Nettle Meadow's Sappy Ewe: A cheesemaker, curds and maple syrup walk into a bar...

Though Sappy Ewe might sound like the punchline of a foodie joke, its real, new, and surprisingly delicious.

Sappy Ewe is Nettle Meadow's newest cheese.

The first time I heard about the savory-sweet Sappy Ewe was when rustling through a box of samples at Cheese & Sundry, a new cheese and tasty-things distributing company in Berkeley. My friend Emiliano and I were hanging out in their walk-in fridge (about the size of Mariah Carey's closet) when he introduced me to the cheese. I had just eyed the 80-pound wheel of Rodolphe le Meunier's Comté and decided it was too big to stash in my coat and run when Emi picked up the tiny Nettle Meadow wheel. Distracted by the 80-pound cheese, I only heard maple syrup, sheep and cow, and Nettle Meadow.

"Do you want to try it?"

I raised my eyebrows at him and nodded.

Going back to the post title. What happens when a cheesemaker, curds, and maple syrup walk into a bar? If you guessed a spiked cheese-curd pancake party, you might not be wrong depending on the day. But in this case, a gorgeous regional cheese. 

Nettle Meadow takes sheep and cow's milk cheese curds (the curds of milk that's been firmed to a thick-custard texture) and drizzles them with maple syrup from Adirondack mountains. Then they fill the curds into crottin-style molds to age. The cheese has a brie-like, bloomy rind that before shipping out, they dust with ash from local black pine trees. It's a New York cheese all the way.

The result is a rich, small sliceable cheese that tastes like brown butter, fresh hazelnuts, and maple ham that knocks the idea out of the water that cheese is always better left alone. Though the list of ingredients might give the impression of sweetness, Sappy Ewe is mellow, subtle, and fit for a cheese plate before or after dinner. 

Wine: Before dinner, pair with a yeasty Champagne or rich Viognier. After, pair with something tawny, spicy and sweet like a sweet sherry or vin santo

After dinner? Amazing with chocolate. Tazo's stone ground vanilla-bean chocolate offered a crunchy bite to the silky cheese.

Chaseholm Family Farm: Farmstead Cheese from Upstate New York

If you saw a ninety year-old woman walking across the street in front of your car over the past three weeks and was surprised to discover that, A- as she (slowly) grew closer, her hair was brown, not gray, and that, B- she might have actually been, say fifty or so years younger than you thought, it was me. I'm sorry for taking so long walking in front of your car. I threw out my back. I wish I could say it was from doing something fun like lifting bottles of wine from a table to my mouth. Rather it was from lifting a case of wine from the floor to a table. That I wasn't going to drink.

Which provokes me to say- bless you, cheesemakers for spending your days bending over vats lifting heavy curds, flipping huge wheels, and scrubbing floors and tables. Your backs and arms are of super human strength. Thank you for risking your body to make delicious cheese. I would never bet against you in an arm wrestling competition.

Now, my friends, I'm back to the blogging world. My back is happy sitting in front of a computer once more, and I'm excited to share some pics from my trip to New York.

When my friend Kathleen Cotter and I of The Bloomy Rind drove through New York en route to Providence for ACS this July, we reached out to east coast cheese friends to ask who to visit. Since Kathleen's from Nashville and I'm from Oakland, we thought it could be a cool chance to meet smaller cheese folks whose goods we hadn't had a chance to try. When Matt of Cheesenotes learned we were already visiting Sproutcreek (more on this later), he told us to to check out Chaseholm nearby. Points for Matt.

Chaseholm Farm is a farmstead family creamery run by sister and brother duo Sarah and Rory in Northern Dutchess and Southern Columbia counties in upstate New York. The sister and her partner raise and milk the lovely Jerseys, Holsteins, Brown Swiss cows organically on grass surrounding their farm (in addition to making sauerkraut and apothecary products), and the Rory makes the cheese. Which coincidentally is delicious and nearly unavailable in Oakland -better luck to you, my east coast friends!

We arrived at the farm a little flustered, hot from the humidity, fresh out of phone batteries, and hoping the maps left on our phone screen actually directed us to creamery on our second attempt (we already stopped at the dairy instead of the make room down the road on the way in). To soothe our nerves and lessen the heat, Rory, the handsome brother-cheesemaker drank a beer with us. Because, you know, it was hot and all the cheese was already made, and he's nice.

Though the farm has been in the family since the early 1900's, it wasn't always a dairy. After hearing his family farm was in danger of selling, in 2007, Rory packed up his bags from his-then home base of California and returned to New York. Because he knew that if they were able to make money from the farm, they could keep it alive, Rory retrofitted his grandfather's old barn into a make room, bought some cows, and started making cheese. His sister returned home shortly after and became a cow maven. The rest is fermented history. Check out Sarah's instagram account, by the way, some of the best pics of farm life out there.

We loved touring Chaseholm. Not only was the beer refreshing, the cheese super tasty, and the farm beautiful, it was fun to see how Rory and the family re-vamped everything. They not only make cheese, they build stuff. When we were wandering around the aging room, we looked up to see tiny water trickles running down the walls, "That's for humidity," Rory said, squinting, "I think I want to put some more in." You know, easy as pie, because they already constructed the cave and started the entire system anyhow.

One of our favorites of his cheeses was Moonlight - a sexy little log number with an ash coating covered in white bloomy rind. Pictured by the local honey in the above photo. It tastes sprightly, lemony, and sweet and buttery. See those yellow tones in the cheese? That's the color of milk from cows who have been munching on grass all summer long.

Moonlight is a lactic-acid set cheese, meaning that its curds hang out for hours slowly developing acidity before being molded into cylinders. The curds spend their time relaxing in the bags below before being molded the next day.

Some other favorites were their Camembert, and Stella Vallais, a sweet, nutty aged cheese. That funky number below was Red Beard, a cheese washed with apple cider and brandy. Normally aged from a couple weeks to a month or so, this was a stinky square pushed to the back of the aging room and then forgotten about for a month or four, with which Rory tested our funk endurance. Kathleen was strong, I was weak. It was tongue bristling.

One of our favorite visits on our way to ACS, Chaseholm was a beautiful reminder of the kindness of strangers willing to share beers on a hot day, the drive that propels cheesemakers forward, and the deliciousness that can ensue with enough passion and rich, rich milk. Thanks for the visit, Chaseholm!

ACS Winner Crown Finish Caves: Tunnels, Booze & Affinage

Last week I wandered the underground tunnels of ACS winner Crown Finish Caves and have decided what I want to be in one of my next lives. Paymaster. A pampered little cheese kept in a perfectly humidified and air-filtered environment that gets washed down in Kings County Distillery chocolate whiskey daily. The American Cheese Society Conference is a chance to do many things. See friends from all corners of the country who sling or coagulate fermented milk- often all at once, and in a karaoke room. An opportunity to try cheese from creameries I can't get my hands on in California -here's batting my eyes at places like you, Ruggles Creamery, Chaseholm Farm, and Goat Lady Dairy. It's also a chance to visit fantastic affineurs like Crown Finish, shops, and cheesemakers near the conference.

My friend Kathleen Cotter of the The Bloomy Rind and I usually team up for visits. The process normally looks something like this. We excitingly call each other three months before the conference, decide we want to visit cheesemakers galore, then promise to email with follow up research the next day. Then, two months later we send each other an email saying we've been busy and will follow up the next week. We repeat this a few times. Two to three weeks before the conference, we make a plan!

Because ACS was in Providence this year, we had a wealth of east coast spots to visit all over Brooklyn, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. One spot we visited was ACS winner Crown Finish Caves in Crown Height's, Brooklyn.

Crown Finish Caves is a cheese care/affineur facility that ages and tends to cheesemaker's wheels after they're made. Meaning they store the cheese, flip wheels, wash rinds with booze (and oh my does Crown Finish have a lot of it), control temperature and humidity in caves, and experiment with new aging techniques and flavors. This is called affinage and requires much experience to know what to do when. And they do it all underground in old subway tunnels.

A question I get a lot is why can't cheesemakers age cheese themselves.

They certainly can, and many are amazing at it. But sometimes they don't want to. Because they're busy, you know, milking cows and making curds and stuff. Or, sometimes they don't have the space or labor to keep an eye on their wheels like they deserve. Other times they just like to collaborate with lovely people like Crown Finish owners Benton Brown & Susan Boyle, and affineur Sam just because they're fun (they're pretty cool people who hang out with cheese in subway tunnels and rub it in booze all day, you know what I'm saying?).

Benton and Boyle bought their Crown Finish building- sort of an office/warehouse/loft space- in 2001 and started to ready it for renters and food service. Then they started to think, hey, not only were the old subway tunnels underneath the building cool looking, the cool looking old subway tunnels would be perfect for aging cheese. They had the right temperature, humidity, and air flow (once the filters started pumping away) and ample space.

Crown Finish caves is a story of their inspired passion. Benton trained with famed affineur Herve Mons and with cheesemakers and agers in the United States, then, started experimenting with local cheeses.The rest is delicious history. Some creameries Crown commonly works with are Coach and Spring Brook, Parish Hill.

These are photos of their varied stash and a couple of the caves themselves when I managed to get enough light. Also, hate to say it, but if you haven't had a chance to try their ACS winner Humble Herdsman, you probably won't in the future either. They've got under twenty wheels left (but cheesemaker Peter Dixon is now maturing his own). But try to get your hands on their other beauties like Paymaster at your local shops. East coasters will be luckier, and bribing your local cheesemonger may apply.

New York: Feeling the Dairy Love

Well folks, I'm fresh back from a visit to New York. And once again after a visit to one of my favorite cities in the world, I'm surprised that I feel refreshed. I always thought beach vacations, long afternoons spent reading at French cafes, and camping were the things that were supposed to refresh, and that New York, with its crazy hours, constant foot traffic, and millions of things to do all at once, would always exhaust. Yet I feel revived. Of course it may have to do with the fact that I was visiting rather than actually living in the city.

Anyhow, I had a hell of a time. Seeing my wonderful friends, experiencing the cheese culture and industry, walking around admiring the blossoms around Central Park (this was the first time I was in New York at spring- oh la la!), and eating and drinking at some of my favorite places replenished my soul as stealthily as it diminished my wallet. It was all worth it. I miss it already.

Here's a little photo diary of my time in Manhattan and Brooklyn. First time using my IPhone camera on a trip!

Hanging out with Hannah, 5, and Claire, 9. My favorite girls in Brooklyn (Claire's glittery shoes above).

I was super happy to go to the Edible Manhattan Good Dairy event while visiting (thanks, Lucy's Whey!). The event was delicious, sold out, and in true Manhattan fashion, had door men.

I was also in town for a cheesemonger meet-up. I got to see all the NYC dairy folk I know, like the lovely Murray's Chef Fromager Tia Keenan, more of Grace and Amy, more of Andy, and ... many, many others. We gathered in the Beecher's basement and feasted on fried cheese curds and cheeses that are hard-to-come-by on the west coast.

Then I hit up some other events that weren't related to cheese, like a normal person (it wasn't difficult, there was always gelato, great coffee with cream, or something deliciously distracting like bone marrow nearby).

Ricotta almond gelato at Eataly

Maybe I'll come up with a list of dairy things to do while in the city one of these days. In the meantime, have fun creating your own!

What do you like to do while in New York?