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Cheese Conference Chronicles II
August 02, 2007
Thursday, August 2nd. I attended two quite technical sessions today. The first was about establishing a flavor profile for cheddars, led by MaryAnne Drake, PhD of the Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center at North Carolina State University. Her center has developed a method for objectively describing the qualities (flavor, texture, aroma) of dairy products, and done studies analyzing cheddar cheese. One interesting study examined whether Irish, New Zealand and American cheddars had different flavor profiles — the results showed that there are distinctive differences in the flavor and texture of the individual cheeses, but the profiles of each country’s cheese were more similar to each other than to the other countries’. I suppose this is partly due to the difference in terroir, but maybe more so due to the cheesemakers in each country developing cheese that suits their national palate. Dr. Drake’s research would mostly be applicable for large, industrial dairy manufacturers, and I’m not sure how applicable it is to artisan cheesemakers or little shops like ours, but it was still interesting the look at flavor profiles in very analytic ways.
The second session was similarly concerned with describing flavor and aroma in ways that can be graphed, though this session used descriptive language that was much more familiar (for example, earthy, nutty, sweet, milky as opposed to alkaline, phenolic, fungal, etc. of Drake’s work). This method develops a kind of ‘fingerprint’ for each cheese — information that might be useful to a cheesemaker who wants to tweak their cheese’s flavor.
Between sessions at the conference, the cheeses of a particular region are highlighted, and today’s cheeses were all from Oregon. Rogue Creamery, Tumalo Farms, Willamette Valley Cheese, Pholia Farmstead, Silver Falls Chevre, and more were displayed during the break, and attendees were happily nibbling and sniffing and examining our fine cheesemakers’ work. It was great to see people from all over the country reveling in Oregon cheese!
Tonight we had a grand adventure: the opening night reception was held in the Breeding Barn at Shelburne Farms. As Tom Kooiman described it, this place is an agricultural cathedral. Built in 1891 by Dr. William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb, it was part of a sweeping estate constructed to highlight innovative agricultural practices (and to give the Vanderbilts an amazing place to breed horses…) It really is an amazingly beautiful building, enormous and open, with soaring beams and high paned windows. How happy those horses must have been to live in such a barn! At the party, cheesemakers and food artisans from all over Vermont were there to showcase their delicious handcrafted products. I got to visit with several cheesemakers whose cheese has graced our case at the shop, including Mateo Kehler from Jasper HIll Farms, John Putnam from Thistle Hill, Emily & Michael Lee from Twig Farm, Willow Smart from Willow HIll Farm — and meet some others whose work I hope to be able to share with you in the future. Lovely sheep’s milk tommes and creamy young goat’s milk cheeses. Oooh la la, the tasting and visiting was great in barn tonight!
Tomorrow is another big day here in Vermont. More tales to follow!!
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