Meet Your Monger: Scott

Is it true that you eat 60 eggs per week? ​I would tell you but then I would have to kill you. (Editor’s note: It absolutely is.)

We heard you have a mean growler collection…? ​Yes I do, I am up to 270ish. It keeps my garage walls full.

If your kids would pick up one good kitchen habit from you, what would you like it to be? ​Hard work and always be prepared, and yes I know that's two things. You need both no matter where life takes you.

What’s your favorite cut of meat to take home on a weeknight, and how do you prepare it? ​Hanger steak. I cook it in a cast iron pan, and make tacos.

How did you learn the art of making charcuterie? ​Asking a lot of questions to people who know way more than me, as well as lots of testing.

What do you want for Father’s Day? ​A long walk on short green grass.

Il Bel Formaggi: A Cheese Monger’s Guide to Italy

Left to right: Pecorino Foglie di Noce, Bufarolo, Bocconcino di Capra, Camembert di Bufala, Fontina Valle d’Aosta, Furmai di Suna, Robiola Bosina, Pecorino Marzolino, La Granda

by Austin Coe Butler

What I love most about Italian cheeses is how playful and varied they are. Each region, valley, and village has their own distinct cheese they’ve made for centuries, if not millennia. They are too vast and many for me to praise all of them, so instead I’d like to take you on a sprint through Italy, from the north to the south, while mentioning a few cheeses we carry in the shop that will tell us something about the country and you can try along the way.

Much of Italy’s cheese culture and variety stems from the north, and so much of the cheese in our case comes from here: Piedmont, Lombardy, Valle d’Aosta. Girdled by the Alps and flanked by the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas, the immense climatic and geographic diversity of northern Italy offers endless opportunities for locals to create both large wheels of hearty mountain cheese and delicate soft bloomy-rinded cheeses. Formaggi alpeggio, or cow’s milk alpine cheeses, like Fontina, Asiago, and Furmai de Suna reflect the millennia old tradition of transhumance or transumanza, the practice of taking livestock up into the high altitude meadows to graze freely on fresh grasses and flowers.

Furmai de Suna, a new addition to the case, is a style of cheese known as Bitto and is a true formaggi alpeggio. It’s made at over 6,500 feet between mid-June and mid-September by the Bongiovatti family in their calec or malghe, a squat, stone shelter that serves as a seasonal dairy. They make only four wheels of cheese a day in a copper cauldron over a wood fire from the fresh, raw milk of their forty-five cows. The cheese has a remarkable flavor like dry cured salame and pepper reminiscent of soppressata.

Fontina Valle d’Aosta is unrecognizable from the cheap, mass-produced Fontina, Fontinella, and Fontal sold in supermarkets and all billed as “Fontina.” Real Valdoastan Fontina is earthy, mushroomy, and tastes of rich, raw milk with a fudgey, pliant texture. It is as good on your cheeseboard as it is melted in hot-dish or fonduta. Another cheese from the north, Toma La Granda with its bright, buttery flavor and elastic paste has won the Slow Food Master of Taste Award five years in a row.

The cool, damp climate provided by the Alps created the perfect environment for delicate, moist cheeses like Taleggio and Robiolas to thrive in caves and cellars. This environment invites molds and funghi to colonize the rinds of cheeses like Robiola Bosina or Camembert di Bufala or bloom within blue cheeses like Gorgonzola. It also encourages the bacteria that give salty, meaty washed-rind cheeses like Taleggio and Nababbo, a goat’s milk play on Taleggio, their characteristic funk.

As the Alps recede and the lush Po River valley opens into the northern plain of Emiglia-Romagna, we enter the kingdom of grana cheeses like Grana Padano and the King of Cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano. These enormous, nutty cheeses share the legacy of alpine cheesemaking techniques (cooking, pressing, brining, aging) blended with their monastic roots of Cistercian monks who used the abundant salt of the brackish marshes of the Po Valley to create a cheese which could easily be aged two, three, four, or even more years in their monasteries, which yield the nutty, crystally, complex cheese we love. Our Parmigiano Reggiano is given the highest distinction of produtti di montagni (made in the Appenine mountains) in Emilia-Romagna and aged by Giorgio Cravero in Bra, Piedmont. And while Giorgio’s Parmigiano Reggiano is fabulous grated onto pasta, we implore you to savor a hunk of it on your cheese board with a flute of Prosecco.

Near the heart of Italy, the story changes. The drier hills and valleys of the Apennine mountains come into view and the Tuscan sun and Mediterranean climate takes hold. Here we see traditions based on pastoralism or shepherding, and the classic Pecorinos (sheep’s milk cheeses) of Italy with their rustic, intense, aromatic, and full-bodied flavors are king. Pecorinos should not be thought of as identical, but as territorials–each region and village has their own distinct style. The saltier, spicier Pecorino Romano, favored by Roman legionaries, lacks the more mature, nuanced, and nutty flavors of Pecorino Foglie di Noce, which are wrapped in young walnut leaves that impart an herbaceous, earthy quality; the firm, tenacious Pecorino Toscano of the elusive and inscrutable Etruscans differs from the velvety, lemony tang of Pecorino Marzolino, a younger cheese that is made only in March (Marzo) and rubbed with olive oil and tomatoes to give its rind a distinctive red glow.

Further south, the pasta filata or “spun paste” cheeses like mozzarella are found. These cheeses are made by melting the curd with boiling water until a single mass coalesces that can be stretched and shaped. Pasta filata cheeses include not just fresh cheeses like Buffalo Mozzarella, Fior di Latte (cow’s milk mozzarella), or Burrata, but also firmer, aged cheeses such as Caciocavallo, Scamorza, and Provolone. Burrata, which was only invented in the 1950s in Puglia, is one of the younger arrivals to Italy. And here we arrive again at our shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we make both fresh Fior di Latte and Burrata on Friday and Saturday mornings.

Stop by this weekend to celebrate Italian cheeses with us. If you’ve read this whole post and would like to learn more about Italian cheeses, you may be interested in our upcoming class on northern Italian cheese and wine at the Harriet Place on July 7th!

Manchego y Más: A Tour of Spain’s Cheeses

Clockwise starting top left: Garrotxa, Rey Silo Rojo, Magaya de Sidra, Pasamontes Manchego, Moncedillo Pimenton, Mahon Semicurado, Cabezuela

by Austin Coe Butler

Spanish cheeses have been historically maligned. English travelers in the 19th century found them dry, dank, and inedible, comparing them to rusks of bread. It didn’t help when decades of brutal dictatorship by Generalissimo Francisco Franco isolated Spain as a pariah state while French and Italian cheese and culture entered international renown. Only in the 90s, after a successful marketing campaign, did Manchego become internationally recognized as and synonymous with Spanish cheese. Spain however has an incredible cheese culture that is more than just Manchego, with well over two-hundred varieties, and despite its obscurity it has thrived in recent years.

Spain’s remarkable cheese culture was saved by the persistence of cheese black markets. Under the Franco regime, dairies producing more than 10,000 liters of milk were required by law to send it to centralized factories that produced Manchego–a cheese which could be easily mass produced–and it became illegal to sell artisan cheese. These cheese black markets would appear in village streets before the sun rose, artisans would sell their cheeses made with purloined milk, and then vanish before any government official could arrive, preserving these traditions into the present moment.

This weekend, we are celebrating Spanish cheeses, so stop by to taste and discover the amazing variety of Spanish cheeses we offer.

Manchego

Manchego is one of the most iconic, sheep’s milk cheeses in the world. Our Manchego comes from the Pasamontes family, who have been making Manchego for five generations. They have consistently been recognized as one of Spain’s best Manchego producers and consistent DOP winners of Premio Gran Selección, Spain’s most prestigious food and wine awards. We sell their 3 month (creamy, nutty, mild), 12 month (firm, salty, tangy), and Romero, which is coated with rosemary from the pasture the sheep graze on, perfuming the cheese.

Garrotxa

I wrote a post on Garrotxa back in September which you can read here. Garrotxa has a remarkable story, and with its mild flavor and semi-firm, smooth texture it is the perfect gateway to goat cheese for the uninitiated.

Mahón

Named after the port city and capitol of the island of Menorca, Mahón is the second most consumed cheese in Spain and one of the oldest cheeses in history. Ancient Greek seafarers praised the cheeses made on the Balearic Islands and often imported it to their colonies. Mahón is a firm cow’s milk cheese that is rubbed with olive oil and paprika while curing. It has a brittle texture with a pleasant Sherry vinegar-like acidity and a briny, mineral flavor befitting of its sun-drenched island home.

La Finca Pascualete Retorta

Torta or retorta style cheeses are one of the most distinct styles of Spanish cheese. These are sheep’s milk cheese that have been coagulated with thistle rennet, which causes the cheese to undergo proteolysis, the process by which proteins in cheese breakdown, in a way that gives it a custardy texture. Cut the top off the crusty rind and scoop out the custardy filling with a spoon for an incomparable experience. It’s been theorized that this cheese descends from the legacy of Sephardic Jews who once lived in Spain before their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. Kosher law prohibits the mixing of dairy and meat, and if traditional rennet, which is derived from the stomach of a young ruminant, it violates Kosher law.

Moncedillo Red

Similar to torta styles, this is another sheep’s milk cheese coagulated with thistle rennet. Its rind is coated in pimentón, smoked Spanish paprika, that brings a fruity, smoky flavor to the cheese. While the texture is not as custardy as the retorta, it does have a delightfully pliable fudgy texture.

La Cabezuela Tradicional Semi-curado

This semi-firm, goat’s cheese is made from the milk of Guadarrama goats, an endangered breed that only lives in the foothills surrounding the Madrid basin. Juan Luis Royuela fell in love with these goats and their milk and dedicated his quesería La Cabezuela to making cheese solely from their milk, bringing them back from the brink of extinction. The natural bloomy rind tastes of button mushrooms, while the cream line is buttery and mild with a cakey, crumbly center that has all the classic herbaceous, lemony notes one expects from a goat cheese. A definite staff favorite.

Magaya di Sidra

Perhaps the most unique cheese we have in our case at the moment. This firm cow’s milk cheese is packed into barrels and cured with the pulp (magaya) from apple cider pressings—you can see the apple skins and pips on this cheese’s rind. Curing the cheese gives it a delightfully fruity, yeasty flavor and a tartness reminiscent of a dry, unfiltered apple cider.

Rey Silo Rojo

This petite button of cow’s milk cheese has paprika added to the curd which brings them a beautiful sunset glow and a playful, lingering spice. Its flavor bright, tart, tangy, and intense in with a texture that clings to the palate like another famous Spanish cheese, Afeuga’l pitu.

Castanya

Our newest and rarest addition to our Spanish selection. This soft goat’s milk cheese has chestnut flour and chestnut liqueur added to the curd, it is topped with a whole roasted chestnut, and then wrapped in chestnut leaves. The result is a remarkably soft and creamy goat cheese that is by turns spicy, feral, funky, and sweet, which pairs perfectly with a Madeira.

Meet Your Monger: Peter

How did you end up working at the Cheese Shop? 

Years ago, I started working a few shifts a week at the St. Paul Cheese Shop, as I was navigating a transition in my career. One challenge led to another, and I’m still around. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ll ever know what I want to be when I grow up.

What cheese do you find yourself bringing home the most?

I can’t live without Roquefort, Comté, or Parmigiano Reggiano. But I suspect that most of our best cheese buying customers eat more cheese by volume than I do. I’m a professional nibbler. 

Gruyere or Comté? No. I want both.

Signature Chèvre – over or underrated? Most of the time, right on time.

Cheese Profile: Ossau Iraty

by Austin Coe Butler

Ossau-Iraty is the ancestral cheese of the Basque, or Euskadi, as they call themselves. These timeless, mysterious people have been living in Europe from the Pyrenees mountains to the Bay of Biscay so many millennia that their history is obscure. They are the last indigenous people who lived in Europe before the arrival of Indo-Europeans, and as a result the Basque language, Euskara, is a language isolate, meaning it has no relationship to any of its neighboring European languages or even any other Indo-European language. From the impenetrable reaches of the Pyrenees mountains, the Basque have seen kingdoms and empires rise and fall. And all that time the Basque have been making ewe’s milk cheeses.

The Basque call their cheese Ardi-gasna, which translates simply to both “local cheese” and “sheep cheese.” Sheep are essential to Basque culture. Their distinct breeds like Latxa and Manex tête noir (black headed) are especially hearty and suited to the rugged beech forests and mountainsides of the Pyrenees. The sheep provide milk, meat, fiber, hide, and warmth to the shepherds, who in turn tend to the sheep. In a traditional Basque house, whitewashed with green or red trim with festoons of Espelette peppers drying in the sun, the sheep live on the ground floor, while the shepherds and their families sleep above them, benefitting from the rising animal warmth. Only the tête noir though are taken up into the highest reaches of the mountains to graze on the remote estives, high mountain pastures rich with fragrant grass and wildflowers.

Isolated on these estives from the nearest towns, shepherds collect milk from their herd and move into their chalets or cayolars for the summer. These chalets are not the grand, imposing wooden structures found in the Alps or Rockies, but small, stone huts like burons that pass from generation to generation and where the cheese is made for the season. It is a site of labor and rest. Estive cheese by its nature is made from raw milk and in small batches. The fresh milk is gently warmed and coagulated before the curd is cut and pressed into wheels, sometimes only with the use of hands.

Our Ossau-Iraty are estive wheels made by Les Bergers du Haut-Béarn and matured for 4 to 6 months by Beillevaire at Cave du Haut-Béarn. The cheese has a rich, roasted chestnut sweetness to it and a pleasant subdued tang. Like Manchego or the many Pecorinos of Italy, Ossau-Iraty has the classic granular texture of a sheep’s milk cheese, but it is also remarkably creamy. It is fantastic with American Spoon Sour Cherry Preserves in a nod to the Basque tradition of serving Ossau-Iraty with cherry jam, and enjoyed with a young, fruity red or bright, zingy Txakoli.

Meet Your Monger: Thomas

When you enter the Cheese Shop, odds are that Thomas’s smiling face will be the first you see. A longtime Meat Monger (and new Assistant Manager!), Thomas is the Renaissance Man of the Cheese Shop; he might sell you cheese on Monday, make you a delicious sandwich on Wednesday, and guide you through reverse searing a ribeye on Saturday. He’s just that kind of guy. His sunny demeanor and staunch work ethic make him a delight to interact with as a customer and a colleague. 

What’s your most-purchased grocery product in the shop?

Probably the chocolate chip cookies. After a long day, who doesn't want to sit down and have a cookie? I know I do. They're easily some of the best cookies I've come across - aside from my Mom's, of course.

What’s something that might surprise us about you?

I'm scared of flying but I want my pilots license. Something about facing your fears head on, right? 

Lobster Roll or BLT?

BLT. When I was growing up I wasn't a fan of tomatoes. At all. So when tomato season rolled around, and my parents wanted to have BLTs, I would simply have a BL, hold the T. I have since learned the error of my way, and now I look forward to tomato season every year. 

Describe the Cheese Shop team in three words.

Industrious. Gracious. Sharp. 

The Pairing: Pleasant Ridge Redux

by Sophia Stern

To celebrate the launch of our July 12th, 2021 select batch of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, we’re rerunning our original pairing: Pleasant Ridge and Red Car Chardonnay. However, there are key difference between last year’s pairing and this year’s. First, this selection of Pleasant Ridge has stronger umami qualities reminiscent of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s rich with just enough bite to keep you craving more. Second, the wine is a different vintage. Last year we rolled with the 2016 Red Car Chardonnay. We now have the 2018 with totally different tasting notes. This pairing works like it did in 2021, but it’s certainly not the same and nor would we want it to be. 

                These changing variables begin every spring when a group of France 44 employees go to Uplands Cheese in the Driftless Region of eastern Wisconsin. The goal is to pick France 44’s select batch (or two) of Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Each visit involves a tour, seeing the cheesemakers in action, and greeting the cows. The staff sample different wheels of Pleasant Ridge, noting the nuances from month to month, week to week, and even day to day. This batch was chosen for its roasted, savory flavors and ideal, semi-firm, buttery texture

                On the wine front, Red Car Winery champion their location, producing balanced Chardonnays that reflect the environment they are created in. France 44 Wine Specialist Karina Roe writes

Red Car Winery prides themselves on honest wines that reflect vintage and terroir variations... The 2016 bottling of this wine (the original Pairing we did with Pleasant Ridge Reserve) came from a harvest that was just beginning to recover from a significant drought season. The fruit tones were denser and more concentrated, and perhaps because of this Red Car chose to age the wine in French oak for 6 months longer than the wine we are drinking today--the 2018 release. 2018 was fairly perfect as far as weather conditions were concerned, with more consistent rainfall and cool, breezy temperatures. The acidity is brighter, the fruit is less dense, and Red Car highlighted the lifted nature of the 2018 by keeping it in oak for a shorter period of time--10 months in mostly neutral French oak rather than 16 months.

                With a more savory, rich batch of Pleasant Ridge and a lighter, tarter Chardonnay, we’re left with a different pairing experience. The wine allows the cheese to shine more than it did back in 2021. The brightness of the 2018 vintage is a welcome addition against the richness of this year’s select batch. Most importantly, we’re reminded of the unique characteristics that come with small, farm focused products. Every variable effects the end result. It’s a miracle that we ever get good tasting cheese and wine at all. We invite you to enjoy the 2022 rendition of this pairing, maybe considering the joys of inconsistency and that supporting food and wine like these means giving up some control. The cheese and Chardonnay are best together without the harsh chill from the fridge. Allow the wine to breathe in your glass and the cheese to come up to room temperature before diving in. 

A Trip to Uplands Cheese

by Austin Coe Butler

After an almost two year hiatus dominated by pandemic uncertainty, this April the buyers returned to Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, to do batch selection of Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Each year, France 44 selects and purchases batches, or a days worth of production, of Pleasant Ridge to serve to our customers. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a special cheese to us. In addition to being a “Day One,” meaning it’s been in the case since the cheese shop opened, the long relationship we’ve fostered with Andy Hatch and the crew at Uplands Cheese and seeing how Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Rush Creek Reserve have changed over the years have been among the greatest rewards of this business.

For a dairy that produces a cheese as celebrated as Pleasant Ridge Reserve–the most awarded cheese in the United States–Uplands Cheese is remarkably humble and low-key. There are no billboards soliciting the creamery and not even an entrance sign at the country road you turn onto, just a long gravel road that crests the gently sloping hill Uplands sits on. To your right you can see the fields taking on the first, fresh green of spring as murmurations of starlings coalesce and shift in clouds above the resting cows. Cows that spend most of their time resting and laying down are an auspicious sign for any dairy farmer, as it means they are lactating, and lactation means milk.

When the buyers arrived at the dairy, Andy welcomed us at the threshold to the reception room. Andy, like Uplands Cheese, is a remarkably humble, humorous, kind, and curious person who has retained his humility throughout the great success of his cheese (and a stint in a Super Bowl LIII commercial for Wisconsin Cheese). His avuncular personality has made him a great friend and mentor to many other fantastic Midwest cheesemakers like Veronica Pedraza of Blakesville Creamery and the Annas of Landmark Creamery. We had to swap our shoes out for sanitized Crocs, galoshes, and gumboots before we could enter. Maintaining the beneficial microbiology of a creamery is paramount, and before entering, it’s imperative that you become a blank slate, so after a cup of coffee and catching up with Andy in the reception room, we scrubbed our hands and put on lab coats and hair nets. As we entered the creamery, we trudged through an anti-septic foam that’s sprayed on the floor to further sanitize the shoes. A renegade microbe can easily wreak havoc on the delicately calibrated microbiology of a creamery.

What immediately strikes you upon entering a creamery where cheese is aged is the smell of ammonia. Ammonia is a natural byproduct of aging cheese from proteolysis, the process by which proteins in the cheese breakdown. Your eyes sting and tear. Your nose runs and a hot, burning sensation catches you in the back of the throat. None of this is dangerous, and once you acclimate, it’s easier to ignore. As Andy showed us the different aging rooms where wheels of Pleasant Ridge were being turned and wiped with a brine, the smells by turn mellowed and sweetened before intensifying.

The creamery room where Pleasant Ridge and Rush Creek Reserve are made is quite small. With our group of four and Andy as tour guide, we were constantly cycling and shuffling around between the forms and tanks. When Pleasant Ridge production is up, usually only two people can work in the room simultaneously. There are three aging rooms, each packed with racks of Pleasant Ridge. The wooden slats the cheese ages on are stained with the rich tannins of spruce bark from Rush Creek Reserves. Within each of these wooden boards lives a thriving, beneficial microbial community that contribute to Pleasant Ridge’s flavor. After the creamery tour, it was time to sample the batches for selection.

Andy presented us with eight batches of Pleasant Ridge ranging from May to July of last year. Having worked with us for over a decade now, Andy knows the shop’s taste—a fact made plain when the first two wheels we tried were from the batches we selected. Andy cored each wheel, and we each tried a piece, noting its aroma, texture, and flavor. The first batch had a younger, fudgy texture and complex tropical fruit flavors, with hoppy citrus notes. The second batch was firmer in texture and beefier in flavor like a roast with caramelized root vegetables. After sampling each wheel, we narrowed it down to three and tried them again. The decision was unanimous: July 12th and 17th, 2021. We went into the aging room and signed the tags.

With the business out of the way, it was time for pleasure. Andy let us sample some of the oddities aging in the creamery as well—a few wheels sheep's milk cheese, some goudas, some especially large wheels of Pleasant Ridge. We sampled one batch of Pleasant Ridge that is bound for another shop in the Midwest that tasted uncannily like prosciutto. Afterwards, Andy gave us some roadies and we walked through the fields with the cows, paying a visit to the calves that had just been born. We talked of the many exciting happenings at Uplands—new toys for the creamery like a cheese turning robot, discussions of a larger format wheel of Pleasant Ridge, a new field for pasturage, the potential of a retail space, and a future aging facility. We stopped by his house, from which he still walks to work each day, and then we drove to Spring Green for dinner at Homecoming, an old schoolhouse that has been renovated into a restaurant that focuses on Midwestern ingredients. The Midwest is brimming with places like Homecoming that signal great opportunity for rural, small town communities and a renewed—or some might say continued—interest in good, slow food. The night ended with a walk to the aptly named Jeffrey’s House of Foolishness for Wisconsin old fashions and two dollar bottles of Schlitz. In the morning, Andy recommended breakfast sandwiches at the new Kwik Trip in town for the ailing buyers.

Batch selection is an integral part of what we do and what we believe in at France 44. When you buy cheese from our shop, you know that your money supports not just our family-owned business, but the livelihoods of all the people and animals who milk, make, and truck the cheese to us. You are preserving traditions and communities. You are supporting families. This memorial day, as you share your time with your family, share a piece of Pleasant Ridge with them and let them know all the love and labor that goes into it from maker to monger.

Meet Your Monger: Erin

If you were a cheese, which would you be and why?

Bocconcino di Capra. A small and bouncy medallion-shaped goat’s milk cheese with a smooth, bloomy rind. It gets along great with everyone involved, pairs perfectly with olives, anchovies, and a refreshing aperitif. 

What's your go-to Cheese Shop “secret menu” item?

The Tuna Banh Mi as a salad, add sriracha, watermelon radish, and miso vinaigrette on the side. 

OR -

Prosciutto di Parma + fig jam and arugula. (Not so secret, but oh so delicious)

You used to be a Target executive and you have a degree in bronze sculpture--how did you end up working in cheese?

I worked in hospitality for many years after working in corporate life, and it really just evolved from there. It really comes down to never being fully satisfied, always being eager gain new and exciting knowledge and experience. Food culture had been a part of my personal and professional career for a long time, and I wanted to cultivate my understanding about something I was honestly pretty unfamiliar with. It’s an incredible place to work, and I love being a part of such a fantastic community. 

You're an accomplished cook--what's the best bit of advice you can give to aspiring home cooks to easily level up their game?

Cook seasonally and use local ingredients. Layer and balance flavors (fat, acid, salt, heat). I’ve always felt that cooking something meaningful to you or what you’re currently curious about is a great place to start. Your personal connection to an experience or your interests will translate into what you’re creating and will make your end result taste even more incredible. Spend time learning, making mistakes, and enjoying delicious food with friends and people you love. There’s nothing better than that for me. 

We've heard a rumor that you're a... horse girl—care to elaborate?

Ha! I don’t know if I’d go that far, however, my family relocated to the Minnesota River Valley when I was in grade school and we did have horse stables. My parents bought and restored a historic property near St. Peter, MN. I grew up on sun-ripened raspberries, vegetables from my Mother’s beautiful gardens, and organic chicken eggs.

(And English riding, but I never actually competed so horse girl doesn’t actually apply in this particular circumstance TYVM!)

What's your role at the Cheese Shop?

Funfetti Cake Expert (Editor’s note: Erin’s being modest. She’s also a marble cake expert.

In all seriousness, when she’s not baking cakes for everyone’s birthdays, Erin is a crucial part of our marketing team, styling, photographing, and writing for our social media accounts with the wit and humor she brings to everything in life. She’s also a pillar of our hospitality staff in the Cheese Shop (she’ll become best friends with your Mom in under five minutes, seriously) and she slings a mean sandwich too.

Meet Your Monger: Sam S

Describe your Day to Day Role at France 44?

My role at France 44 changes almost daily. I spend much of my time behind the cheese counter, but am also known to trim steaks and make sandwiches. I'm also a member of our cheese buying team and I assistant manage the food business.

You recently became the NYD cheese buyer—what is it about the NYD cheeses specifically that made you fall in love with them?

I love how rooted in tradition the NYD cheeses are. These are cheeses that have been made for generations in the exact same fashion. That being said, these farms are so small that there can be great variation between batches. There's no greater rush behind the counter than opening a fresh wheel of an English Territorial. You never know what you'll find.

What’s tasting great in the case to you at the moment?

My favorite cheeses behind the counter right now is the Invierno! The texture is fabulous and it's hitting all the right sheepy notes.

How do you like to spend your time outside of work?

I spend my time outside of working riding my bicycle, playing with my dogs, reading books, and birdwatching.

Favorite local Pizza?

Fav pizza right now is the Kingfield from Northern fires