LaClare's Katie On Cheese Love & Flipping Curds at Nine Months

After sharing a drink or two with my friends at the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board at the last American Cheese Society Conference, we decided to collaborate on a project (this is how most things get done at ACS). I’d get to pitch a topic. My pick? The female cheesemakers of Wisconsin. I’d tell the stories of my choice of four of my favorite women cheesemakers in a series of blog posts. I loved interviewing these ladies, what they’re doing, and thank them for their time. This is the third of the series, focusing on Katie Fuhrmann of LaClare.

Katie Fuhrmann of LaClare Cheese and I first met at the Sonoma Cheese Conference about three years ago. We were sitting across from each other at an outdoor patio after the sessions had wrapped up, beer in hands, and we both looked up and met each other’s eyes. I was super impressed after just trying Katie's Evalon for the first time at a sample panel, knew she was just opening her new and first creamery at the age of twenty-eight, and really wanted to meet her. Having the intention of befriending the brunette Wisconsin curd magician and being so very smooth as I am, I turned to her and said...

“I, ah, I like your cheese.”

I think she was very impressed (could have been her Midwestern politeness). We became quick cheese friends.

When LaClare's clothbound Standard Market Chandoka won runner-up Best in Show at the American Cheese Society Awards I, like many in the cheese world who continuously root for the talented and sweet cheesemaker, were very happy. The cheesemaker, however, was very surprised (and the very modest company has not yet even updated their website to reflect the victory).

Today’s LaClare's most widely available cheeses are Chandoka, Evalon, and Martone. Chandoka, featured above, is a goat and cow’s milk hybrid made in the style of a New Zealand cheddar with sweet lemony notes and fluffy consistency  (note to cheese geeks New Zealand Cheddar makers simply stack the cheddar slabs on one another rather than flipping them over as is done with English Cheddar). Her Evalon is a subtle, lightly caramel-like goat’s milk gouda. Her Maratone, below, is a fresh and light goat and cow’s milk hybrid shaped into a tiny, cheese-plate friendly mound covered with ash.

How does one that is twenty-eight go on to start winning Best in Show awards two years after launching her own creamery?

Skills and gumption it seems. Katie was always ambitious when it came to the LaClare family farm. Knowing that she wanted to contribute to the family, she started making her own soap on it at sixteen. Then, in 2008 when the family started shipping off their goat’s milk to a creamery to be made into cheese, Katie took note.

She said, “It hit me like a ton of bricks.”

Katie, who wanted to involved in the farm life but didn’t want to have to milk the family’s goats twice a day or clean out their pins, thought cheese was the perfect answer.

She started learning how to make cheese under Nathan Deahny at Saxon Creamery, who at that time was making cheese with LaClare’s milk. The mentorship relationship was ideal and within years Katie was applying for her license, moved her cheesemaking to Cedar Grove (another Bob Wills inspired maker) and then to Willow Creek. Other cheesemakers she’s cut curds next to during her learning process have been Bruce Workman of Edelweiss, Chris Roelli of Roelli Cheeese, Bob Wills, and Jon & Dave Metzig. Cheesemaking in Wisconsin is apparently supportive.

“There’s a sense of community and respect, no competition. Just, 'Hey nice job at that cheese you made',” says Katie. “We all want to represent Wisconsin and that it was built being a dairy state.”

Besides the makers she worked next to, Katie also sites the last “Women in Wisconsin Cheese” focus, Marieke, among her biggest influences. Sure, for her talent and prowess (both make some of the country’s most respected gouda styles), but thoughts of Marieke in particular crossed her mind when she was recently making cheese and over nine months pregnant. Marieke made cheese almost all the way through when she was pregnant with her own five children, and so did Katie. As it became harder to shuffle curds around the vat, Katie told herself, “If Marieke can do it, I can do it.”

“I used a stool to reach into the big vat because my pregnant belly didn’t fit over it anymore,” says Katie, laughing, “you just twist and turn and make it work.”

Katie worked up until the day she gave birth, saying she had plans to start the day's cheese, then go into the hospital. As it was, Katie went straight in.

But her brother still teased her about missing the day.

"He told me since Charlie was born at 8:30 am, I could be back in time for the audit!," which was scheduled at 9am.

Word is, she took the entire day off.

The posts were sponsored, and edited only by me.

Women of Wisconsin Cheese: The Annas of Landmark Creamery

After sharing a drink or two with my friends at the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board at the last American Cheese Society Conference, we decided to collaborate on a project (this is how most things get done at ACS). I’d get to pitch a topic. My pick? The female cheesemakers of Wisconsin. I’d tell the stories of four of my favorite cheesemakers in a series of four posts over a couple weeks. I loved interviewing these ladies and thank them for their time. This is the first of the series, focusing on Landmark Creamery.

In a state like Wisconsin where third-generation dairy farmers are as common as twenty-degree days and aspiring cheesemakers train for more than two hundred hours to earn their license, it can take a lot for newbies to establish themselves. So when Bob Willis of Cedar Grove told the Annas of Landmark Creamery they could use his Milwaukee Clock Shadow space when his other cheesemakers were off or home sleeping, they jumped on it.

Anna Landmark would drive the two hours from her home in Albany in the afternoon, make the cheese, hoop the curds, then wash up and head home. Then Thomas Bates would arrive, (also from Albany) make sure the curds were draining right, flip the wheels, and wash up again, sometimes not getting home until two or three in the morning.

“We’d pass each other on the highway,” said Landmark, who was also pregnant during much of her Shadow Clock tenure. Both women have children at home.

“We decided we were too old to take naps at truck stops,” said Thomas Bates, nodding.

Now the two are making cheese at Cedar Grove closer to their Albany homes and though happily are a little less sleep deprived, are just as impassioned.

Landmark Creamery makes three cheeses. Tall Grass (pictured at top) is their citrusy, mushroomy, grassy semi-firm wheel made from local sheep and cow’s milk. Petite Nuage is their tiny ten-ounce fluffy, white sheep’s milk cheese button. Anabasque (pictured below) is their brown buttery, lively, aged semi-firm French Pyrenees sheep’s milk inspiration. Not even two years old, Landmark’s cheeses have grazed restaurant plates as close as Estrellon in Madison to Manresa in Santa Cruz.

Landmark runs the cheese vat and Tomas Bates directs orders and marketing. The two met at a Green County Women in Sustainable Agriculture potluck and became close friends while their children were in the same class at school. When they both discovered that they wanted to start a food business and equally adored cheese, their fate was sealed. Landmark winning a Cheese Originals Beginning Cheesemaker Scholarship to help fund getting her license was another boost.

The two first decided on sheep’s milk because they knew the animals would happily and sustainably graze on the grass around the region’s cows, and they thought their children would like to play with them. When they found out they could buy grass fed milk from the state’s only pastured and grass-fed cow’s milk co-op, they added that to the vat, creating their first mixed milk cheese.

With great milk, cheesemaker Bob Wills’s mentoring, and cheesemakers like Holland Farm’s Marieke Peterson, Brenda Jenson of Hidden Springs, Diana Murphy of Dream Farm, and Anne Topham of Fantome Farm that Landmark cited as influences, the two have no lack of inspiration.

Aapparently the Annas themsleves inspire too. Tomas Bates’s son is considering his next career move.

“My seven year old son said he’d take over the business when we’re done, that's if he doesn't want to be a tree trimmer," she says, laughing.

The posts were sponsored, and edited only by me.

Carboncino: My Mixed-Milk Comfort Cheese

Perhaps because my family has always based our trips around going to spots where we could pull over for a cheese tour or wheel, our car drives normally started in my home town of Sacramento, and ended in Sonoma or Marin. So even though I grew up in northern California, I had only been to the Mendocino coast once.

But two Sundays ago, I hopped in my car, packed my computer, a pilates roller to get those laptop writing kinks out, hiking boots, comfort cheese, other less necessary food provisions, and drove to a friend's cabin overlooking the sea. I wanted to work on a writing sample for a upcoming project (which I would love to share soon) near nature. The cheese? Well I brought it because I obviously needed it.

It was a gorgeous drive. Once past the Bay Area, Sonoma greeted me with rolling hills, vines,  cows of all sizes and colors, and short, roaming trees. After I turned the Russian River corner leading to Jenner, my drive was flanked by Highway 1's drastic Pacific ocean views, cliffs, and redwoods. Then once I arrived to my little corner of Mendocino, I unpacked, grabbed my cheese and a plate, and pulled a chair onto the deck overlooking the ocean. I had underestimated the drive and was ready for fresh air and food.

The cheese I unpacked was Carboncino. Whenever I take a trip that I'd like to be as effortless as possible when I'm not writing, hiking, etc..., I bring comfort cheese. What is comfort cheese? Well, its basically whatever cheese offers you respite and simple pleasures when you need it to. What cheese do you like in your grattins, your grilled cheese, your mac n cheese, or just spread over a cracker with little else? That's your comfort cheese. It can change.

Last week Carboncino was mine. A couple weeks prior when I went on a hike I packed Comté (holds well in a back-pack). Other times I've brought Garrotxa, PennyRoyal's Boont Corners, and …. whatever felt good to me at the moment. This time I wanted something spreadable and unctuous.

A goat, sheep, and cow's milk hybrid, Carboncino is a mild, creamy cheese with lemony and often mushroomy notes, and an ashed rind. I've served it to picky family members, friends who like their cheese as soft as butter, and to myself when I want a cheese that's all about the simple pleasures.

It's made by Alta Langha, the same blessed mixed-milk people who make La Tur and Rochetta in Piedmont, Italy. I picked up this lovely disk from my friends at The Pasta Shop in Oakland. It's wonderful with a sparkling wine, an Italian Trebbiano or Vermentino, or a porch overlooking the sea.

What's your comfort cheese?