not be very many wars in Europe anymore, but there are still quite a number of fights between Europeans. Often, they're about cheese.

The Italians fight the Germans over Parmigiano. The Greeks fight the Bulgarians over Feta, and the French, too. The French also fight each other over Camembert.

Now, the Swiss are battling it out with the Russians over Tilsit. It's just the latest skirmish in the never-ending debate: "What's in a name?"

The issue in all these cases involve various local and E.U. rules, which assert control over which European country or region can use particular food names. So, for example, the good people of Parma, Italy lodge a complaint when German producers want to call a dairy product Parmigiano, without so much as a sprechen sie deutsche on the label.

There are big bucks involved -- the marketing value of real cheese versus fake cheese is immense -- so these kinds of squabbles keep coming.

The latest one, over Tilsit, is kind of funny. Tilsit, or Tilsiter, is an historic German variety, hailing originally from Prussia. Somewhere along the way, cheesemakers in Switzerland and many other countries starting making the stuff.

Fast forward to the present, and the Russians are coming. So the leading Swiss Tilsit-making farm, the Holzhof farm, is renaming itself Tilsit. Since the original town in Germany is no longer called Tilsit, the Swiss reckon that they can just grab the name for themselves, thus blocking the Russians from using it.

Sound confusing? Read on here to learn more.

Gamalost: Cheese Viagra

The Vikings were hardy men, famously aggressive and vigorous. Centuries after they last set sail, they are remembered as the manliest of men.

As they plundered their way across northern Europe, the Vikings developed not only a fearsome reputation for looting and pillaging, but also a certain notoriety for their luck with the ladies.

What caused those damsels in distress to swoon? And what made the invaders so virile, anyway? Turns out, it might have been their cheese.

Gamalost, which means "Old Cheese" in Norwegian, is a variety first made by the Vikings and still produced in small quantities in Scaninavia. I'll confess that I've not tried it, because it is awfully hard to find in the United States, and I've never been to Norway.

But I'm intrigued by Gamalost because it's said to be a natural aphrodisiac, which the Vikings used whenever rampaging left them a little too tired for nookie.

By all accounts, it is a smelly old cheese, made from unpasteurized cow's milk. It is aged for four to six months until it becomes hard, with a brownish-yellow rind. It's quite assertive, too. This is how food writer Janice Nieder describes it:

One story I heard attesting to the intensity of Gamalost's flavor was that when an old-timer was asked how Gamalost was made, he replied, "Take some cheese, stuff it in an old sock, bury it in manure under the barn and when it is ready, it will crawl out."

That sounds tasty to me, but perhaps Gamalost is an acquired taste. But if it's really an aphrodisiac, there must be a market for it.

Click here for the story about Gamalost, the Viking Viagra.

Brebiou

My friend hates goat cheese. Cannot bear to taste it, smell it, look at it. To tell you the truth, even the words "goat cheese" cause her to scrunch up her face in violent displeasure. It's kind of funny.

What's so offensive about goat cheese? We've narrowed it down to, mostly, that classic tangy flavor that is so pronounced in most goat cheese. I like it, but she thinks it is the flavor of sour, rotten milk.

Up 'til now, we steered clear of the goat cheese aisle. But all other milks were fair game. Then we try this Brebiou, a sheep's milk cheese from France. Cute little sheep, giving us their milk so we can eat cheese. How nice an image is that?

Brebiou, is a soft, creamy cheese. It's commercially made, so it's perhaps not as nuanced and robust as a hand-crafted farmstead variety. But it's lush, to be sure, wondrously rich when spread across a chunk of crusty bread.

Only problem, from my tasting pal's perspective: Brebiou is tangy.

"Tangy?" I asked. "Like goat cheese-tangy?"

"Yup."

Oh well, you can't please everyone. So if you like a tangy, creamy tastes, try sheep's milk Brebiou. If you don't, well, it's your loss.

Berkeley Cheese Board

Berkeley is one of those iconic places on the California map.

Hotbed of student radicalism in the 1960s, of course, and home to a socialist brand of politics even today. They don't call it The People's Republic for nothing.

Now, this isn't a politics blog. So I won't opine here about workers rights or the nuclear freeze movement (the city is, naturally, a No-Nukes Zone).

But I do have an opinion about the Berkeley food scene: it's terrific. And at the center of it all is the Cheese Board, which is arguably one of the finest cheese shops in all the land.

The Cheese Board, like much of Berkeley, is a child of the Sixties, founded in 1967 as a small, worker-owned shop. Today, it's a sprawling emporium where you can choose between 3,400 varieties of cheese, plus amazing fresh bread, hearth-baked pizzas, and all manner of other extraordinary edibles.

In fact, the place long ago became a "Berkeley Institution", mentioned in all the guidebooks alongside People's Park and Sproul Plaza. And on the occasion of the Cheese Board's 40th anniversary, the Berkeley Daily Planet has a loving retrospective.

Click here to read the article.

Saint-Nectaire

To people who like food, pasteurization must be viewed as a mixed blessing at best. Oh, sure, the flash-heating process kills bacteria in milk and other liquids. But it also kills taste.

In the world of cheese, wrong-headed bureaucrats at the Food & Drug Administration long ago enacted a draconian standard for allowing imported cheese into the United States. It either must be pasteurized or aged for a minimum of 60 days.

That presents a problem for certain younger cheeses -- and the Americans who love them. Case in point: St. Nectaire, the wondrously silky soft cheese that is properly made from the fresh, unpasteurized milk of French cows.

If you go to France, you can get that marvelous raw-milk variety, which is dense and soft and creamy, with a classic mushroomy aroma. It's a farmhouse cheese in all its earthy glory.

Sadly, the FDA won't allow the importation of that kind, because real St. Nectaire is made with uncooked milk, then sold while it's young. So while the versions of St. Nectaire you can get in the United States can be tasty, they're often relatively bland.

Even if you get one of the better pasteurized versions (look for the Babut or Prugne brands), they're not the real thing. They're just not. If you want to taste the difference, go to France.

(Note: I chose to write about St. Nectaire today because a reader mentioned it in a previous post. If there are any cheeses other people want me to write about, write a comment and I will.)

Specialty Cheese Biz Heats Up

It's been a big month for fancy cheese. The big-money guys are getting into the game.

First came the news that Murray's, the beloved Greenwich Village cheese emporium, had signed a deal to help Kroger's supermarkets build out its cheese sections across the chain. For one of the biggest mass marketers of food in America to do such a deal is a hopeful sign that hard-to-find cheeses are about to see much wider distribution.

Now comes another development on the dealmaking front. Artisanal Cheese, the affineur/cheesemonger offshoot of New York City bistro Artisanal, has been sold, for about $5 million.

Click here for the Artisanal story.

Cheese Art: The Movement

For the 6,000 or so years since cheese was invented, people have continually come up with new and interesting things to do with it.

Grate it, melt it, chop it. Put it on toast. Stuff it into chickens. Layer it on tuna. (Click here for a brief history.)

But for all the myriad ways there are to eat cheese, I must say I'm surprised by a recent trend in art: using cheese as a material for sculpture.

A few weeks back, I reported on the guy who replicated Mount Rushmore in a 700-lb. block of cheese. But it turns out that this story is bigger than just a single artist working in cheese. This is becoming a movement, like Cubism. (Which, come to think of it, might become an offshoot of the cheese sculpture game, in which sculptors work exclusively with those little bags of pre-chopped Kraft.)

In Indiana, an artist named Sarah Kauffman regularly wow the crowds at the State Fair with her monumental works in cheese, which tend to honor local legends. This year's subject: the Indianapolis 500.

In Montgomery County, Md., an entire cheese sculpting competition recently took place, according to the Washington Post. (Click here for the story.)

I'm not sure any of these works will be headed for museums any time soon. But it does prove one thing, though: there's a lot you can do with cheese.

Sea Breeze Vache de Vachon

The Vache de Vachon is a cheese made in the Tomme de Savoie style, but it's not from France. This version hails from Vashon Island, Wash., in the middle of Puget Sound.

Vashon is a leafy, bucolic place. It's just a short ferry ride from Seattle -- but with a laid back vibe that's light years from any big-city pace.

It's a farmstead cheese, made from the milk of cows raised by Sea Breeze Farms on Vashon. The batch I tasted was well aged, which made it drier and richer than many Tommes.

A hard cheese, with an inedible rind, the Vache de Vachon has slight sweetness to it (think milky, not sugary) along with a more intense nuttiness. Pair it with apples or just-ripened pears.

Of course, Sea Breeze is a small operation, so the cheese might be hard to find. It's available at farmer's markets around Seattle, and some stores including Pike Place Market.

Sadly, they do not ship their food. But if you find yourself in the Pacific Northwest, search out the Vache de Vashon. You'll be glad you did.

Cheese Across America

Now, this may be big news.

Murray's Cheese, arguably the finest cheese store in New York City, has signed a deal to help Kroger supermarkets build out their cheese sections.

No more Kraft singles? An end to Cheez Wiz? Could this mean that tasteful eaters might be able to choose farmstead Cheddar instead of Cracker Barrel at the supermarket?

Well, it's too soon to know the answers to any of these questions, of course. But potentially, Murray's involvement could improve Kroger's offerings in a big, big way. Given that Kroger's is one of the nation's largest supermarket chains, that would be a most welcome development.

The revolution is spreading....

Kroger's Enters Agreement with Murray's Cheese (CNNMoney)

Texas Goat Cheese

The Dallas Morning News has a roundup of goat cheeses in the Lone Star state. Seems like Texans are beginning to like the stuff. Here's an excerpt:

At its freshest and best, a spoonful of chilled chèvre is almost like a bite of premium ice cream.

Texans in general are a little bit late coming to this party, says cheese doyenne Paula Lambert, whose Mozzarella Company made Dallas' first fresh chèvre in the mid-1980s.

"I think, in Texas, it really got going in the Hill Country and spread from there, as more people went back to the land and got interested in organics," she adds. "Whole Foods started in Austin, after all."

Tonia Ashworth-Kuesel of Chateau de Fromage says that the goat-cheese industry is really growing in Texas. "Of 22 cheesemakers in Texas," she notes, "17 make goat cheese."

Click here to read the full story.

Best Cheeses in America

The results are in from the annual American Cheese Society show, arguably the premier cheese competition in the United States.

The big winner? Black Star Farms, a.k.a. the Leelanau Cheese Co., of Suttons Bay, Michigan. The company's Aged Raclette beat out over 1,200 entries to take the “Best of Show” award.

Black Star Farms wasn't the only cheesemaker to win plaudits though. Fast-rising Beecher's Handmade Cheese of Seattle took home second place overall for their Flagship Reserve. (Technically, the ACS called them "first runner-up", but by my math that means second.)

Meanwhile, another entrant from the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin-based Roth Kase USA, came in third ... er, "Second Runner-Up" ... for the Roth’s Private Reserve.

Vermont Shepherd, a sheep's-milk cheesemaker in Putney, Vermont, was honored as the best farm house cheese in the country.

Bravo Farms Chipotle Cheddar

What's with all the Cheddar experiments these days?

A few posts back, I looked at Fiscalini's Purple Moon, a wine-washed Cheddar with a psychedelic purple hue. On today's cheese plate is the Chipotle Cheddar from Bravo Farms, whose white paste is marbleized with burnt-orange veins, courtesy of the smoked jalapeño pepper that gives the cheese its name and its spicy bite.

Perhaps they're efforts to break out of the Cheddar-is-Cheddar clutter, and establish themselves as just a little bit different. Perhaps they're brave experiments by cheesemakers intent on pushing the envelope. Perhaps they're just marketing vehicles.

Whatever the reason for all this colorful creation, these offbeat cheeses are fun. In the case of Bravo's Chipotle, what you're eating is a proper Cheddar, made from unpasteurized cow's milk. Then, they add a semi-spicy chipotle powder. The resulting combination matches a creamy, full-bodied cheese with the pungent, smoky spice.

On its own, the cheese is a good nibble, but not exactly a centerpiece. It's too quirky for that. But melt it into an omelette with onions and tomatoes, and the flavors of the Southwest come rushing out. I imagine Chipotle Cheddar makes a great cheese for nachos, too.

Bravo Farms Web site: Click here.

Vella Dry Jack

There is a cheese, widespread throughout the United States, called Monterey Jack. In most forms, it's kind of an "eh" variety, prone to bland commercial production, occasionally spiced up with some equally dull jalapeños in the paste.

Then there is the Vella Cheese Company's Dry Monterey Jack. It's something entirely different.

Complex, sophisticated, original, Dry Jack is wondrous. The great cheese writer Steve Jenkins lists it as one of his favorites of all cheeses, and I cannot really disagree.

Sonoma-based Vella, a longtime presence on the California cheesemaking scene, produces a few of the better versions of Jack, soft, buttery varieties. But the line of dried Jack is where the company really shines.

To make it, they age normal Jack for nearly a year, during which time it becomes dry and almost powdery, like Parmigiano. The cheese also acquires a depth of flavor that is simply impossible to attain in a younger cheese.

Dry Jack is pale yellow in color, with a taste that roams from sweet to nutty in a single nibble. Like Parmigiano, it's especially good as a grating cheese, used to enhance the flavor of other dishes. But you can also slice it very thin and include it in a cheese plate.

Thistle Hill Tarentaise

Alpine cheeses are often among the world’s wondrously complex. Well aged, well balanced, with a depth of flavor that in the best varieties is downright profound.

Think of the first time you tasted a really well made Gruyère, for example. That’s what I’m talking about – that swirly mass of concentrated dairy flavors, so rich and refined all at once.

In the United States, it’s been somewhat difficult for artisanal cheesemakers to emulate the great Alpine cheeses, because so much of what contributes to them is unique to their home regions. American cows just don’t eat the same as European cows, so their milks taste different. Alpine grass does not grow alongside the interstate, you know.

Against the odds, then, the folks Thistle Hill Farm, in rural Vermont, are demonstrating that world-class Alpine cheese can be made in the US of A. Of course, they go to great lengths to do so.

For starters, their equipment comes direct from Switzerland -- the only copper cheesemaking vats in Vermont. The cultures used to mature curds into cheese are off the boat from France. And every other step of the process is as traditional as possible, including the way their herd of Jersey cows just wander around eating mountain grass.

Oh sure, it's not the Savoie. But Thistle Hill's careful, traditional methods yield an incredible cheese called Tarentaise.

It's a Beaufort-style cheese. It's dense and smooth, not overly sharp but with a multi-layered flavor that ambles from nutty to caramel to cream. Like the great French mountain cheeses, it has a terroir all its own. And you owe it to yourself to try it.

Thistle Hill Farm web site: click here.