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Older and Sharper
“The older I get, the sharper I like it,” says Snook, in the
cheese house at Pleasant Valley Farm near Ferndale. “At my house,
I’m eating a 15-month-old Mutschli.”
As she packs curd into molds, Snook talks about the cheese that
she’s made for the last 20 years. Today she is making gouda, which
will be five months old by Christmas. On other days she makes a
farmstead cheese from a French culture, or a Mutschli, using a
Swiss culture and recipe. She also makes flavored goudas and a
Norwegian holiday cheese with cloves, cumin, and caraway. (This
cheese, Snook instructs, should be eaten as dessert, with ginger
cookies or dark beer.)
Because she makes her cheese from unpasteurized milk, it must be
aged at least 60 days before sale. That is fortunate for us. Her
aged gouda is divine—rich, complex, and tangy.
Snook is adamant about her milk. “You can make a good cheese
with pasteurized milk,” she says, quoting another cheese maker.
“You can make a better cheese with unpasteurized.”
Cheese from unpasteurized milk is a living product, she says.
“It leaves you satisfied. When you pasteurize, you kill all the
good stuff, too.”
Although Snook’s observation echoes one of the principal
controversies in cheese making, the fact that WSU and Beecher’s use
pasteurized milk complicates the argument.
Snook’s father, George Train, who milks the farm’s 70 cows,
attended WSU in the 1950s and was a member of CUDS. Train and his
wife Dolores bought the farm in 1963 and started building a herd,
which now numbers about 70, a mix of Jersey, Guernsey, Brown Swiss,
Holstein, and Milking Shorthorn. Originally, the Trains bottled and
delivered milk. But Train figured there had to be a way to get more
value from his milk. He decided to make cheese. In spite of the
skepticism of the Creamery manager at the time, whom Train
consulted, he forged ahead, experimenting with different cultures
and working toward the fine cheese made by his daughter today.
Snook packs the curds into rounded molds and stacks them nine
high, then places a metal weight on top and leaves them for two
hours. Tomorrow she will soak them in brine for 24 to 48 hours,
then coat them in wax and place them in the aging room.
Aging is what turns the bland, rubbery curds into anything from
simple workaday cheese to works of gustatory art, again depending
on the ingredients and the cheese maker.
After the first three weeks or so, most of the bacteria have
died, having consumed the nutrients that they can use. But the
enzymes they produced continue to break down the fat and protein
into fatty acids, peptides, and some amino acids. It is this
process from which the flavor develops.
Snook makes 130 pounds of cheese a day, four days a week.
Beecher’s sells about 80 pounds a month. Most of the rest of their
cheese is sold through their farm store, though at Christmas their
cheese goes worldwide. This in spite of their not advertising at
all. There is no Pleasant Valley Web site. But the New York
Times food editor has visited the farm a couple of times. With
such occasional coverage and word of mouth, the only business
problem Pleasant Valley seems to have is not being able to produce
enough cheese to keep the aging room full.
Later, in the house, we taste Snook’s cheeses chronologically.
Two months. Nice flavor, mild, creamy. Six months. Umm. Getting
interesting, a little sharpness developing.
And a year. Yes. This is what getting older is really all
about.
The Time is Ripe
The dairy industry has just gone through a century of
consolidation, says Marc Bates. As an industry matures, it
consolidates. The result is the identical-looking and -tasting
cheddars and jacks that filled grocery store coolers not too long
ago.
But that was then. Fortunately, we live on the downside of that
cycle. Lack of diversity can last only so long. Those industrial
cheeses are still clogging up the coolers, but joining them are
fine, deeply luxurious farmstead cheeses from around the country.
The bottom end of the market, says Bates, is opening up again.
Industry preference for consistency and shelf life over flavor
and variety has provided opportunity.
“We also have organic and sustainable ag movements encouraging
small manufacturers,” says Bates. “Everything is ripe for this to
happen.”
We may not have reached cheese heaven quite yet. But we’re well
past the purgatory of cheese sameness. There is a lot more cheese
to go with our wine than there was a few years ago. Besides the
cheese course alumni mentioned earlier, Pierre Louis Monteillet,
who attended this year’s cheese making class, is making a fine goat
cheese in Dayton. The already legendary Sally Jackson in Omak
produces eccentric cow, goat, and sheep cheeses that hold their own
with the finest cheese in the world. Appel Farms in Lynden,
Estrella Family Creamery in Montesano, Grace Harbor Farms in
Blaine, Port Madison Farm on Bainbridge Island, and White Oak
Farmstead in Battle Ground are all building Washington’s new cheese
culture.
And of course, all along we’ve had Cougar Gold, rich, tangy,
with that smooth creamy finish. We live in a wonderful time.
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Fortunately, says Pleasant Valley Farm's Joyce
Snook, the Creamery's cheese-making class scientifically confirmed
the practices she has honed over the past 20 years. Photo by Tim
Steury.
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