by Sophia Stern
The first style of cheese I fell in love with was a goat milk gouda. I was five and regularly haunted my local cheese shop in Brooklyn. For years, I would ask my parents to treat us all to this gouda until I was old enough to spend my own money on a wedge here and there. Eventually, I started working at this cheese shop during my summers in college and learned to sell this gouda to the masses.
In 2019, I moved to Minnesota and started working at France 44. I got to know our customers, our products, and slowly our vendors. Eagerly, I got to know the goat gouda we sold, Brabander, and fell in love all over again. I learned that a small company called Essex Street imported this incredible cheese. Their portfolio is thoughtful, small and very mighty. We sell four of their incredible goudas imported from Fromagerie L’amuse: The raw milk and savory Wilde Weide, the buttery sheep milk Rispens, the tangy and bright goat milk Brabander, and the impossibly crystalized and complex Signature, aged for two years.
Betty Koster, Founder of L’Amuse
Essex Cheese hosts an annual L’amuse internship, and any cheesemonger who sells their goudas is qualified to apply. Not only do interns get to go to the Netherlands, but they are hosted by founder, Betty Koster. The Kosters changed the gouda game when they founded L’amuse. They support thoughtful farmers who care for their land and animals. They insist on high quality milk. They challenge the standard practices of gouda aging, going for longer and in more volatile conditions.
In 2019, it became my secret goal to apply for the internship. I’d have to be patient, as the pandemic stopped the program until fall 2023. I applied and half a year later found myself hurtling across Europe, train bound from London to Amsterdam in mid-April. The internship lasted two weeks, taking myself and my co-intern across the Dutch countryside. We visited farms and factories, learned about cheese making and cheese selling, got to meet lots of animals, and learn about Dutch culture. Most importantly, we ate a lot of cheese.
My co-intern, Matt, and I picked up our rental car and drove to Cono, a cheese making facility north of Amsterdam. This cooperative factory is home to the L’amuse Signature, an annatto-dyed crystalline gouda aged for 24 months at higher-than-average temperatures. You’ve probably seen a stack of this stunning gouda with its orange rind sitting on our cheese counter. The higher aging temperature allows the gouda to have a softer texture, while still developing all the tyrosine crystals we’ve come to love in our aged goudas.
Then, Matt and I worked a shift at the L’amuse Cheese Shop in Amsterdam. The customers, though surprised by our English greeting of “Hello! How are you?” were happy to work with us, their English strong and cheese preferences stronger. Though the United States market leans towards aged, crunchy goudas, the Dutch prefer younger gouda. They eat it on bread for breakfast and lunch. It’s a household staple.
The coolest part of working in the shop was seeing all the European cheese we can’t import to the United States. We coveted the raw milk cheeses younger than 60 days and were awed by the cheese with such small production they hardly make it to the Dutch cheese shop, let alone across the Atlantic. Our favorite was a water buffalo blue cheese made by four former Dutch businessmen turned cheesemakers.
The rest of our two weeks were focused primarily on farm work. This was the part that I, a New York City girl, was most nervous about. We worked with the makers of Wilde Weide, father and son duo, Jan and Joost, who make just seven wheels a day of their raw milk gouda on a polder in the middle of the Netherlands. Jan picked us up from a parking lot along the water. It was raining and he piled our suitcases into his small motorboat. We climbed aboard and enjoyed a brief, thrilling boat ride across the brackish water to the farm called ‘Solitude’. Though isolated, the farm is beautiful. If you’ve ever seen the Wilde Weide label, it looks exactly like this.
Jan and Joost do everything the right way, not the easy way. They consider the health of the dirt and grass, the quality of life for their cows, even how their farming practices will affect the meadow birds in their fields. Their small herd of 40 cows are cherished and Jan knows each of them on sight. Jan milks the cows and Joost runs the business side of things. Together, they make the one-of-a-kind gouda they call Wilde Weide, or wild meadow. Keeping the milk raw creates a complexly savory gouda unlike what most of us in the States are familiar with. Like most of the Dutch, Jan likes his cheese when it’s only a few months old. The Wilde Weide we receive is closer to 15 months, firmer and scattered with crystals.
Sophia and Matt with Baby Nadine
Jan and Joost graciously allowed Matt and I to assist in the cheese making and affinage (aging). We mixed the curd, shaped wheels, and handled the plastic molds. We painted wax rinds, flipped wheels on wooden boards, and checked in on the cows. On our second day, we were summoned to watch a seasoned mother deliver her calf for the year. The little female arrived at Solitude healthy and strong. Jan was delighted to have another milking cow. We helped name her Nadine.
Wheel of Wilde Weide
Working at Wilde Weide was immersive, romantic, and hard work. There was always something to do, and always a generous cheesemaker to show us how to do it. The farm looked magically lush and vibrant. The grasses in the field were dense and wild, full of biological diversity. The farm buzzed with life: chickens laying eggs in the hay, mooing cows, three stoic farm cats watching everything. Wilde Weide had always been a place on a sticker, but now I knew it was real. And I knew that every part of the island went into making the gouda taste so good. I was sorry to leave and very excited for what was next.
Sheep-uccino!
The second farm we went to also took us across water, this time the North Sea. Matt and I boarded a ferry and crossed to the West Frisian Island of Terschelling. Terschelling is an island of dunes, full of sand and rolling hills. The island hosted us for three days as we worked on De Zeekraal, a farm named after the sea beans that grow across the sandy beaches. This farm made a few different sheep dairy products. They made wax rind and natural rind goudas with and without spices, fresh cheese, ice cream, yogurt, and more. My favorite was the sheep-uccino, a cappuccino made with freshly milked sheep cream. As fresh as it gets. Matt and I milked the sheep, which was as cool as it was intimidating. We helped turn that milk into gouda, a process a lot easier with 10-pound wheels instead of Wilde Weide’s 30.
This family mostly sells their cheese locally, on the island of Terschelling. Some of it goes to the Dutch mainland, very little crosses the Atlantic to the United States. I was grateful to try this gouda. It tasted like salt air and beach rocks, like the sandy grasses the sheep graze on. This gouda reminded me again so much of terroir and how the place a product is made imparts its unique flavor.
Our final leg of the internship took us to our last farm, Rispens. This sheep farm was back on the mainland and even further north. Rispens, unlike the previous two farms, is not a farmstead operation. In other words, they do not make their own cheese. Their milk gets picked up a few times a week to be thoughtfully turned into gouda by full time cheesemakers. Because they don’t make cheese, Matt and I spent our time focusing on animal care and farm work. Rispens dairy is run by sister and brother, Janita and Ype. We helped them milk and feed the herd. We held ewes still while Janita ultra-sounded each sheep to check on their pregnancy. Ype showed us how to operate the milking floor.
Newborn lamb at Rispens
Suddenly, Janita and Ype got a call. On one of their auxiliary pastures, there was a newborn lamb. None of the sheep had been pregnant when the Rispen’s family adopted them. All the sheep were supposed to be ewes. We got in the farm truck, suited up in coveralls and boots, and drove to the dike where sure enough, a small lamb was flocking with the adult sheep. The four of us got behind them, herded the startled sheep into a makeshift pen, and tracked down the baby, mother, and-sure enough- the secret ram. We took mother and baby back to the farm for a warm night and to make sure they both stayed healthy.
As cheese professionals, we romanticize the concept of farmstead. We adore the idea that our cheese is made in the place where the milked animals graze. But Rispens reminded me that farmstead may not always be the way to go. Animal tending and cheese making are two full time jobs. There is something to be said for less stressed farmers and their subsequent happy herds. And it gave the Rispens family time to make the most delicious dessert I’d ever had, a tart that tasted like a sheep milk cheesecake and key lime pie combined.
After three farms in a week and a half, I felt extremely satisfied and accomplished. I was also ready to return to city life. I had understood in theory what it meant to make cheese, but nothing explained the complexity like the tactile experience of what it really means to care for farm animals, the land, handle the milk and turn it into cheese. Cheese making is deceptively simple. Good cheese is a condensed representation of hard work, respect for the land and the animals, and care for a place. Cheesemaking is alchemy built on chemistry.
Gouda has become a commodity product, mass produced, made in giant factories from milk from who knows where. Gouda is a product we see so often anonymously in the grocery store: we aren’t always sure what it is, where it comes from, or how it’s made. I was inspired by everyone I met. All these people are dedicating their lives to doing things the hard way in the name of environmentalism, tradition, and love for their craft. What a privilege that these wheels of crunchy gouda make their way across the European continent, over the Atlantic Ocean, and out to the middle of the United States. When you enjoy these delicious cheeses, not only do you get a better product than you can get almost anywhere else, but you support these family farms doing the hard thing for the right reasons.
If you're interested in trying these cheeses while hearing more details and personal stories from each farm, please join us for the Cheese of the Netherlands class on July 17th.
