Dairy Fam in Vermont.

Dairy Fam in Vermont.
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American Cheeses – A Primer

We think cheese and our minds turn to the traditional cheeses of Europe, but as our author reminds us, there is a lot of great cheese made in the United States.

As a cheesemonger, I seem to spend a lot of my time telling people that actually the Americans make a load of really great cheeses. Funnily enough, and even a little sadly, quite a lot of these people are Americans.

Rogue River Blue from Oregon

This American cheese, Rogue River Blue from the Rogue Creamery in Oregon, won the World Cheese Awards in 2019. Rogue River is a cheese with a lot going on – it’s a cow’s milk blue wrapped in vine leaves that have been macerated in pear brandy, which adds a boozy sweetness to this pungent spicy blue. Luckily for those of us on this side of the pond you can buy Rogue River Blue in cheese shops like La Fromagerie and Neal’s Yard Dairy, when it is in stock.

A colonial start

The Americans invented factory cheese in the mid-19th century and processed cheese in the early 20th, but these questionable products belie a flourishing artisanal and farmhouse cheesemaking tradition that stretches back to the early history of the United States and even further back to the colonial period.

John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as a good industrious puritan, set up a commercial dairy business when he arrived in the new world with the first tranche of British colonists in 1630 – although it was his wife Margaret who ran the dairy operation, as was the way in those days. By the 19th century Vermont and Wisconsin with their lush pastures had become the cheese powerhouses of America, a position they still hold. Wisconsiners wear the once derogatory term ‘cheeseheads‘ with pride.

Vermont

The colonists and settlers remained true to their British roots, Cheddar was the flagship cheese for both states, and a great example is Cabot Clothbound, made at Cabot Creamery, a Vermont farming cooperative set up in 1919. The cheese is matured in the cellars at Jasper Hill Farm, another mighty Vermont farm cheesemaking operation set up by Matteo and Andy Kehler and their families in 1998. As a proper, traditional clothbound Cheddar, Cabot has a dense yet crumbly texture, with notes of of hay, caramel and a brothy savoury edge.

Jasper Hill themselves have an impressively large portfolio of cheeses, and I recommend that you seek them all out – they are available now and again in the UK. One of their flagship cheeses is Bayley Hazen, a more conventional blue than the eccentric Rogue River, this cheese has a rich buttery texture, a gentle piquancy and a soothing sweetness.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin still produces Cheddar, of course, including a venerable fifteen-year-old version by Hook’s Cheese Company with a caramel sweetness and crunchy protein crystals giving a burst of umami. Cheesemaking is not hidebound by tradition in this state, and another of my favourites is the not-Cheddar Pleasant Ridge Reserve made by Andy Hatch of Uplands Creamery. This cheese, like its alpine forebear Beaufort Alpage, is only made in the summer when the cows are out on lush pasture, and this healthy diet confers flavours of fresh grass and herbs, tropical fruit and a lifting trace of citric acidity.      

Tennessee and Missouri

Way down in Tennessee, Sequatchie Cove Creamery make European inspired cheeses with an Appalachian accent, although their Shakerag Blue might owe more to Rogue River – Shakerag is matured in fig leaves that have been soaked in a bourbon called Chattanooga Whisky, which adds an intriguing smoky root beer note to the peppery blue flavour. The name alludes to a method for scoring yourself some moonshine in the bad old days of prohibition. As a cheese geek, I am particularly excited by their Cumberland, a raw milk semi-hard cow’s milk cheese, which, appropriately given the mountainous setting, harks back to an alpine tomme. As a British cheesemonger, however, Cumberland reminds me of Single Gloucester, with the mild milky characteristics of that unfairly lesser-known cheese.

American cheese naming game is strong, as expressed by Green Dirt Farm’s mixed sheep and goats cheese Aux Arcs, which in French means ‘to the arches’, but say it out loud and you’ll get a clue to the cheese’s place of origin, somewhere in Missouri… Like the Dutch Gouda that inspired it, Aux Arcs tastes of sweet milk with a hint of pineapple, rounded out with an earthy note from its natural rind.

California

Alongside the reputational damage inflicted by such delights as Cheez Whiz, another thing that gets in the way of a proper appreciation of good American cheese is that the U.S. is quite big. While the New York city cheese fancier might enjoy the odd bit of Wisconsin or Vermont cheese, they might be less aware of all the great cheese made in more distant states, like California, Missouri or Tennessee, to name just a few.

Purple Haze might be my favourite name for a cheese. Made at Cypress Grove Dairy in California’s Humboldt County by self-proclaimed hippie Mary Keehn and her team, the name might refer to the scattering of lavender and fennel pollen on this delicately flavoured, foamy fresh goat’s cheese. Or, given that Mary started up in the 1970s, Purple Haze might refer to the psychedelic tune by Jimi Hendrix, or a particularly powerful batch of LSD around at the time. Cypress Grove make a load of other cheese, including a hard sheep’s milk, a relatively rare stye in America. This one is called Lamb Chopper, and the label features a sheep riding a chopped, or customised Harley Davidson, the ride of choice for California’s original Hell’s Angels.

Indiana & back to Vermont

A cheese name with great sentimental attachment for me is Julianna, a flower-strewn goat’s milk tomme made in Indiana by Capriole Goat Cheese, it is named for its inventor Juliana Sedli. Juliana, a cheese-pal of mine comes from Hungarian farming stock, and after interning with Capriole, came to the UK and worked for another friend, the late, great Mary Holbrook, the ‘Godmother of British Goat’s Cheese’. Juliana now makes cheese on the UK estate of Neston Park, an 18th century stately home.

The Sound of Music

Concluding this whistlestop tour of the States’ cheeses, we return to Vermont for a richly textured, smoky washed-rind with a hint of the barnyard called Oma – ‘grandma’ in German. This cheese has, in a crowded field, the best backstory of all. It is made on the Von Trapp’s family farm in Waitsfield, and if that name sounds familiar it is because these Von Trapps are an offshoot of those Von Trapps, who settled in Vermont after a tour in the state because it reminded them of the home they had left in Austria. The sound of music still rings out in the Vermont hills.

So perhaps it’s about time the Americans were forgiven for factory cheesemaking and Velveeta. All these wonderful cheeses I have described are just a small sample of all this huge and hugely varied country has to offer, there are many more cheeses from more states for you to try. Given that only a few of them are available in the UK and the rest of Europe, and then only occasionally, perhaps it is time to plan a cheese tour of the United States for your next holiday.

The Von Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont
© Shutterstock
The Von Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont
Ned Palmer
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