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Cheese Conference Chronicles IV
August 04, 2007
Saturday, August 4. By the time the first session was letting out today, the smell of cheese was beginning to waft out of the ballroom where the Festival of Cheese was to be held. Inside that room, over twelve hundred cheeses were being cut and arranged on tables in preparation for the 4:30 opening. By 2pm, the aroma had completely filled the lobby and people who weren't a part of the conference were beginning to get very curious about what was happening behond those closed doors. Of course, since this is my 4th day at the conference, I've already tasted about sixty or seventy cheeses and am starting the worry about my stamina. If you've ever been to one of these Festivals, you'll know what I mean: imagine walking into a ballroom that is literally full of cheese, tables piled high with cheeses that range from the dreamy to the sublime. (Okay, not every cheese on those tables will be either dreamy or sublime, but even so, there will be hundreds that are...)
But before the Festival, I went to two sessions on pairing cheese: One focused on hard ciders and ice wine, the other on foods to pair (like honey, nuts, fruit breads, etc.) We tasted a couple of ciders from New England, both made with heirloom apple varieties. They were both very tasty, but Oregon's own Wandering Aengus was equally fine (perhaps even a bit better, I thought). These ciders were paired with a soft ripened goat's milk cheese, Lumiere, and with Beecher's Flagship Reserve cheddar(which is the cheese we use on our Mole sandwiches). One cider had a hint of residual sweetness and was bang up good with the cheddar. The Lumiere was tastier with the bone dry, tart cider. The most delcious beverage we tried was La Face Cachee de la Pomme's Neige ,an apple cider dome in an ice wine style. In this, the apples remain on the tree until they are frozen solid and then pressed and fermented. Amazing! Sweet without being cloying, rich and viscous but still clean and crisp somehow. Made in Quebec, this is a beverage I'd love to source for the shop. It was wonderful with an aged goat's milk cheese life Chevre Fermier du Montagne. Oh, yeah, baby!
During the lunch break, I went to the Burlington Farmer's Market with friends. We were in search of any non-cheese food, and treated ourselves to raw corn on the cob, maple syrup glazed fruit, and the best homemeade root beer I've ever tasted. On a gorgeous day in Vermont, it's so easy to be happy.
After lunch break I went to the pairing cheese with foods session. Almost all the pairings were ones that are similar to things we already do (honey & blue cheese or fig bread & chevre, for example) so there wasn't any surprising new idea. We had six accompaniments to pair with four cheeses, and the interesting thing to see how diverse people's response was to the individual match ups. What one person loved another couldn't stand. What Ione found uninteresting, someone else might find exciting. It jsut shows (again) that every palate is different and there aren't any right or wrong pairings -- it's all about what tastes good to the person eating it.
And then it was time for the Festival of Cheese! As I roamed from table to table, I was so happy to see that our Oregon (and Northwest) cheesemakers came out so well. Seventeen awards went to Oregon cheeses! We have many of those cheeses in the case, so although I was sure to point them out to others, I didn't try them this evening. A person can only really taste so many cheeses in one evening, so I had to set myself some parameters: don't try anything I'm already familiar with and don't try anything that I'm not super intrigued by. Think about it -- even tasting one out of twenty would still be over sixty cheeses!! Even so, there were some that I couldn't resist taking a little tiny taste of -- Willow Farm's Alderbrook, Estralla's Caldwell Crik, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, Constant Bliss... Oh, it's hard to be disciplined. And then there were the butters -- sweet and salty, delicate and robust. Mmmmm, yum! After about ninety minutes, I was starting to ache so I called it a day. I went for a walk with friends in the beautiful Vermont evening -- all of us groaning and loosening the top button on our pants, but awfully happy. So much great cheese!
Comments
Thea Hardy says:
Thanks for the blogging - it's been exciting hearing about the conference, and also to hear that my state of Oregon has done so well! It's really great to see so much real cheese happening.
