From Swiss Buffalos to Blue: My 5 Top Picks of the Fancy Food Show

A peek at Fresca Italia's Fanciness case, packed with rich, soft, Italian water buffalo cheeses.

Last week the Fancy Food Show, otherwise known as The Fanciness, stormed into San Francisco. It brought with it rain, the onset of a new president, tons of stuff covered in sea salt and caramel, nut butters mixed with ev-er-y-thang- (maple syrup, chili, pumpkin butter, coffee) and, cheese.

It also brought new delicious discoveries from home and abroad that this girl is very eager to share.

Below are my top 5 picks at this year's Fanciness. Some are new, some are new to me.

Valley Ford Grazin Girl

Since I wrote an LA Times article about dairy farmers turned cheesemakers featuring the creamery, Valley Ford has been one of my favorite California dairies. It's a family affair: Karen Bianchi-Moreda launched the creamery and was the original cheesemaker- now her sons make the cheese and take care of the cows. When I tried their blue newbie at the food show, I loved it. I also loved the idea of another California blue. Silky, mellow, buttery, and made with the milk of their pastured cows, Grazin Girl is our new California blue, otherwise named here, Blue Velvet.

Vacherin Fribourgeois L'Ancienne (from Colombia cheese distributor)

A classic cheese of Switzerland, but new to me, Vacherin Fribourgeois L'Ancienne is a raw-milk tomme made in Fribourg. It can be pasteurized or raw, but the particular one I tasted was made by Marsens Vuippens and was raw and delicious. Aged for 4 to 6 months, the rind is firm like an older cheese, but the paste is creamy and silky. It tastes like a sophisticated mac n' cheese.

Buffalo Berglinde

Switzerland hits it out of the park again. Truly- this time with milk from 40 buffalos living in a Swiss National Park because cheesemaker Beat Meier fell in love with the animal and, you know, just brought them over from Italy.  The cheese is rich, sweet, and has notes of creme fraiche, and unsurprisingly, is brought into the country by the wonderful importer Caroline Hostettler.

Moonside Creamery Grady's Wheel

Buffalo again? Buffalo again! Grady's Wheel is a new cheese made with cow and buffalo milk from Sonoma. Its white paste is rich, and blessed with hazelnut and sour cream flavors. A perfect little wheel from a new creamery. Aged and firm and a must-try.

Consorcio de los Quesos Mahon

Most Mahon that makes it to the states is pasteurized. And it can be tasty as hell. This Mahon though, is raw milk and tasty and hell and very different from the other guys all over. While other Mahon is flaky and aged, this version is younger, lighter, and a little floral and grassy. Plus, it doesn't have the classic red, olive-oil and paprika-rubbed rind. Instead, this one is lightly dusty gray. A whole new year, a whole new Mahon.

First Berkeley Cheesemaking Classes - From Curds to Wine, January & February

I've taught summer cheese classes in San Francisco when fog's taking over the city. I cooed over Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Roelli cheese as blustery March winds blew through Chicago. I've paired Long Island Riesling to Vermont cheddar in New York City. And recently, I just drove to Point Reyes and made queso fresco with the same milk that they use to make Bay Blue (yup, omg).

But I've never taught a public Berkeley cheesemaking class that my friends and cheese lovers can come to.

it's five minutes away from my house. Why? Hard to believe, there just aren't many places to hold classes. This is about to change.

January and February I'm striking out on my own and teaching my first public Berkeley cheesemaking class, and cheese and wine pairing class.

Cheesemaking 101 & Wine, and Wine & Cheese Pairing 101.

I'm teaming up with my friends at Potliquor Catering, who share a community space in the same building as Morrel's Bread, Shrub & Co, Standard Faire, and Stonehouse Olive Oil- to host these par-tays (known to some as educational classes) in their kitchen.

Berkeley cheesemaking class- fresh dairy love

Beginning Berkeley Cheesemaking Class & Wine, Jan 28th, 2-5pm, Potliquor

The first, detailed below, mixes cheesemaking and wine in a three-hour classes where we'll make the cheese then enjoy the fruits of our labor with wine. Two cheeses, cultured butter, a recipe or two, and vino. Win win?

Make 2 cheeses, cultured butter, and drink wine! From pressing fluffy curds into fresh cheese to churning your own cultured butter, learn the basics of cheesemaking and culturing in this hands-on, 3 hour, lively class. After a breezy cheesemaking science lesson, we'll make queso fresco, fromage blanc, rich butter, and sample what we just made with wine!

Then...

Cheese & Wine Pairing 101: From Wine & Cheese Pairing Meek to Wine & Cheese Pairing Geek, February 10th, 6:30-8:30, Potliquor 

The second is a classic Wine & Cheese Pairing class that is a delicious education in the basics- Go from wine and cheese pairing meek to wine and cheese geek!

Photos on Napa wine country brochures make it seem like cheese and wine are easy to pair, but if you’d ever had a cheese and wine bomb, you know the two can be a difficult duo. It’s not you! In this class, I’ll walk you through a tasty education and give you the tools to harmoniously enjoy the two at home without fear. 4 wines, 8 cheeses, two hours of deliciousness.

If there's Berkeley, demand, there will be more! I hope to see you at one or both of these two classes, or around town.

Mary Quicke ❤s the Cheesemonger Invitational + CCP, English-Style

Mary of Quicke’s Cheese posing with her wheels

Cheesemaker and owner of Quicke's Cheese, Mary Quicke, would like to see an MC in a cow suit dancing around cheesemongers on a stage in England.

"The first time I was at the Cheesemonger Invitational I thought, this is amazing and should be everywhere and how can we clone Adam Moskowitz [the cow]? Cheese in the U.S. is young and cool and happening, and people are rolling around and having fun with it. It's exciting!"

Though the CMI may not be traveling to London any time soon, Mary Quicke's enthusiasm for cheese can be felt across the world. If an international Cheese Enthusiasm Ambassadorship position opened up, Quicke would be one of the top three candidates. She can be found anywhere, any time, spreading her love for the community and the fruits of its labor.

Flipping cheddar curds at Quickes, Devon, England

Fitting then that Mary is heading the new British Academy of Cheese exams. Starting in the spring of 2017, the United Kingdom will join the U.S. in certifying cheese professionals who have thorough knowledge of cheese history, care, sales and science. This is a pretty big deal because a) it encourages education in the field, making cheese more well-cared for and customers better served, and b) it serves up a sense of pride.

"Now when your mom asks you to get a proper job, you can say, excuse me, look at this," says Quicke. 

Whew... feeling lucky at the moment that my parents took me on trips to creameries all during childhood so they consider my career not only valid but an opportunity for their gastronomical enrichment. Win-win.

In short, Quicke hopes that becoming certified will make you "unmessable in your knowledge." Its been a while since Quicke returned to the family business in 1984, when people kept asking her "why aren't you making block cheese?" Now people want to hear about terroir, specific cheesemakers, to feel that they're supporting a movement or small farms.

"We want to make sure that the cheese professional has everything they need to give a proper answer and serve a cheese at its peak of perfection."

The tests will differ from the American test because they'll start with Level 1- basic training, to 2- professionally able to educate others, to 3- an expert, to 4- a Master. As in a Master of Cheese like a Master Sommelier (they don't have this exam ready yet but I'm hoping it'll require experts to cut cheese with lightsabers instead of cheese wire) where one would know everything from cheesemaking to distribution, education and importing.

Someday she hopes for residency, a sort of international cheese professional exchange. Quicke thinks there would be a lot to learn on both ends, "I've gone from being a judge at ACS many years ago, thinking "oh, the Americans are kind of doing well," to tasting and thinking, "these ones are world-class- there are now so many beautiful, balanced, complex cheeses here. I had many oh-my-goodness moments during judging."

Some of her favorites are the Jasper Hill Cellars collections, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, anything by Andante's Soyoung Scanlan, and Spring Brook Farm Tarentaise Reserve. To start.

And if Mary really loves the CMI, she has to also love pairings or The Perfect Bite part of the competition, right? She does. And she has her own favorite Quicke pairings too- her mature cheddar with single estate Darjeeling tea, or, unblended rye whisky. Cheers.

Photos are from my visit to Quicke's during my Isles cheesemaking tour two years ago. 

Quicke’s hand rolled butter. Not cheese. But,,… butter. Because, butter.

A Visit to Tomales Farmstead: When a Guild Class Means Baby Goats

Early December I had the lucky opportunity to visit this dear kid above. Just as snuggly as she looks, Sweet Pea (whose given name I may have forgotten) pranced up to the fence to demand head scratches and nibble on my fingers. Only a year or two from now, Sweet Pea will not only give snuggles, she will be a valuable milk supplier to Tomales Farmstead Creamery.

Classes at Tomales Farmstead mean baby goats.

This post is a photo dairy of my recent visit to Tomales Farmstead, where I taught a class to some amazing cheese lovers who bid on a class with me at the creamery to raise money for the California Cheese Guild. Bless you, cheese lovers.

After a farm tour and tasting (which anyone can arrange) I taught the class how to make cheese: whole-milk ricotta from the farm's goat milk and Straus cow's milk, traditional ricotta from leftover whey, and queso fresco with milk from the creamery's goat herd. Raw milk, ya'll. This was one of my favorite classes to teach.

Not only did I get to team up with Hadley, one of the Tomales Farmstead cheesemakers (below) and ask her geeky cheese questions, I got to cuddle with her baby between culturing and pressing the queso fresco. Classes at Tomales Farmstead can mean human babies, too.

We visited the growing babes, attempted to herd some goats to the pastures after being milked, peeked in the creamery, and made and likely each ate more cheese in three hours than one should in a week. That's all to say that we left very happy.

Thanks for the opportunity, Tomales Farmstead! I look forward to joining you again soon.

Baby Tomales Farmstead Atika

As a heads up, if you, like me love the combo tour and class events, I'll be teaching a Cheesemaking 101 class nearby at Point Reyes Creamery's The Fork on Saturday, January 13th. We'll tour the farm, visit the creamery, taste Point Reyes's lineup, have lunch, then make cheese with the same milk and cream used for beauties like Bay Blue. Queso fresco, creme fraiche, cultured butter, and ricotta. Tickets up.

Holiday Cheese Bling: My Favorite Stocking Stuffers

Winter brings on an urge to invest in cashmere socks and sparkly Christmas trees, to light menorahs, and attend festive classes. And, gifty feelings! Happy holidays to my readers and cheese lovers out there! It's time for cheese gifts.

Below are a few things I'd love to find in my stocking this year. Some cheese bling picks are for my San Francisco Bay Area crew, and some go further and wider into the cheese world and are order-able online.

This holiday season, stay warm. Excuse yourself to watch extra puppy videos and sip mulled wine if Aunt Doris starts to ask you about your career choices at the holiday table, and eat well. This is Cheese Season, after all.

Much love and happy holidays

Cheese Bling & Gifts, Holiday Style

San Francisco Bay Area Local Picks

June Taylor's Mince Meat: So classic, so English, so amazing with cheddars. June Taylor's Still Room is open extra holiday hours this week. She also makes the best preserves in Berkeley and Christmas cakes with hand-painted wrappers. Still, my fave for the holidays is Taylor's mince meat. Tastes just like what my Aunt Becky used to make. Gift with a farmhouse cheddar like Fiscalini, Westcombe, or Montgomery's.

Baby Tomales Farmstead Atika

Tumalo Farms & Tomales Farmstead Cheese & Farm Tour

Tomales Farmstead is not only one of the top new creameries in California, it is one of best places to visit in Marin. Seriously, this place is gorgeous. Baby goats, a stream running through the property, and an inspiring view of the green hills that will make you forget about any lack of water in our beautiful state. But the best part may be cheesemaker Hadley, who walks you through the farm, tells you which goats are named Corky or Peanut, and tell the stories of the cheeses she and the Tomales team make on site. Pair with a visit to a local winery.

Cheesemaking 101 & Wine: Two Cheeses, Cultured Butter & Wine

Saturday, Jan 28th, 2:00-5:00pm, Berkeley, Potliquor

Yes, this is my class! From pressing fluffy curds into fresh cheese to churning your own cultured butter, learn the basics of cheesemaking and culturing in this hands-on, 3 hour, lively class. After a breezy cheesemaking we’ll make queso fresco, fromage blanc, rich butter, and sample what we just made with wine!

Or.... private cheese classes. Hit me up. I make pretty gift certificates.

Beyond the Bay Cheese Bling & Gifts

Books: These books are written by some of my favorite people and cheese buddies, ever. Congrats to them and their books this year!

Photo by Noah Feck for Art of The Cheese Plate, below.

The Art of the Cheese Plate by Tia Keenan

The photography by Noah Feck and Tia's recipes for cheese condiments (matcha marshmallows, anyone?) puts this one in my top 10 cheese book list. Here's a link my interview with Tia, which asks her to pair cheese to famous people like RZA.

The New Cocktail Hour: The Essential Guide to Hand-Crafted Drinks

Cocktails. With Cheese Pairings by blogger and author Tenaya Darlington. Enough said.

The Oxford Companion of Cheese

An ultimate cheese reference book. A joint project written by amazing people in the cheese industry like Dr Catherine Donnelly and Mateo Kehler. Kind of like a mini-encycopedia of cheese.

Other Things to Wrap

Cool cheese boards.

A tree slice, above.

A tree slice another way.

Or a round cheese plate from Brooklyn Slate, circle.

Cheese plate edibles

Honey: For your honey and cheese lovers out there, Formaggio Kitchen has an amazing selection of the golden stuff, like this Wild Thyme honey from Crete.

 Cheese & Chocolate 6-Month Club, Saxelby Cheese

Saxelby Cheese is a legendary shop, and they don't hold back in the gift-ables either. Chocolate and cheese is the new.... gourmet Friday night?

Talbot & Arding's Fruit and Nut Loaf

For all the soft cheeses in your life. Pair with a young goat cheese or rich sheep's milk like Abbaye de Belloc, or an Alpine like Comté. Or, just toast and top with cultured butter. Also gluten-free.

Cheers!

Cheese Season [The Holidays] + 1st Point Reyes Creamery Class

Well my friends I don't know if you can hear the jingle bells ringing from where you sit, but from my desk the morning after teaching a burrata class in Vallejo, and hours before teaching a mozzarella class in San Francisco, they're chiming loud and clear. Turkey's been basted and eaten, the first Christmas tree appeared on Instagram, and menorahs are being dusted off. Meaning, it's offically Cheese Season.

Otherwise known as "The Holidays," by some, Cheese Season is the time from Thanksgiving (or the week before, if you count turkey day cheese plates) to the end of Hanukah when cheese educators and mongers can be found at the end of the night either: exhausted, in a bubble bath with a glass of wine, or, tired and nursing a negroni or pint with their fellow mongers in a club. Booze is almost always involved at the end of a Cheese Season night. I teach 3 to 10 times the amount of classes in a month, mongers sell 300-700% the amount of cheese they normally do, and, quite frankly, it's just hard keeping up with eating the amount of cheese released in winter (hello Rush Creek!) that one needs to as a professional. Whew.

All in all, Cheese Season is awesome. And... a little tiring (come on and rain, California, Kirstin needs more bubble baths).

With all this in mind, here are some public holiday events. December and the beginning of January are packed and there is more to come. I'm also happy to announce that this January I will be teaching my first class at The Fork- at Point Reyes's Creamery, and will be using the same milk to make our fresh cheeses as they do to make Bay Blue. Yessss.

Lastly, In celebration of the season and to encourage early gifty thoughts and bookings, I'm offering my blog readers an early-bird discount for the holidays as a way of saying thank you for your support.

private cheese making classes San Francisco

Reserve a class by December 10th (the class itself can be before or after December) and I'll offer a $50 discount on any of my private cheesemaking, or cheese and wine classes in your home. Email for my class topic sheets and prices to learn more. Gift certificates are also available.

And now.... Public Cheese Classes!

Holiday Cheesemaking: Chevre, Truffles & Cheeseballs!

Thursday, Dec 8th, 6:00-9:30pm, San Francisco, 18 Reasons

Want to make your very own extraordinarily fresh cheese for the holiday table? We do! And luckily we have author and instructor Kirstin Jackson to show us how. In this hands-on class, we’ll learn to prepare a fresh chevre, goat cheese truffles, and an old-school, supremely festive cheeseball!

Taste the Cheese Club: Winter Fair at Solano Cellars

Saturday, Dec 10th, 2:00-4:00pm, Albany, Solano Cellars Wine Shop & Bar

To celebrate this holiday season and all the tastiness it offers, we’ll be popping bottles and slicing cheese. Come by to taste the special selection wines, our world-famous holiday case, our craft beer club (just as fabulous, almost as famous), and sample Kirstin’s even more famous and delicious cheese club. For those feeling gifty or for those just feeling like sampling the goods before taking them to a party. Complimentary, drop-in.

Cheesemaking: Washed Rind Cheese

Sunday, Dec 11th, 11:00-2:00 pm, San Francisco, The Cheese School

You may not have thought a luscious, pungent washed rind cheese could come from your own home kitchen, but it can, and home-cheesemaking enthusiast Kirstin Jackson will show you the whey from fresh milk to stinky deliciousness.

Rich Reds and Cheese

Tuesday, Dec 20th, 6:30-8:30pm, San Francisco, The Cheese School 

On a winter’s night it feels so right to find warmth and comfort in sipping on the dark, rich wines that take the nip off winter’s chill. Yet bold red wines can make a cheese pairing go so wrong. In this class you’ll pair these sumptuous wines with seasonal cheeses and learn the guiding principles of pairing with big flavors.

Artisan Home Cheese Making & Cultured Dairy at Point Reyes Dairy

Friday, Jan 13th, 6:00-9:30pm, Point Reyes, The Fork Kitchen

At The Fork, we specialize in farm-to-table, which is why all of our classes always include a tour of the farm. You’ll learn our history, meet our cows, understand our commitment to sustainability and see how we create our farmstead cheeses – all right here on the Giacomini Dairy. Inside The Fork kitchen, you will receive a hands-on education in fresh cheese making from Instructor Kirstin Jackson. Kirstin will first give an overview of the fundamental process of cheesemaking and then you’ll taste, sample and discuss the styles and flavors of different fresh cheeses.

A Farm Visit to Milleens Cheese: Feeding Calves & Free Range Kids

October felt like a loooooong month- busy, car problems, job stuff, little time to write. Felt a little heavy. Then, this week hit, and suddenly last month felt as light and breezy as skipping through a field of poppies alongside a liter of puppies. When browsing through photos from my summer trip to Ireland this week, a few batches made me smile. One of them was from my trip to Milleens. For a little history about the creamery's impact on on Irish cheese, read more here.

Milleen's original cheesemaker Veronica Steele is as important to Irish cheese as Laura Chenel or Alison Hooper of Vermont Creamery is to the U.S. cheese movement. It's on her kitchen stove that she and other Cork cheesemakers learned how to make the washed-rind cheese for which the region is celebrated. Milleens is on my list of top ten washed-rind cheeses world-wide.

With a soft and wonderfully stinky rind and sweet center that oozes with age, Millens is saucer size and persimmon orange. Let's keep crossing our fingers it makes it to the states.

The creamery is in Eyries- a town alongside the rocky Cork coast whose three-to-four block town center is lined with bright blue, yellow, and fuchsia houses. Here I had the chance to join the Steele family (children of current head cheesemaker and Veronica's son, Quinlan Steele) in roaming the farm and feeding the baby calf who needed a little extra love until her mother grew used to nursing. I had wandered around the creamery and tasted different ages of the cheese on a previous visit a couple years before and walking around the farm this time was a perfect finale.

Revisiting the photos of the animals on the green Irish grass and and watching Quinlan's children eat blackberries from the hedges as they climbed the stone fences reminded me of how happy and welcomed I felt when visiting. In the middle of everything, it made me feel lighter.

Light enough to remember that even in a time of uncertainty and doubt, it's good to have hope. There are wonderful people out there and free range kids who make forts out of berry bushes. And after remembering my conversation with Quinlan (a sustainability advocate who is just a touch less passionate about his local community than he his about his children), inspired to be more active and vocal about what matters to me and treasured members of my community going forward.

Here is to hope, community, welcoming strangers, and free-range kids with blackberries on their faces. And amazing funky-sweet Irish cheese.

Thank you for the visit, Milleens!