table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Two Artisan Cheesemakers

Talking with Craig Nelson, plant manager for Rogue Creamery, one of the most successful “artisan” cheesemakers in the country, I asked why French cheeses are so much more varied and flavorful than American ones.

(Jan. 25, 2007)  Talking with Craig Nelson, plant manager for Rogue Creamery, one of the most successful “artisan” cheesemakers in the country, I asked why French cheeses are so much more varied and flavorful than American ones.

“The FDA has much higher standards for pathogens,” he told me, “and many companies have even less tolerance than the FDA - for example, our tolerance is 20 percent lower.” As hygiene becomes more rigorous, the molds that give cheeses distinctive flavors are less and less active. “I know of companies that are struggling to get the particular `good’ molds to survive,” he said.

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Pasteurization, of course, is a way to kill pathogens, but there is a cost in flavor. That’s why, although the U.S. is the seventh-largest cheese-consuming nation (between 1980 and 2004, the amount of cheese eaten per person rose from 17.5 pounds to 31.2 pounds), we rank low on the list of fine cheeses. The most popular domestic cheese is now low-fat mozzarella, a virtually flavorless product that can survive long shelf life and the sanitary conditions of chain pizza retailers. The consumption figures are thus skewed: Very little of the cheese consumed in America is artisan.

Rogue Creamery’s limited edition Rogue River Blue won the “world’s best blue cheese” award over Roqueforts, Gorgonzolas and Stiltons in London in 2003, and 80 percent of its sales are in different varieties of blues. Of its pasteurized cheddar cheeses, flavored ones - spiked with flavors like olive/garlic, chipotle, pesto, rosemary, etc. - dominate sales. This is consistent with the far larger output of Humboldt’s own Loleta Cheese Factory, a high-quality non-artisan cheesemaker with a wide range of fairly bland cheeses, including Cheddar, Jack, Fontina and Havarti.

For me, however, “flavored” cheese is a sign of desperation, a clear indicator that for those who’ve never experienced more, our senses are telling us there is something out there beyond jack and mozzarella and mild cheddar.

But I also suspect that most Americans, tasting a ripe Tomme de Savoie, are more likely to go “Eww” than “Ahh!” We live in a culture suspicious of complexity, and the infinite combinations of sweet, sour, bitter, umami and salty (to say nothing of textures) often arrive unwelcome on our national palate.

A few years ago, my wife and I ordered a small selection of unpasteurized cheeses from France (six chunks cost $99, much of which was the ice-pak and international shipping charges). But it was worth knowing something about the real world outside our FDA-fortified fortress of sterile foods. True, we made some poor choices, and the company (fromages.com) turned out to be rude and venal, but in three shipments, we discovered that there were truly magnificent cheeses in France.

Part of our education was the fragile and highly seasonal nature of raw milk cheese. A true raw-milk *Roquefor*t, ordered in prime season, is a sublime experience; miss the season by a couple of weeks, and you’ve got a salty, sour mess.

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