LAURA WERLIN

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Laura's Slice of Life

 

Spring 2022

5/5/2022

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Nicasio Valley Cheese Company "Lucas Valley"

There's a new cheese just hitting the market from California’s only organic farmstead cheese operation, Nicasio Valley Cheese Company. This latest creation is unquestionably my new favorite.

Nicasio Valley Cheese Company’s new cheese called Lucas Valley is a nod to the scenic valley just to the south of the equally beautiful Nicasio Valley. For Star Wars fans, Lucas Valley is also home to the famed Skywalker Ranch.

According to Scott LaFranchi, an owner of Nicasio Valley Cheese and head cheesemaker, the inspiration for this was the French washed rind cheese called Reblochon. The difference is that the French one is made with raw milk and can tilt toward the stronger side of washed rind cheeses. Lucas Valley is neither unpasteurized nor is it particularly strong. But boy, is it good.

A lot of care goes into making the cheese including hand-washing it with the brine and b, linen solution numerous times over the course of the first month and aging it for at least two. B. linens are the bacteria that make the surface of the cheese orange and lend washed rind cheeses their funk, though they have all kinds of ripening purposes beyond that.

The new cheese pays a nod to its older sibling, Nicasio Valley’s Nicasio Square. La Franchi explains they wanted a cheese similar to Square but one that wouldn’t get as strong over time. Rather than square, they wanted a round. The result is the four-pound wheel with a light orangish-tannish hue, a slightly tacky rind with “tiny crunchies”– basically crystallized minerals – and a texture that, when young, is something I’d call “bouncy” – firm enough to hold between two fingers and yet still creamy on the palate. It gets softer and creamier with just a little bit of age, and the funk factor on both the palate and in the aroma increases just a bit too.

On the palate, the first thing I tasted was roasted onion. I also got a hint of smokiness, some yeastiness, a bit of fruitiness, and some brown butter notes. The washed rind funk isn’t absent but neither is it dominant. The salt is spot on – not always an easy achievement with washed rind cheeses.

Lucas Valley is just beginning to hit the market so be on the lookout. It’s not my new favorite cheese for nothing!


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Vineyard to Vintner 2023

​Make your plans now for the 2023 Vineyard to Vintner event celebrating the wines and wineries in the beautiful Stag’s Leap District in the Napa Valley. This year, I was lucky enough to team up with Silverado Vineyards president Russ Weis to lead two seminars on cheese and wine pairing with some truffle mac & cheese thrown in for fun and flavor. See what we drank (1986 cab, anyone?) and get the delicious and yes, decadent, recipe below.

In addition to Silverado Vineyards beautiful Borreo Ranch Rosa (rosé of sangiovese), which I paired with the classic, Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog, and Borreo Kerner – a relatively unknown Italian white grape full of tropical aromas and bracing acidity, paired with Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam -- Russ brought out magnums of Silverado Vineyards’s 1986 Stag’s Leap cabernet sauvignon. Now that was special. Cheese-friendly too. I paired it with a cheese you may not know called Matos St. George “Piccante.” This is a small-production cheese made by Joe Matos Cheese Company in Santa Rosa, California. It’s been around for many generations starting in the Azores off the coast of Portugal but is made on such a small scale, most people beyond northern California don’t know about it. Luckily, they ship.

The final stellar wine poured was the 2018 Abel, a gorgeous Stag’s Leap District single vineyard cabernet sauvignon that is one of Silverado’s Classic Collection. Classic though it is, it is sold only at the winery and online. It’s worth the splurge.

As for that mac & cheese, the truffle in it came from Point Reyes Cheese Co’s TomaTruffle core – a clever creation and perfect for cooking and cheese plates – both of which I used it for.

Want the recipe? Find it here. 

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Ribera y Rueda

And finally, let’s talk about wine. I traveled to the land of castles and lions in Spain - Castilla y León - where I learned firsthand about the wines of Ribera del Duero and Rueda - together known as Ribera y Rueda.

The wines made there – Tempranillo (red) from Ribera and Verdejo (white) from Rueda – are as interesting, complex, historical, and exciting as it gets. I saw vines over 100 years old that were still producing grapes! Winemakers now are using modern techniques to make wines in both the traditional styles and more New World styles – something for everyone. All are thrilling, and most importantly for all of us, cheese-friendly. Read my introduction to Ribera y Rueda here.
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The oldest vines produce some of the best Tempranillo in Ribera del Duero
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Bodegas Vidal Soblechero, a winery in Rueda, uses predator birds for rodent control.
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Luckily, this eagle didn’t mistake me for dinner.
 

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fall 2021

11/7/2020

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Happy 90th Vella cheese company!

It always surprises me when, at the mention of Vella Dry Jack, the person I'm talking to hasn’t heard of it. After 90 years of production, how can this cheese still be a secret to so many? Whatever the reasons, Vella Cheese Company, originator and maker of this cheese, is celebrating its 90th birthday this month -- a milestone that should cause all cheese aficionados to give a collective hurrah.

The creator of this cheese was Gaetano (Tom) Vella. Vella began his cheese operation in 1931 in Sonoma, California, where he made Monterey Jack among other cheeses. At the urging of the local Italians in Sonoma who wanted a hard grating cheese, he tweaked the recipe for Monterey Jack to create a cheese that could go the distance on the aging shelf. In so doing, he literally reinvented the wheel and gave birth to Vella Dry Jack, and American original.

Also original was Ignazio (“Ig”) Vella, Tom's son. Ig became a legendary figure in the American cheese community, not only as a tireless promoter of his own cheeses but also as a champion of American cheeses everywhere.

Anyone visiting Ig at the Vella Cheese factory might have been lucky enough to catch him him bending over the vats to scoop up curds into large pieces of muslin, squeeze those curds to extract some of the whey, roll them between his body and the side of the vat to for perfectly-shaped wheels, expertly twist the corners of the muslin to create a wheel-shaped "sack" of curds and, along with that, create the signature indentation on the top of the wheel, place them on a rack and continue with the remaining curds and muslin until the vat was empty.

After that, the cheese would be pressed and ultimately placed in its own slot in the wooden aging racks, though not before being brushed with a mixture of cocoa, black pepper and oil. This coating protects the cheese during its long stay on the aging shelf - a year or two. It looks pretty nifty too.

If you haven’t tasted Vella Dry Jack, I urge you to do so. With its notes of nuts and butter topped off with a pleasant tang, the longer aged Special Select is my favorite. No matter its age, though, Vella Dry Jack fits perfectly in almost any context -- as a snacking cheese, on an elegant cheese board, or, for its original intent -- grated on pasta, salad, or any dish that needs a sprinkle of a whole lot of goodness.

Vella Cheese Company is now in the hands of the next generation, which I can only hope will be around another 90 years – at least.

in memoriam

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​The American cheese community is a little less rich after recently losing two shining lights in the industry.
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Anne Saxelby, founder of Saxelby’s Cheese in New York and an American cheese champion, succumbed to heart complications at her home on October 9th. She was 40 years old.

Anne started Saxelby’s in 2006 in a tiny shop at the Essex Market in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan. I will never forget visiting her shortly after she put out her shingle. Her shop was small but mighty, her smile warm and broad, and her cheeses – many from the smallest farms in the Northeast – each told a story of place and of people. That was Anne – someone who was all about the cheesemakers, the land, and the craft of cheesemaking itself. Indeed, a few years after meeting Anne at her shop, I was visiting Andy and Mateo Kehler at their farm in Vermont, Jasper Hill Farm and Cellars, and there she was, ostensibly just hanging out at Jasper Hill, hands in the vat, literally feeling and crafting the work of the artisan cheesemaker. As it happens, she was also collaborating with Jasper Hill on a cheese called Calderwood, which Saxelby’s and many other cheese shops have sold ever since. Anne walked her talk, which is why her family and friends have created the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund. This will provide funding for financially challenged teens and young adults to work as apprentices in sustainable systems and agriculture and bring what they learned back to their communities. Anne leaves behind three children and her husband, Patrick Martins, founder of Heritage Foods.

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Pat Polowski was also much beloved in the cheese community. His unique ability to bridge the most technical details about the whys and hows of cheese with language we non-scientists could understand endeared him to us all. He died August 29th at just 29 years old.

Among many things, Pat was a food science guy who focused on cheese. He created the cheesescience.org website to bring cheese science under one “roof,” a kind of one-stop shopping for all who were (and are) interested in what makes cheese, well, cheese. While the site may be a technical guide, it is also a fun guide too – a reflection of Pat’s ability to weave his unique brand of humor into science to make it fun and understandable.

A component of the site, which is still up and running, is the Cheese Science Toolkit - a feature Pat explained this way: “The Cheese Science Toolkit is intended to be a science guidebook for those who have a special place in their heart for cheese.” We all have a special place in our hearts for Pat whose brief time on earth and even shorter time in the cheese community has left a legacy that will surely keep his memory alive for a long time to come.

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