Angie and I have been cultivating our love of cheese for quite awhile. I guess it really started with the poorly planned Sconnie Cheese Tour of 2008. It didn't get serious until this year, though, when most of our monthly feasts featured a cheese course.
Last weekend, we continued our learning and tasting at the Wisconsin Cheese Originals Annual Festival.
We started with a Meet the Cheesemaker Gala on Friday night. There were 35 cheese makers and more than 150 cheeses to be tasted. The unedited pictures. . .
We took three cheese "classes" on Saturday.
First, we learned about "A New Era for WI Cheddar." We heard two cheddar-makers speak about their craft and tasted two-, four-, six-, and ten-year cheddars. The six-year was my favorite.
Next, we learned about "WI Craft Beers and Artisan Cheese Pairings." We taste seven different beers from Potosi Brewery each paired with a unique WI cheese. It was incredible - a completely different experience than wine and cheese. The carbonation of the beer really worked with the cheese.
Our third class was from the owner of Fromagination and the cheese monger from School House cheese. We tasted international cheeses and their WI counter-parts: a gruyere, a parmesan, and a blue. In two of the three instances I preferred the WI cheese.
The final event of the night was a dinner with Andy Hatch, the award-winning cheese maker for Uplands Cheese at the Admiralty Room in the Edgewater Hotel. We had a four-course meal (with wine pairings); three of the four courses featured Andy's cheeses. It was a small group of people, so we had plenty of time to hear about the processes involved in making the cheese.
It's pretty fascinating, actually. Andy studied dairy science (I think) at UW-Madison. Then, he traveled around Europe studying cheese. After that, he was hired by Uplands to make a specific kind of cheese. The owners of the farm studied the type of milk their cows were able to produce because of the location and features of the land. They studied different cheese to select a specific type to make based on the milk. They hired Andy to make that cheese.
And, that cheese (Pleasant Ridge Reserve) has won a "Best in Show" award for three consecutive years. That's some sort of record in the cheese world.
Anyway - Pleasant Ridge Reserve is made only during the months where Uplands's cows are able to graze in the pastures of their farm. It is a farmstead cheese - made only from milk from their own cows. During other months, the cows' milk is sold to other nearby farms. (Until this year when Andy decided to make another type of cheese with the milk.) Then, the milk supply ends until after calving in the spring.
The careful planning, science, and environmentally friendly practices of the whole process are absolutely fascinating.
I ended the weekend not wanting to eat any more cheese for a very long time, but I also ended the weekend incredibly proud to live in America's Dairyland.
