We're the Cheese!

Everybody loves cheese. Freshly grated over a bowl of pasta, melted between slices of bread, or oozing from a hot slice of pizza, cheese adds flavor to many of our favorite foods. Today, cheese is playing a starring role in the state’s next great culinary revolution. As with wine, olive oil and chocolate, California cheese has become a gourmet item, making appearances at upscale restaurants and taking center stage at gourmet retailers. Behold the power of California cheese.
    Today, hundreds of California cheese makers are producing high-quality, handmade cheeses that are seducing food-lovers to the cheeseboard. The California Milk Advisory Board’s national ad campaign, featuring California’s “happy cows,” reminds us that dozens of the country’s finest cheeses are made here, in our own backyard. In recent years, California cheeses have garnered more awards than any other state’s at the American Cheese Society Competition, the Super Bowl of fine American cheese making. At the competition in Milwaukee in July, California claimed 38 awards. And many experts agree that artisan cheeses from our small producers are on a par with the best cheeses from Europe.
    Laura Werlin, a San Francisco-based writer, is a bona fide cheese-lover. In the past five years, she has achieved renown for her obsession with three authoritative books on cheese and a syndicated cheese column for the Los Angeles Times. Her first book, The New American Cheese (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2000) won the 2001 International Association of Culinary Professionals award; her second book, The All American Cheese and Wine Book (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2003) won a 2004 James Beard cookbook award. Her latest, Great Grilled Cheese: 50 Innovative Recipes for Stove Top, Grill and Sandwich Maker (Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in September 2004. As Werlin, who travels the country tasting cheese, notes, “When all is said and done, most people like cheese best when it is melted between two slices of bread. When I think back to my childhood, it was cheese, especially melted, that I wanted more than anything else, and I ate it every day. As I got older, I gravitated toward cheese in any form and when I traveled in Europe, I was positively awed by the cheese course.”
    Werlin says that cheese might be the easiest and most satisfying food you can serve. “Having a cheese course or cheese tasting at home is a really fun thing to do. It’s very festive and easy because you don’t have to make the cheese. Guests will remember the cheese because of the experience.”
    The gourmet food industry has embraced and nurtured the specialty cheese market. At shops all across America, handcrafted domestic varieties are replacing factory-processed and imported brands alike. Gourmet retailers have trained members of their staff to help consumers understand the wide range of styles and types. Werlin recommends shopping at reputable stores where you can taste before buying. “When you’re tasting cheeses, you want to taste from mild to strong, and from soft to hard. If you’re serving three cheeses, you’ll want to buy 1 to 2 ounces of each cheese per person. An ounce of cheese is quite a lot. For an appetizer, I like to serve one kind of cheese with several accompaniments so that people don’t fill up before dinner. Accompaniments can include fresh or dried fruit, chutney, biscotti or bread. For a three-cheese course, you might choose one goat’s milk cheese, one sheep’s milk cheese and one cow’s milk cheese. Or you can choose three different cow’s milk cheeses because they come in such a wide variety of styles.” As for whether or not to eat the rind, Werlin encourages us to taste it (unless it’s wax) because the rind is a natural part of the cheese.
    There are several factors driving our appetite for artisan cheeses, Werlin says. “In California there is a gravitational pull to agricultural products. The proliferation of farmers’ markets where people can meet cheese producers is also having an effect. At almost any farmers’ market, you’re going to find a cheese maker who will let you sample their cheeses. It’s completely lacking in pretentiousness. These days, people are well traveled. When you go to Europe, there is cheese. You come back with an appetite for that same experience. California has hundreds of cheese makers who can answer that call with so many good cheeses, one thing begets the other.”
    Werlin’s deep appreciation for cheese extends to those who make it. “When I decided to write about American cheeses, it was the natural fusion of a life-long passion and a genuine affection toward American cheese makers. They work really, really hard. Cheese makers are my heroes. You can’t really separate the cheese from its maker and their stories are so compelling.”
   
One family's legacy of fine mozzarella

Roberto Ferrante, who makes fresh Italian mozzarella and ricotta in Benicia, is a real pioneer. Ferrante has been making cheese since 1982. He learned the craft from his father Vincenzo who made it for 60 years in Sicily, New York and California. “My father learned to make cheese in Palermo, Sicily before he came to the U.S. in 1960. He was the first to make fresh mozzarella in California in 1981. He made the cheese. I packaged it, delivered it and went to the bank because my father never knew how to read or write.” A tremendous amount of work goes into cheese making. “Specialty cheeses are still very hands-on because we make and package them by hand,” Ferrante says. “Our first customers included Chez Panisse (the birthplace of California cuisine) and the Cheese Board in Berkeley as well as several Italian restaurants in San Francisco’s North Beach.”
    The Formaggi di Ferrante plant in Benicia processes about 5,000 gallons of cow’s milk a week to make water-packed fresh mozzarella and whole milk ricotta. “We get our milk from happy cows in Turlock,” Ferrante says. “The process is simple, but the way you make cheese is what matters. We make fresh cheese each week based on the orders we receive, so it really is the freshest of fresh mozzarella. Making fresh Italian cheese is what I do best. I make something that I am proud of and once people taste my cheese, they want to buy it.”
    The beauty of fresh mozzarella is its delicate flavor and texture. Because it’s fresh, it’s also fragile. Many commercial brands don’t survive shipping and storage in refrigerator cases without becoming rubbery or losing their sweet tang. Not so with Formaggi di Ferrante’s fresh mozzarella. In October 2003, it won the San Francisco Chronicle’s Taster’s Choice for mozzarella balls, delivering “great texture and creamy, clear flavor.” As Ferrante likes to say, “A Caprese salad with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil and a little extra-virgin olive oil just might be the world’s easiest and best tasting salad.”
   
Happy goats, great cheese

Amy Wend, owner of Skyhill Napa Valley Farms, began making cheese in Napa 12 years ago. She started with three Nubian goats, named Emily, Natalie and Rose. Today her goat herd has expanded to 450 Alpine, La Mancha and Nubian goats, which graze on 200 acres of fenced pasture that she leases in Rio Vista.     “We’ve been making our cheese in Willows but we’re building a new plant in Rio Vista that should be ready in November or December. Right now we’re making all fresh goat’s milk cheese in six flavors: plain, chive and garlic, roasted pepper and olive, smoked pepper crust, feta and rigoatta, a twice cooked chèvre that’s very good for cooking.”
    Before getting into the cheese business, Wend worked in sales and marketing in San Francisco. “I got lucky when I moved to Napa Valley and started researching the food business,” she says. She bought into an organic gardening business and pursued cheese making as a hobby. “We expanded the herd to 45 goats before we started making cheese. We basically bred goats while we built our cheese-making facility and then sold organic produce and cheese at farmers’ markets.” Wend hired two cheese makers that she found through a search firm. “They would make the cheese, and I did the tasting. I had traveled a lot and had eaten plenty of goat cheese so I knew what I wanted it to taste like.”
    Today, Skyhill Napa Valley Farms makes 1,000 pounds of goat cheese each week. The company ships its products all over the country, and you can buy them locally at Vallerga’s Markets in Napa, the Davis Food Co-op in Davis and Sunshine Foods and Dean & Deluca in St. Helena.
    “I absolutely adore the goats,” Wend says about her favorite part of cheese making. “I am most relaxed when I’m with them. They’re very people-oriented and very smart. I deliver cheese to some of our restaurants and I love knowing that what I’m delivering came from my goats. Goats are very happy animals and they live in a great environment—nothing but sheep, goats and lots of land. No flies, no traffic. They get special grain when they’re milked. A happy goat gives good milk that makes great cheese. It all starts with the animal.”
    Author Werlin agrees. “Animals that produce milk for cheese seem to have a life I’d love to live. They get to play all day, then we bring them in to be fed and hand-milked and that is their life. They don’t have to do anything and they get to eat good food. Cheese cows, sheep and goats are treated very, very well because it’s crucial that their milk is good. And the way to get good milk is to not stress the animal. The happy cow TV commercials seem to speak the truth."

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