So, who is ACS and what is this conference? The American Cheese Society claims membership across the U.S., Canada and parts of South America. It’s an organizing body that helps the membership stay on top of trends, studies and industry changes. The conference is an annual event that brings together retailers, cheese makers, farmers, distributors, food scientists and more. The conference has a few events and presents topics of interest to these people. On our tour from Portland to Seattle, we had a few cheese enthusiasts. As an enthusiast, the conference is not really geared towards you. However, the topics are fascinating and with my volunteering hours, I was able to make it to a few seminars. I focused on the two topics that were of interest to me most: business and science. Here’s what I attended:

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Raw Milk Cheese
Catherine Donnelly, PhD., University of Vermont
Dave Potter, Dairy Connection, Inc.
Andre Jean, Health Canada

This was a fascinating seminar on the issues surrounding raw milk and the “60-day rule” which allows cheeses to be made with raw milk if they are aged over 60 days. This naturally rules out soft and mold-ripened cheeses (among other dairy products) that would go bad if left to age 60 days. In France, there is actually a rule that Camembert cannot be legally sold after 57 days. Such a process would be dangerous for soft cheeses.

Why do we care about raw milk? Well, in my layperson’s knowledge of the issue, and after the great talk by Catherine Donnelly: if you want to make high-quality cheese, you need high-quality milk. Pasteurizing the milk does not as a rule make it a poor quality product. You and I, in the U.S., enjoy many amazing cheeses that are made with pasteurized milk. However, pasteurized and raw milk are fundamentally two different kinds of milk.

Pasteurization is a process of heat-treating the milk to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time in order to kill off any nasty bacteria. However, the argument is made, it also kills off the good kinds of bacteria. Bacteria which can also help fight off the organisms which are bad for you. When you start to really get into cheese you will start to become familiar with the fact that it’s not just milk in there giving the cheese it’s flavor. We have to give thanks to all the little microorganisms that live in the milk and create the character of our favorite cheeses. Often, producers need to add back in those microorganisms after the pasteurization process in order to recreate that environment. Dave Potter, one of the speakers, is a purveyor in just such products! Who knew such a thing existed? I didn’t!

The third speaker was Andre Jean from Health Canada who talked about Canada’s approach to the raw milk issue. Basically, it exempts cheese from the pasteurization requirement that it otherwise imposes on fluid (drinkable) milk. In Canada, they are working to develop a set of standards that would apply to different cheese categories – rather than treating all cheeses the same, it would look at issues for hard cheeses, firm, semi-firm, soft, spreadable, etc. And their focus is really on the contamination issue. Pasteurization takes care of organisms at one end of the process but does not do anything to make the cheese super-heroes against contamination through handling later. They feel like education is the key to safe cheese consumption.

It’s worth noting that ACS invited a representative from the FDA to come in and talk about what their stance is on the issue but they declined.

There was lots of great info in this seminar and I found it really illuminating. Catherine Donnelly, from the University of Vermont, is an expert on this topic and a great speaker. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak on this issue, I highly recommend you do it.

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Cheesemaking Demo: Surface-ripened cheese
Marc “Frenchie” Druart, Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese
Assisted by: Maureen Cunnie, Cowgirl Creamery & Michael B. Vicha, Mt. Townsend Creamery

Okay, I think I have lost my notes on this one! This took place in one of the hotel kitchens around a big vat of already curdled milk where Marc “Frenchie” Druart from the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese held forth in a very amusing way on the science behind cheese, specifically surface-ripened cheeses. It involved drawings on the white board of negatively and positively charged molecules, bouncing curds in the sink and checking and re-checking the pH of the milk to know when, just precisely when, is the moment to make your move.

It was almost all over my head but it was really great insight into how things actually get done when you understand the science. I was also rather beside myself to recognize two of my favorite Oregon cheesemakers at the demo taking notes as well. (Fangirl! Squee!)

Ahem.

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Zingtrain – why our dishwashers know our net operating profit
Ari Weinzweig & Aubrey Thomason, Zingerman’s

Zingerman’s is a well-known fine-foods business based out of Ann Arbor. In the process of creating their business and expanding over the years they’ve developed a rather unique approach to doing business encapsulated in the title of the seminar. Basically, everything is open there. Everyone knows how much things cost, how much revenue and profit is being generated and everyone is responsible for taking care of the business. They’ve developed a whole line of training materials and classes to show other entrepreneurs how it’s done. I’ve long had an interest in starting and owning my own business. Hasn’t happened yet but I find the principles of the whole enterprise very interesting. There are so many approaches and we’ve all worked before for a company doing things the wrong way!

This talk was just a quick overview of their business model but it really seems to make a lot of sense. By being open, you are encouraging ownership of the business. When everyone takes ownership, you have a lot of enthusiasm and motivation which is directed toward the bottom line.

They also talked a lot about tracking things – not just numbers (clients, customers, products, revenue, profit) but thing that are harder to quantify like quality. It was really interesting and the idea is something I’ll definitely keep in the back of my mind. I can see this approach working really well in retail industries but I can also see how the principles could be applied in other fields.

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The Enthusiasts Guide to Cheese Science
Zoe Brickley, Cellars at Jasper Hill

I kind of thought this one would be a bit boring. I’m an enthusiast. I’ve read a bit on the science of cheese. I’ve started to get a handle on how things work. I was wrong. I mean, I was right, but also wrong – Zoe Brickley from the Cellars at Jasper Hill took us on a breathless overview of the entire process from grass to cheese and it was totally fascinating. She did an amazing job of breaking down the science into its component parts, offering analogies that made sense and created a narrative that was both informative and entertaining. I also learned a lot I didn’t know about cows! The poor, overlooked cow. We are so concerned about what goes into the cow and what comes out. But the process of what happens in between is pretty interesting and we should not take the happiness and health of the cow for granted.

Also! Jasper Hill makes some exceptional cheese. If you see their stuff anywhere, try it and buy it!

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Festival of Cheese

There were so many more events and seminars and tastings and demos that I did not get a chance to go to. However, as I said before, this is an industry event. It’s really not geared towards the enthusiast despite the last seminar I attended. And it shouldn’t be. From what I understand, dairying, farming and making cheese can be a somewhat isolating career. It’s clear that there is a lot of value in fostering a place for all these amazing artisans to come together and share. The one event that is geared towards everyone with a healthy lactose tolerance is the Festival of Cheese. This was really my whole reason for getting involved in the first place.

On the last day of the conference, they announce the winners of the ACS competition categories of which there are dozens. Then, they put out an amazing spread of all the submitted cheeses – there were over 1400 cheeses submitted this year. 1400, I said!

Here’s a few photos:

Did I try them all? Yes, I did.

No! That’s a total lie; I did not! I would be dead. I gave it my best go, though. Between myself, my husband, and our friends Linnea and Peter, we figured we sampled less than 5% of the available cheeses. We sampled as many of the winners as we could and found some great new cheeses and managed to stuff ourselves silly. It was really a sight (and smell) to behold and so much fun – a truly unique and special bacchanal of cheese the likes of which I can’t imagine seeing again… until next time.

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See more photos of the festival starting here or the whole set of ACS photos.

Don’t miss Part 1, in which we visited three Washington creameries and drank lots of beer at 60 miles an hour.

To kick off the 2010 American Cheese Society conference, there were three tours originating from points a few hours away from Seattle and visiting various creameries and retail stores along the way. After the Portland Wedge Cheese Festival last year, I got roped into volunteered to help lead the Portland to Seattle tour which left the morning before the festival, arriving in time for the opening keynote address that evening.

Our itinerary had us starting early in the morning in downtown Portland, visiting the Hollywood Whole Foods for snacks and then heading up to three Washington state creameries on the way to Seattle. We picked up cheese along the way and on the last leg, had a cheese tasting with wine and beer on the bus! My partner in crime, Bill Stephenson from DPI Northwest, was very adept at cutting the cheese at the front of the bus as I wandered the aisles with wine and some of the finest Oregon craft beer (graciously donated by the Oregon Brewer’s Guild).

We all had a lot of fun and only lost a little cheese when the bus braked hard and Bill’s cutting board went flying. For my part, I only spilled a little wine and beer on one poor guy who was very good-natured (and luckily wearing navy blue pants!). Here’s just a little wrap-up about the creameries we visited.

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Black Sheep Creamery
345 Bunker Creek Road
Chehalis, WA 98532-9721
(360) 748-9543

We started out at Black Sheep Creamery in southern Washington. Black Sheep makes only sheeps milk cheese and raises their own sheep and tends their fields for hay. In 2007, their farm and dairy was devatasted by the rising waters of the nearby Chehalis River. To walk by this river today, you’d marvel at how such a gentle meandering stream of water, looking barely larger than a creek at summer’s end, could cause so much devastation. But when heavy and sustained rains came in the fall of 2007, it brought with it tons of silt from the nearby clearcut hills.

Black Sheep bore the brunt of this destruction. The flood covered their fields in a thick layer of silt, and took the lives of many in its herd. It lifted their aging room – a repurposed shipping container – and carried it about fifty yards where it caught on some high ground.

Farmers and neighbors and dairies came to their aid to help save their cheese and help restore the farm. Today, you would never know but it’s clear listening to owner Brad Gregory talk about the incident and recovery that it is still very fresh in their minds. Read more about the flood and the farm at Weekend America, “Recovering from the Chehalis Flood” and over at Tami’s blog, “Black Sheep Creamery Devastated by Flood.”

It’s a real blessing that they have managed to get back on their feet, as Black Sheep makes exceptional sheeps milk cheeses. We sampled their Queso de Oveja which is like a livelier, younger Spanish manchego – you can practically taste the sheep leaping in the meadow! It’s a really lovely cheese which took home a deserved blue ribbon in the ACS competition category for aged sheep’s milk cheese. If you’re in the Northwest, you should look for it today!

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Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese (will•uh•puh)
4680 State Highway 6
Doty, WA 98539
(206) 612-6253

Just up the road from Black Sheep is Willapa Hills Creamery. Also raising sheep, they do both sheeps milk and blended cheeses. They are are focusing on blue and soft-ripened cheeses and are getting a lot of acclaim this year for their Two-faced Blue, a truly buttery blue made from sheep and cow (the two faces) it is decadent like a triple-cream with lovely blue notes that do not overwhelm. Their Little Boy Blue is firmer and more robust in flavor with lots of mold. It’s bold without knocking you over.

Amy and Stephen showed us around the operation and let us look into their caves. They have three young kids whose faces show up on their cheese labels and we were lucky enough to come by while KelseaMae was in the process of making cheese. Willapa Hills were also winners in the competition for their Two-Faced Blue which took 2nd place in the Blue-veined Sheep or Mixed Milk Category. I’ll be trying to bring this cheese to any and all parties I’m invited to – it’s really unique and fantastic.

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Estrella Family Creamery
659 Wynoochee Valley Rd
Montesano, WA 98563

Our final stop was Kelli Estrella’s creamery which she runs with her whole family. All the kids help out with the extensive farm duties with her oldest daughter taking on the role of cheesemaker. Kelli has made a name for herself for her superb aged cheeses. When you go to Europe, you see cheeses that are kind of like this – mottled, strange, pungent. Creating an exceptional aged cheese requires patience, diligence, a commitment to the science of it and wild leaps of faith.

Estrella is a cow farm and they make a staggering array of cheeses. Their most beloved and well-known is probably the Red Darla, a double-fist-sized lump of cheese with a sticky, newspaper-grey rind derived from the red wine wash that is applied to the cheese. It isn’t the prettiest cheese but, wow, is it good! Pungent, creamy, assertive but not rude, it’s a fantastic cheese and a great pair for beer. Yum, yum, yum! They took a blue ribbon for their Weebles, in the Smoked Italian Styles category and a 2nd place win for their Jalepeno Buttery in the Flavored Cheeses.

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A huge thank you goes out to the creameries for opening their doors and their caves to our group who had a really great time. It was so informative and amazing to meet the makers, hear the stories and really connect with all the hard work and love that goes into these exceptional products.

Don’t miss: Lots more photos of the cheese caves and cheese makers on my Flickr pages!

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Last but not least: Beer

You didn’t think I could get through this without talking about beer, did you? You are right. At the last minute we managed to secure some donations of Oregon microbrews from the Oregon Brewer’s Guild to take on the bus and sample. We already had some donated bottles of red and white wine but, you know, these people on the tour came from all over the U.S. (and New Zealand!) and I felt that it was my duty to expose them to Oregon beer. There’s just nothing like it anywhere else.

The Donations included several bottles of Rogue Brewing beer, Deschutes Brewing Green Lakes Organic, HUB’s brand new Rise-up Red, several bottles from Oakshire down in Eugene (Overcast Espresso Stout, Line Dry Rye, Watershed IPA). Oakshire is really knocking it out of the park these days. I was really surprised by the Watershed IPA. It’s a nicely-hopped beer without being too bitter. Incredibly drinkable and great for summer. It’s really nice to see brewers tempering their hop usage and creating notes of hops and not relying on it as the entire character of the beer. Well done, Oakshire! We liked it with the Two-Faced Blue from Willapa.

I was impressed with how interested everyone was in the beer – including people that said they were wine drinkers only. They came around and sampled quite a few brews. We opened a lot of bottles and kept passing beer then cheese then wine then cheese then more beer then cheese then… any more beer? Yes, please! I was dubious about the plan to do a tasting on the bus, rambling along at 60 miles an hour, but it worked out and nobody got hurt!

Next: Part II, the ACS conference and festival of cheese!

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.