Garrotxa

Photo by Dio Cramer

by Austin Coe Butler

The story is familiar: A traditional style of cheese, usually made by hand in small regional villages, faces the threat of near extinction before being brought back from the brink by a humble few. Maybe that threat of extinction comes from the exodus of villagers from the countryside to the cities. Maybe it is crushing post-war quotas that demand the factory production of cheeses that are easily mass produced. Maybe it is simply a change in tastes. Many cheeses have faced this fate: Monteboro, Wrångebäck, Red Leicester, maybe Limburger is facing it right now. But while the story is familiar, this cheese might not be, and it offers us an unfamiliar twist on this tale – Garrotxa.

Garrotxa (gahr–ROH-chah) is a semi-firm goat’s milk cheese with a bloomy rind from Catalonia. Catalonia is located in the northeast of Spain (or not, depending on who you ask), but for our purposes, let’s just say it is at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains along the cool, humid coast of the Balearic Sea. The cheese is named after the comarca or county of Garrotxa where it is made in the province of Girona, just north of Barcelona. During the modern production quotas instated by the Franco dictatorship, Garrotxa, like many other small, unscalable traditional Spanish cheeses, nearly went extinct in favor of Manchego. But in the early 1980s a group of urban hippies, the neorurals as they called themselves in Spanish, left the cities for the country. Captivated by rural life, they started communes and cooperatives and learned trades. Among the neorurals were Toni Chueca and Rosa Heras who moved into a countryside bauma (Catalan for a den or shelter) in 1979 and began Fromagte Bauma, the first modern producer of Garrotxa, bringing the cheese back from the brink.

But here’s where that familiar story of death and rebirth changes – when the neorurals began making Garrotxa, they made something different, something that was their own creation. What separates contemporary Garrotxa from its ancestral form is its most conspicuous feature: that beautiful, intimidating bloomy rind or pell florida in Catalan. In the past, Garrotxa had no mold or real rind – it was a young, fresh goat cheese that was consumed within days of production. The humid climate of Garrotxa county at the foot of the Pyrenees and off the coast of the Balearic Sea is an ideal environment for Penicillium molds, especially P. glaucum, the more mild sibling of Penicillium roqueforti that gives Stilton and many other blues their distinctive blue veining and spice. P. glaucum gets derives its species name from “glaucous” meaning dull, bluish-gray, green, and it is easy to see why. The rind on Garrotxa is a gorgeous gray suede. Traditionally, mold on Garrotxa was seen as a defect or sign of spoilage, but the neorurals encouraged it, finding that the mold  was beneficial to the cheese as a ripening agent that tempered the natural acidity of goat’s milk, lending a little sweetness and subtle flavor to the cheese. Garrotxa is now aged for a minimum of twenty days in the abundant caves found naturally occurring in the mountainous and volcanic landscape to encourage this creation of this bloomy rind. 

Concealed beneath this rind is a surprisingly mild cheese with delicate citrus notes, slightly tangy, acidic goatiness similar to chèvre but with a buttery, melt-in-your-mouth creaminess of a cow’s milk cheese like brie. This cheese is a great gateway to goat cheeses and incredibly versatile. Pair it with a traditional wine from Catalonia like Priorat or something less traditional like a Txakoli white or Isategi unfiltered cider, a rustic loaf of bread, stone fruit and pears at the peak of their season, fresh figs, and hazelnuts on a picnic to welcome the coming season. Its low salt makes it an excellent option to have with jamón ibérico and Marcona almonds. Enjoy Garrotxa as a dessert cheese with a sherry like fino or amontillado. There’s no wrong way to eat this cheese. Don’t let this unfamiliar name or intimidating rind stop you from trying a new cheese. It just might become your new favorite.

Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve

by Austin Coe Butler

Many of the world’s great cheeses are named after the places they are made–Stilton, Manchego, Roquefort, Parmigiano–and for good reason. Traditional and artisanal cheeses are inseparable from the climate, culture, and land they are made on. Chemists can analyze cow’s milk and tell by distinct terpenes if they have been grazing on the flora of the Asiago Plateau. Roquefort’s iconic blue-gray crumble is the marriage of the saprotrophic fungus Penicillium roqueforti that is endemic to the Combalou caves the cheese is aged in and the milk of the ewe’s that graze the surrounding fields. To put it simply, making cheese includes the geology and microbiology of a place (and everything in between). Pleasant Ridge Reserve is another cheese named its place of origin, a long, rolling ridge in the Driftless Region .

The Driftless Region takes its name from the absence of “drift” or glacial deposits of sediment and erratics (large boulders) left during the retreat of glaciers. Resistant hills to the northeast and the basins of the Great Lakes diverted glaciation three times from the region, sparing it from being scraped flat by thousands of feet of ice and resulting in the region’s characteristic landscape: hills, dramatic bluffs, rock outcrops, and valleys that were deeply trenched by streams carrying torrents of meltwater when the immense glacial lakes to the north shattered their dams of ice. North of Dodgeville, Wisconsin is one of these long, rolling ridges named Pleasant Ridge.

At the base of this ridge is Uplands Cheese Company where Pleasant Ridge Reserve is made. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a cow’s milk alpine-style cheese in the alpage tradition. From May to October, the closed, crossbred herd of cows tended by Scott Mericka are rotated to a new acre of pasturage every day, and every day Andy and his staff make a batch, approximately 96 wheels, of Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Each day, right before dinner as the cows are coming out of the barn having just been milked, Andy walks the pasturage they’ve grazed and notes what’s growing. Maybe one day the cows dined heavily on orchard grass and mineral lambsquarters; the next day on sweet red clover, bitter dandelions, and meadow fescue. This pasturage results in rich, raw, minutes-old milk that is always complex and different from the previous day’s and is why Andy makes cheese seven days a week, adjusting the salt and rennet in the vat according to the milk, using his hands to feel the texture of the curd, and coaxing the cheese towards different flavors and textures. After the curd is separated from the whey, pressed into molds, and rubbed with salt, the wheels are then aged between ten and fourteen months, and every week every wheel is washed by hand. (Andy says the cheese makes good company in the winter.)

This cheese is a celebration of the seasons and that ephemeral yet essential expression of the land captured in crystalline French: terroir. Each batch and wheel of Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a perfect moment in the pasture and in the dairy. Every season’s cheese is different. Every batch is different. What will this year’s cheese taste like with it’s hot, dry weather? What will next year’s cheese? These are the joys of cheesemakers, mongers, and eaters to ponder. But if each batch is different from the next, how do you choose which one to buy?

Batches of Pleasant Ridge aging in Uplands’ own cellars (Photo by Maura Rice)

Every year around March or April, staff from France 44 drive down to Dodgeville to visit Uplands Dairy and have dinner with Andy and his family. We sample five wheels from five different batches. Tasting these batches side by side is a truly remarkable experience. Each wheel is incredibly complex and balanced between the sweet and savory, but the differences, while subtle, are significant. Some have a gentle, fruity sweetness, others are malty and toasted. In some, the texture is granular, while in others it’s fudgy, toothsome. For all these qualities, Pleasant Ridge Reserve has received many accolades–it is the most awarded cheese in the United States–though none of these awards make it taste better.

Andy Hatch preparing wheels of Pleasant Ridge for the F44 staff to sample (Photo by Maura Rice)

During a year when many people have struggled, especially small farmers and cheesemakers, there’s been a vital sense of urgency to sell cheese from the people we know and are close to. Pleasant Ridge Reserve has been in the cheese case here at France 44 since day one. We know Andy and his family. This year we did not have dinner with Andy and his family. We did not go to Dodgeville. We retreated to the vacant dining room and lay the five wheels side by side and sampled them. This year we selected the batches made on July 14th and 28th. Come see why we thought these two batches were special.

Widmer's Six-Year Cheddar

Photo by Dio Cramer

Third-generation cheesemaker Joe Widmer can boast of more bonafide cheese lineage than almost anyone in America (and even most in Wisconsin). Joe’s grandfather John Widmer, a Swiss-born immigrant, began making Brick cheese in 1922, a tradition the company upholds to this day. Tradition is ingrained at Widmer’s; Joe still works from the same milk vats his grandfather purchased; he presses his cheese with the same real bricks. Along with six siblings, Joe was raised in the quarters above the cheesemaking room, where he resides to this day. It makes, he would tell you, for a short commute. 

The story of Widmer’s begins with Brick cheese, a true Wisconsin original; first created in 1877 by another Swiss immigrant, John Jossi, who found himself living amongst the largely German population of 19th-century Wisconsin. Having married into the cheesemaking business (as one does in Wisconsin), Jossi modeled his new creation after the German Limburger, but used bricks to press out the whey for a firmer, milder cheese. Jossi’s Brick was a hit amongst the funk-loving Germans and a key player in the burgeoning Wisconsin dairy scene that would eventually become the fifth largest dairy production market in the world. 

Joe Widmer pressing some Brick (Photos courtesy of Joe’s dad Jim, who passed away in 2019)

While Brick was the flagship of Widmer’s, the cheese lost popularity in the mid-20th century and now stands largely unknown outside of the Midwest. Today, Joe Widmer is the only cheesemaker in America still producing Brick using traditional techniques. However, in the past several decades, the Widmer’s name has become synonymous with excellent aged cheddars. 

Two cheesemakers cheddaring (stacking the curd to drain whey) some future Widmer’s cheddar (Jim Widmer)

Though best known for their Four-Year Cheddar, we love the Six-Year for its perfect balance of buttery richness, assertive acidity, and unexpected creaminess. While some turophiles may balk at an orange block of cheddar (the pigment comes naturally from annatto seed), we consider Widmer’s amongst the best cheddars we’ve tried. Pair a chunk of Widmer’s Six-Year with a juicy IPA or a big Cab.

The Pairing Week 17: Two greats, great together

This week we’re excited for the opportunity to highlight two more fantastic french offerings as part of our weekly pairing series. Last week we visited a dairy located just outside of Paris, and this week we head southeast to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, to a special place deep in the densely forested Haut Doubs, where we stumble upon a relic of the Franco-Prussian war, Fort Lucotte. Purchased in 1967 by a man named, Marcel Petite, this bunker once used for defending troops, is now enlisting wheels of Comté, with the sole duty of aging them to perfection. Situated not far from the border with Switzerland, the surrounding hills of the Jura mountains are made up of thick limestone rock formations which were used in construction of the fort, some 150 years ago. This defunct military bunker provides the ideal environment for aging wheels of Comté, and allows for the type of slow maturation once envisioned by Marcel Petite. Time is money, but a slower, gentler maturation cycle at lower temperature produces superior wheels of Comté. Wheels of cheese are delivered to the fort from local cheesemakers in neighboring villages, and each day, the fort’s affineurs taste individual cheeses and tailor their aging strategy. Some wheels are destined for the table earlier, with others using time to their advantage as they take on deeper, more complex texture and flavor traits. Our wheel of Comté for this week lands at right around 10 months of age, and possesses notes of caramelized onion, roasted nuts and brown butter, with a boozy finish and the slightest hint of hay. To pair with this cheese, we’ve selected, Domaine Paul Nicolle’s 2018 Chablis, a white wine produced in the village of fleys, just a couple miles from Chablis proper. This 100% chardonnay from northern burgundy provides a perfect balance to the rich aroma and flavor within the cheese. The wine’s creamy mouthfeel, high level of acidity, and taut minerality encourage the cheese to develop on the palate, showcasing an evolution of flavors.

The Pairing Week 16: Camembert + Pallus Messanges Rouge

For this week’s pairing, we continue on our journey through France, this time landing on an organic farm just 35 miles southwest of Paris named, Ferme de la Tremblaye. Since 1967 this dairy farm has been working towards becoming their ideal model of sustainable agriculture; one that mimics the rich, lush soils of the nearby Rambouillet forest by encouraging plant and animal biodiversity, meanwhile minimizing their carbon footprint and eliminating demand for outside resources along the way. Combining modern soil management strategy and farming techniques with traditional methods of cheesemaking has proven successful for this dairy business in its effort to produce the highest quality farmstead cheeses. Their herd of 150 cows and 350 goats supplies milk for production of both soft-ripened, bloomy rind cheeses and blue cheeses. This week we’ve chosen their cow’s milk Camembert for our pairing selection. Made with nothing more than pasteurized whole cow’s milk, cultures, natural rennet, and salt, this cheese is the the best version of a french Camembert available to us here in the U.S. When tasting this cheese, early notes of cooked egg yolk and toasted garlic gradually develop into more of an earthy, mushroomy, damp wood aroma and flavor. The cheese is fudgy, salty and creamy, and tastes like the farm — in the best way possible. We’ve paired this perfectly ripe Camembert with a Chinon from Domaine de Pallus Winery, located in the central Loire Valley, along the northern edge of the Vienne river just southwest from Tours. Following a similar approach and care for his soil, Bertrand Sourdais, the winery’s 5th generation winemaker closely monitors the rhythms of his vineyard in his attempt to produce the best grapes possible. We found the wine’s juicy bubblegum fruit, generous acid, and lightly structured tannins complementary towards the cheese and its heady posture. The wine gently tames the cheese’s pungent bite, while the cheese reveals leafy green notes within the grape, bringing on new levels of complexity.

The Pairing Week 15: French Softies

After focusing our attention on German cheese and wine for the last few weeks of our pairing series, we now shift our energy to France. Our cheese cave has just been reloaded with newly arrived French goodies, and the time to explore them is now. For this week’s pairing, we head to the northern region of Champagne - Ardenne, just east of Paris and bordering Burgundy to the south. Here we find a cheese named, Langres, a deeply rich and creamy, soft-ripened cow’s milk cheese produced at La Fromagerie Germain. Made with pasteurized cow’s milk harvested from a small number of farms within 20 miles of the creamery, this savory cheese is complex in both form and flavor. Whereas most cheeses of this type may be flipped multiple times over the course of the first few days of their life, to achieve a balanced, symmetrical shape, Langres is only turned once during its entire production. The result is a hollowed surface on its top side, in which tradition might recommend a splash or douse of Champagne to aid creaminess and add excitement. While not a Champagne, our wine pairing for this week sparkles, and is produced by winemaker Julien Raimbault, a little ways to the southwest, in the wine growing region of Vouvray, within the Loire Valley. This bright and citrusy, lighter-bodied sparkling white, made with 100% Chenin Blanc grapes, promotes the cheese’s yeasty rind and balances its salty, meaty profile. The bubbles help to scrub the palate and the wine’s delicate sweetness lightens the mood. Do yourself a favor this weekend and celebrate this pairing for yourself!

Your Global Shipping Primer

Ready for your crash course in trans Atlantic cheese shipment? Here we go!

Step 1: Five weeks before our scheduled arrival date we email our cheese importer our order.. Cheese is imported on a file system—52 files per year corresponding to the 52 weeks.

Step 2: Our importer starts the process by sending the order to France where the cheese is eventually consolidated at an enormous market called Rungis. There it is consolidated with our British farmhouse cheeses and any of the other European cheeses we pre-order

Step 3: Time to set sail! The cheese is in a refrigerated container for it’s voyage across the Atlantic. The cheese then lands at the port of Newark in NJ

Step 4: Our cheese hitches a ride to a warehouse in Long Island City New York where it meets up with some other products we’ve ordered. All of that product is consolidated onto a single pallet just for us!

Step 5: A truck cruises by that warehouse on a Friday morning and brings our pallet BACK to a different warehouse New Jersey (oh the tolls!). At that warehouse it is place with a truckload of pallets bound for the Midwest

Step 6: Early on a Tuesday morning the most enormous 18 wheeler you’ve ever seen arrives in our parking lot. We climb in and unload 1,000-2,000 pounds worth of product from the back of the truck.

If everything goes according to plan we receive cheese four weeks from the time we send the email. This results in cheese that is actually a little on the young side (don’t tell anyone but we get our cheese faster/fresher than anyone in the cities).

Of course I am here to tell you that there are so many ways this can go wrong and 2021 has been filled with the most shipping challenges we’ve ever encountered. COVID-19 delays, staffing shortages at the port, congestion at the port, rough seas, lack of freight, lack of truckers. You name it, we’ve seen it. Oh, and once the cheese is picked in Europe, we own it . Doesn’t matter if our ship gets lost in the Bermuda triangle—we’re paying for that cheese.

But look again at that picture up there. It’s totally worth it when you can sell someone an absolutely perfect piece of soft French cheese—there’s just nothing quite like it.

The Pairing Week 14: German Wine Detour (Part 2)

For the next two weeks in our pairing series, we’ll focus our attention on cheeses produced at a small dairy in southern Germany, called Hofkäserei Kraus. It is here, in the southern Bavarian Alps, just north of the Austrian border, where Albert Kraus produces his innovative cheeses that taste delicious and differentiate themselves from traditional regional norms. In 2018, Albert completed construction of a new, state of the art production facility designed to increase production capacity of his cheeses, and also provide space for experimentation and future partnerships. Albert’s goal is to inspire the market with cheese that stands out from others in both flavor and form. This week we’re highlighting his first major success, Alex. Named after a local rail route, and inspired by traditional European mountain cheeses, but with new twists, Alex has made a splash within the cheese world. With milk from select surrounding farms, including his older brother’s, Albert turns raw milk from Braunvieh cows into his own version of a classic. Sweet and creamy, with a meaty bite and flavors of deep butterfat and composted hay, we found Alex to pair beautifully with a German Rosé from the Pfalz, a wine-growing region just a few hours to the north. Von Winning Winery’s Pinot Noir Rosé presents a crisp acidity, with complimentary mineral notes, and a mouthful of ripe raspberry, melon and vanilla. A slight sparkle and subtle tannins within the wine both balance the cheese’s richness and efficiently soothe the palate.

The Pairing Week 13: German Wine Detour (Part 1)

For the next two weeks in our pairing series, we’ll focus our attention on cheeses produced at a small dairy in southern Germany, called Hofkäserei Kraus. It is here, in the southern Bavarian Alps, just north of the Austrian border, where Albert Kraus produces his innovative cheeses that taste delicious and differentiate themselves from traditional regional norms. In 2018, Albert completed construction of a new, state of the art production facility designed to increase production capacity of his cheeses, and also provide space for experimentation and future partnerships. Albert’s goal is to inspire the market with cheese that stands out from others in both flavor and form. This week we’re highlighting his first major success, Alex. Named after a local rail route, and inspired by traditional European mountain cheeses, but with new twists, Alex has made a splash within the cheese world. With milk from select surrounding farms, including his older brother’s, Albert turns raw milk from Braunvieh cows into his own version of a classic. Sweet and creamy, with a meaty bite and flavors of deep butterfat and composted hay, we found Alex to pair beautifully with a German Rosé from the Pfalz, a wine-growing region just a few hours to the north. Von Winning Winery’s Pinot Noir Rosé presents a crisp acidity, with complimentary mineral notes, and a mouthful of ripe raspberry, melon and vanilla. A slight sparkle and subtle tannins within the wine both balance the cheese’s richness and efficiently soothe the palate.

The Pairing Week 12: Blue Cheese (Part 2, the Heavy Hitter)

For the second week in a row, we’re focusing our attention on one of the world’s most famous blue cheeses. This week’s pairing selection takes us to a small region in southern France called Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, where we find Maison Carles, one of the world’s smallest producers of Roquefort who export their cheese to the U.S. For nearly 100 years, this 3rd generation cheesemaking family has been producing Roquefort by hand, relying on an old-world recipe and time-tested techniques to achieve brilliance. It was in 1924 that Roquefort became the first French cheese to receive its AOC status, a label indicating that the cheese had been produced in a specific geographical region according to strict production regulations. And now, under the leadership of Delphine Carles, and amongst only 7 producers of Roquefort in the world, Maison Carles stands out to us as one of the best we’ve tasted. Made with milk from their own herd of pastured Lacaunes sheep, and inoculated with house-grown mold harvested from locally made rye bread, Carles Roquefort is deeply complex, subtly sweet, and ripe with bluish green veins of molding. Aging of these wheels occurs underground in cavernous limestone fissures, known as fleurines, which provide the perfect form of natural ventilation needed to ripen the cheese. For a wine pairing, we’ve selected Domaine La Tour Vieille’s Banyuls Rimage 2016. Made from fully ripened Grenache grapes, and employing a process known as mutage, which arrests fermentation within the grape must, producing a sweeter tasting wine, this rich and silky Banyuls dessert wine from French Catalonia provides a perfect balance to this luscious salty cheese.