Ig Vella keeps an eye on the creamery!

Another year, another visit to Central Point, Oregon, for the Oregon Cheese Guild’s annual cheese festival which coincided with the 75th anniversary of the Rogue Creamery. The tent this year was much bigger and better which seemed to keep the 4,000 cheese lovers from becoming a crush. Like last year, there were all kinds of vendors in addition to cheese: a number of wineries, meats, bread makers, jams, chocolate, beer, soda and tea. There is definitely something for everyone there and I really liked the array of vendors. The festival does a great job of highlighting food purveyors in the Applegate and Rogue Valley — stuff that I don’t see up in Portland. The wine in Southern Oregon is quite good — it’s drier and sunnier down there and you can taste the difference in the kind of grapes they’re producing.

Steven Smith pours his tea

The festival had three great workshops going — a cheese and wine pairing with Max McCalman the venerated cheese author who has written a number of must-have books for cheese professionals and enthusiasts including Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best and The Cheese Plate which is chock full of information on how to pair food and drink with cheese. He was promoting his latest book, Mastering Cheese: Lessons for True Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager. I attended the middle workshop, a tea (!) and cheese pairing with David Gremmels, co-owner of Rogue Creamery, and Steven Smith who has a long history with tea as the founder of both Stash and Tazo teas. He has a new line of eponymous teas and they are exceptional. More on that in another post! The last workshop was a cooking demo with Vitaly Paley, restaurant owner of Paley’s Place in Portland and I spied them setting up and was tempted but I just had to get back to the festival!

The ladies of Fern’s Edge Goat Dairy

I made a beeline for Fern’s Edge to get a round of their chanterelle-coated chevre which I missed out on last year (I think it’s the first to sell out) — wonderful and clean chevre base with a nutty coating of fresh chanterelle! Then I wandered and sampled and took in the crowd. Overall, I think people had a great time though I felt like there were some vendors missing. I know I personally was quite sad that Oregon Gourmet Cheeses is no more as I really enjoyed what they had at the festival last year and brought home a wedge of their Drunken Goat. I also felt like some of the cheese makers were holding back a bit on samples. I know that this recession has affected them in a big way and I hope that they are all able to weather this downturn and come out stronger at the other end. I love these festivals because they directly support small businesses that are making world-class products. When belts get tightened, we often cut back on luxury items and that includes fine foods. However, I’m happy to save my splurge money on some of the best and most innovative cheese that are being made right outside my front door. I encourage everyone to do the same.

The Creamery cheese case

The Rogue Creamery was an excellent host and I walked away with some yummy cheese. I’ve now been hanging around the cheese scene long enough that I’m starting to spot friendly faces and I spent as much time chatting and catching up with folks this year than sampling. Instead of staying in a yurt, this year we opted for a cottage in Ashland — two thumbs up on that! Ashland is completely charming and we loved all the food and beer we had there.

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Coming up — more posts on this weekend: tea and cheese pairing — does it work? How awesome is the beer in Ashland? And, where can I get the most unique chocolates in Oregon?

This will be the second year FUCheese travels down to Central Point for the Oregon Cheese Guild Cheese Festival hosted by Rogue Creamery. This year, we’re going to try to hold back a little bit and not eat the whole thing! We’ll be staying in Ashland so if you have any “don’t miss” restaurants or things to see, please comment! I’m hoping to attend more of the workshops this year and am looking forward to meeting Gordon Edgar and getting a signed copy of his memoir, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge. Tami Parr wrote up an excellent review of his book and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

This is the second annual Blog For Food Oregon Food Drive supported by local food bloggers to get the word out. It runs from February 15th to March 15th. To participate in this food drive, go to the Oregon Food Bank donation page and donate any amount that you are able. Please include “Blog for Food” in the “In Honor Of” section.

If you are a blogger interested in participating go to Pacific Northwest Cheese Project for more info.

Thank you!

Boerenkaas from Willamette Valley Cheese Co, a 2009 favorite

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FUCheese started off the year with a revelatory cheese and beer tasting put on by Saraveza and Steve’s Cheese. It kicked off a true obsession with pairing these two fine items and I spent most of the year trying new combinations and doing my best to spread the beer/cheese love.

In March, we packed up the car and stayed in a yurt in the Rogue River Valley to attend the 5th Annual Oregon Cheese Guild Cheese Festival in Central Point. We had so much fun at the festival and met some awesome people. We also visited Vern and Gianaclis at Pholia Farm which kicked off a love of goats. I still haven’t been brave enough to milk one yet. New Year’s resolution?

Linnea feeds a baby goat at Pholia Farm

In April, we made mascarpone, more yogurt and had some iffy cottage cheese. I also attended a hard cheese class at Kookoolan Farms which convinced me that we needed to get back on that horse and give hard cheeses another try. Did we? No. Another resolution, perhaps.

Nicole and I hit the road again, this time north to Seattle for the cheese festival at Pike’s Place Market. We went as volunteers and worked at the Peterson tent taking in money and handling out samples. It was a total blast and we may do it again this year. This time we’ll have to walk out of there with more cheese. We were just so overwhelmed after finishing our shift that it was all we could do to visit some of the smaller cheesemakers for samples and then go collapse in the park.

Nico attacks the mimolette @ Seattle Cheese Festival

In the summer, I was too busy camping, BBQ-ing and drinking beer to spend too much time in the kitchen. I got my first paid gig doing a pairing of cheeses and beers. Profits, admittedly, were a bit low because I bought waaay too much really awesome fancy cheese and paired it with incredible (and expensive) beers. It was a total blast, though, and everyone had a great time and – bonus! – we had enough cheese left over to put together a handsome platter for a dinner party of 6 the following weekend. I have done a couple more pairings for groups since then and my portioning is getting more under control.

I also spent a fair bit of my summertime involved in putting together the Portland Cheese Festival. I somehow wrangled my way onto the planning board and met some great people in the process. The festival went off really, really well. Feedback was – and continues to be – incredible. The cheesemakers brought amazing stuff and the location turned out to work pretty good. Hopefully when it comes around again, I’ll be able to get involved and build on what I learned with the last one. You’ll be there, too, right?

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Sadly, this is where an already bumpy year for personal reasons got downright depressing. My father passed away at the end of October after a fierce, year-long battle with cancer. He was a good military man and, really, still too young to go. He loved hearing about the cheese festival and all our adventures with cheese. He was a big cheese fan (also smoked anchovies, hot mustard, oysters and other Scandinavian treats and terrors) and it was really tough to lose him. However, his death opened my eyes to what it means to have people in your life who truly care about you and for that I am so very thankful.

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The end of the year rounded out with more goats, excellent cheese plates and a beer/cheese pairing challenge! My friend Bruce, a die-hard beer nerd and curator of fine brews decided it was time to pull up some beers from his cellar and do a tasting. He asked if I could pair some cheeses with his eclectic collection. Since I couldn’t pre-sample these beers due to their rarity and age, I went off of tasting notes from the brewers and other beer writers and his own recollection of what these tasted like or should taste like.

A 3-decade vertical of Sierra Nevada Celebration – 2009, 1999, 1989! – paired with a pungent and footy Canadian cheese called Charleudix.

The pairings turned out really well and everyone had their favorites. The one pictured above was a huge hit. That cheese was incredibly stinky and I made everyone take a good sniff before I portioned it out. They were scared, for sure. However, it was a wonderful and creamy cheese with a lot of flavor and balanced with the hops notes of the ‘99 and ‘09 quite well. Poor, old ‘89 tasted like it had almost no hops left at all. I couldn’t have asked for a better cap to the year, surrounded by some of my favorite things in life: good beer, great cheese and fantastic friends.

So, to more of that in 2010!

Despite the grand title, this will be a short post.

I was extremely privileged to wrangle a spot on the organizing committee for the ‘09 Wedge Cheese Festival — Nicole and I were co-coordinators of the volunteers and site. We had a good group of over thirty volunteers throughout the day and they were all rockstars. Seriously. Everyone worked so hard and I think it was a lot of fun, too.

We had nearly 30 vendors from all around the Pacific Northwest. There were close to 10,000 visitors to the festival and we took in four barrels of food donations for the Oregon Food Bank. From what I could tell, people were really amazed and blown away by all the wonderful cheese. Our site at the Green Dragon Pub worked out great and the bar did a huge amount of business selling beer and grub. You can see a bunch of photos from the event on the Flickr group site — if you took pictures at the event, become a member of that group and submit your Wedge ‘09 photos today!

All in all, a big success and I’m so proud to have been a part of it. Looking forward to the next one!

Claudia did a mozzarella demonstration for us and she was absolutely charming and very clear. She has a great, relaxed attitude about cheesemaking — you can’t mess it up! While cheesemaking is a science it is very often an inexact science so it helps to have a cheerful can-do attitude for when things go a bit sideways. I picked up some great tips from her and look forward to sharing them when Nicole and I do our own mozzarella demo for some friends next month — eek!

Claudia is planning to be at the Wedge Festival (be there!) with her kits and may also do a ricotta demonstration on the main stage. Kits are such a great way to jump in to cheesemaking, I highly recommend picking one up. You can find out on her website which stores in Oregon are selling them or order from her etsy shop. They would make such great gifts!

Also, if you want to get notified when Foster & Dobbs do their next DIY cheesemakers meeting or to hear about any of their other many events, sign up for their mailing list!

I think a cheese festival is second only to a puppy festival in terms of how awesome it would be to have one. Sadly, there is no puppy festival this year. Only a cheese festival! Hooray!

Mark your calendar for Saturday, October 3, 2009. The Wedge Cheese Festival will be held at the Green Dragon Pub on SE 9th and Belmont. The whole street will be closed and cheesemakers from around the Northwest — Oregon, Washington, Idaho & California — will be there. This is a great chance to sample and buy cheeses that are the best in the region and some that are impossible to get anywhere else!

More info can be found at the official Wedge PDX site. I cannot wait!

Rogue Creamery just took top prize at the Amercian Cheese Society annual conference with their Rogue River Blue. Back in March, we got to sample this wild cheese at the Cheese Guild Cheese Festival. It’s a smokey, figgy cheese wrapped in grape leaves which have been soaked in pear brandy. Truly unique in the world of cheese and definitely special for Oregon.

Tom Vorhees from the Rogue Creamery and Steve Jones of Steve’s Cheese also won the cheesemongering competition. I’m not at all surprised there as Steve has one of the best cheese cases around and is so knowledgeable and approachable that they couldn’t help but win. You can read more about the competition over at the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project.

Congratulations to everyone! I think I’m going to have to start putting aside my pennies so I can attend next year. If nothing else, just to see the festival cheese room would be worth it.

Okay, not to beat a drum but we went to another cheese and beer tasting event last night and it was EPIC. Going in knowing that the menu would include 10 pairings, I was a bit intimidated. Luckily, both the beers and cheeses were more on the mellow side, lighter beers without super complex flavors and cheeses that were all unique but none that really knocked your palette out. We also sampled Rogue’s new whiskey which was pretty darn good as whiskey goes. I could definitely see taking it on a camping trip which is my metric for tasty whiskey.

It was hosted by Rogue at their Flanders Street location but included a variety of breweries. A few of the standout beers for me were Deschutes Twilight Ale, the Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar and Hair of the Dog Fred. The cheese was supplied by Sysco, a fine foods distributor and the portions were quite robust. Frankly, by the end of the event we were very stuffed and quite cheerful.

Me and Fred

The star of the show was Fred Eckhardt, a local beer writer and celebrity who is a colorful and jolly guy, regularly surrounded by friends and fans — you’ll know him by his artfully curled mustache. Earlier this year, I attended “Fred Fest” at Hair of the Dog Brewery on the occasion of Fred’s birthday. It’s a rather intimate brew fest as far as those things go with limited ticket sales and some very special beers. I was delighted to find myself chatting with friends off in a corner when a huge platter of cheese arrived and was set on the table right in front of me! A gift from the heavens! It was really great cheese, too, not just a bunch of oily cheddar cubes. This is when I discovered that Fred is known for his interest in unique pairings, including candy and cookies and, naturally, cheese. All the food at Fred Fest was chosen by the man himself for its pairing friendliness. Last night he suggested we try warming Hair of the Dog Fred to 110 degrees and then dipping an Oreo cookie in it! Hmmm… I might try that… once.

Eugene City Brewery Honey Orange Wheat & Willamette Valley Gouda

Overall the event was a lot of fun and Fred kept up a patter of beer and cheese trivia, history and advice on life while the samples came fast and furious. I would say that the pairings were good with a few standouts. The first pairing was Fern’s Edge Chevre paired with Full Sail Ltd 03 Lager. The lager was light like a pilsner and very slightly bitter, a perfect mid-day beer. The chevre was incredibly light and fluffy with notes of lemon. Sampling the beer again after the cheese made the difference. The cheese cut the bitterness of the beer, bringing out a sweet and happy flavor.

Our whole table really enjoyed the third pairing, Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown (which we used at our sampling event) with Alsea Feta. The feta was moist and creamy, not very dry, very light in flavor and salty. The interplay between those two was really just pitch perfect. I’m thinking that Browns and Porters really have a ton of potential pairings and the Rogue Brown especially has such lovely notes that I think we’ll come back to that again.

My notes

Thanks Fred and Rogue and all the others who worked behind the scenes to make this happen — it was a lot of fun! You can see a few more pictures over here.

Our cheesemaking group, FUCheese, has long talked about doing a home cheese pairing with homebrews (from the guys at BSBrewing, including my husband) so I started doing some research on what kind of cheeses we would want to make and what would be a good pair. There’s a surprising amount of information out there about pairing the two and for good reason: they are delicious together!

Typically, when you think of pairing something with cheese, you think of wine. Wine is a wonderful, wonderful thing and I have had some truly sublime wine and cheese pairings. (The Rioja Santiago paired with Midnight Moon that we had at the sadly defunct Curds & Whey shop in Sellwood comes to mind.) But, at least for me, wine is a little less accessible than good beer. And wine is really more of a contrasting flavor with cheese whereas beer can be more complementary. The tannins and oak and leather and jam of wine is not very present in cheese. However, the grassyness of some hopped beers, the earthy and meaty flavor of porters and the bright freshness in pilsners and hefeweisens can really interact with cheese in a refreshing way. That’s the other thing — beer is refreshing! It can cleanse the palate in a way that wine is hard-pressed to do. Some cheeses are incredibly tongue-coating and not much but something bubbly and cold can hold up to that. And now that the hot weather is finally upon us, it makes even more sense to crack open a beer and keep on enjoying that cheese.

Last year when we got some goat milk and had a goatapalooza of cheesemaking, Nicole and I put together a goat cheese plus beer pairing using as a guide some info we found online (google Garrett Oliver — he loves this stuff!). We were bowled over by how good it was. Then this past winter, Thom (the Mr.) and I joined Dave and Sarah at Saraveza for a cheese and beer pairing with cheese provided by Steve Jones of Steve’s cheese. It was fantastic! The cheeses were incredible and the beers were amazing. So, we’d been talking about this for months and continually pondering which beers would go with which cheeses. I’d push Thom to try some cheese and think of what beer it would go with and he’d push back with some beer asking what cheese I thought would go with that. We were talking about this with his cousin Julie (also a beer fan, she used to work at Bridgeport Brewing, Portland’s oldest craft brewer) who is now at Adidas. She said that a cheese beer pairing would be a fun thing to do with her department at work and could we arrange that? We looked at each other and laughed, “Yeah, we could probably do that.”

So, a few weeks later after some fun evenings of beer sipping and cheese sampling, we came up with a rough plan of attack. We bought beers at Belmont Station and Saraveza (all Oregon beers) and I spent an hour or so at Steve’s Cheese getting the cheeses. And let me take a moment to sing the praises of Mr. Steve’s Cheese, also known as Steve Jones. He is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable cheesemonger who clearly loves his work and puts a lot of effort into stocking the best local and international cheeses. Thankfully, he is also a big beer fan and was able to suggest alternatives and amendments to my cheese list based on the beers that we wanted to serve. I knew the type and flavor of the cheeses I wanted but only had one very specific cheese in mind that I had to have so he was invaluable in finalizing the list. If you live in or near Portland, GO TO STEVE’S CHEESE. Seriously.

The next day, I packed up a cooler of beer and cheese, a big cutting board and my cheese knives (a birthday present — they are so cool! I should write a post on those.), some crostini crackers and sampling glasses for the beer. Thom and I went over to Julie’s house that evening and met a dozen of her coworkers and gave a little talk about what we were about to do. Then, we started sampling!

The menu started with a fresh chevre from River’s Edge paired with Widmer’s Hefeweizen. This is one of my favorite pairings, they work so well together and I think Widmer’s Hef is one of the best of its kind — easy drinking, accessible and inexpensive. Next we paried Pondhopper with Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Pondhopper is an aged goat cheese that uses Mirror Pond Pale Ale to wash the curds during the making process. I wasn’t actually sure how well these would pair because when you taste Pondhopper you don’t necessarily get a “beer” vibe from it or a hops note but they were really fantastic together. Also, Pondhopper is a standout cheese that would be welcome on any cheese plate at any time. We then passed around small samples of Mirror Mirror which is a double of their Mirror Pond beer and aged in oak barrels to produce what is essentially a barleywine.

After that we shifted gears a bit and sampled Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown with the creamy, 3-milk Robiola — an Italian cheese from the Piedmont that is meaty and full and creamy and awesome. You kind of want to roll over and die after eating some Robiola and that’s a good thing. The final pairing matched Cascade Brewing’s Kriek (a sour cherry beer) with a stinky swiss style cheese called Maritchas. This last cheese came straight from Steve because I could imagine a few different types of cheeses that might work with the sourness of the beer but I wasn’t sure how big I wanted to go. Some cherry beers are incredibly tart and the Cascade Kriek is too but not terribly so. Once he cut me a sample of the Maritchas, I knew it would be a good finish to the evening.

Anyway, everyone had a really great time and Thom and I had a blast. I would totally do that again. So, next time you’re at the cheese counter, pick up a few things and then head over and grab a couple beers. Beers tend to be cheaper than wine (though not that Kriek!) and you may come up with an astounding flavor combination. Also, I was asked what would be a good cheese to go with Budweiser and I think a Kraft American cheese slice wrapped around a Slim Jim would be pretty awesome.*

* But I’m not sure I would ever eat that.