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Janet Fletcher

180 Stonecrest Dr
Napa, CA, 94558
(707) 265-0404
{ Janet Fletcher / Food Writer }

{ Janet Fletcher / Food Writer }

Janet Fletcher

  • Home
  • About
    • About Janet
    • Media
    • Client List
    • Contact
  • Planet Cheese
    • Planet Cheese Blog
    • Planet Cheese Signup
    • Cheese Library
  • Store
    • All Items
    • World Cheese Tour
    • Books
  • Classes
    • World Cheese Tour Classes
    • Other Classes & Events
    • Custom Class/Event Request
    • Cheese O'Clock Video Archive
  • Recipes
    • Spring
    • Summer
    • Autumn
    • Winter
    • Comfort

Next-Level Chopped Salad

May 13, 2025 janet@janetfletcher.com

I did not know that chopped salad had a celebrity pedigree, but AI just informed me. I went searching for some history on the dish, which I associate with red-sauce restaurants, and learned that it likely originated in Beverly Hills in the 1950s. Chopped salads with chickpeas, salame and mozzarella were a favorite with tony Angelenos, fancied by starlets like Natalie Wood and ladies-who-lunch like Nancy Reagan. Seven decades later, they’re still popular. They’re colorful, crunchy and amenable to improv. Include what you like; omit what you don’t.

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In From: U.S., Milk: Cow Tags Rogue Creamery, Smokey Blue, chopped salad, blue cheese, Oregon cheese
5 Comments

Next-Level Chopped Salad

May 13, 2025 janet@janetfletcher.com

I did not know that chopped salad had a celebrity pedigree, but AI just informed me. I went searching for some history on the dish, which I associate with red-sauce restaurants, and learned that it likely originated in Beverly Hills in the 1950s. Chopped salads with chickpeas, salame and mozzarella were a favorite with tony Angelenos, fancied by starlets like Natalie Wood and ladies-who-lunch like Nancy Reagan. Seven decades later, they’re still popular. They’re colorful, crunchy and amenable to improv. Include what you like; omit what you don’t.

Read more
In From: U.S., Milk: Cow Tags Rogue Creamery, Smokey Blue, chopped salad, blue cheese, Oregon cheese
Comment

Raising the Bar on Buttery

March 25, 2025 janet@janetfletcher.com
Cut wheel of Briar Rose Creamery Butterbloom

I was shopping for cheeses recently for a sparkling wine tasting and hoping to find a few selections my guests wouldn’t know. This bloomy-rind beauty caught my eye because even I didn’t know it. A gentle probe of the exterior told me it was ripe. But was it tasty?

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In From: U.S., Milk: Cow Tags Briar Rose Creamery, Oregon cheese, Butterbloom, Guernsey cows
8 Comments

Tough Times on the Left Coast

July 27, 2021 janet@janetfletcher.com

Drought. Wildfires. Record-breaking heat. Not to mention a pandemic that’s upended the supply chain. For dairy farmers and cheesemakers on the West Coast, this is one tough summer. Triple-digit temperatures and lack of water are stressing pastures and dairy animals. If such conditions are the new normal in California and Oregon, is dairy farming even viable? David Gremmels of Oregon’s Rogue Creamery and Reggie Jones of Central Coast Creamery in California shared their thoughts on these trying times. I have edited their comments for brevity and clarity.

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In From: U.S. Tags Rogue Creamery, David Gremmels, Oregon cheese, Oregaon dairy farms, Central Coast, Central Coast Creamery, Reggie Jones, California dairy farms
4 Comments

Trouble in Paradise

March 31, 2020 janet@janetfletcher.com
Sarah Marcus photo (right): Christine Hyatt

Sarah Marcus photo (right): Christine Hyatt

How quickly cheesemakers’ livelihoods can crater, especially when they make mostly perishable cheeses or care for animals that have to be milked twice a day. What are you supposed to do with that milk when nobody’s buying your cheese? I checked in with two West Coast cheesemakers I greatly admire to see how they’re faring in this crisis and how they plan to climb out of the pit. Because they will.

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In From: U.S. Tags Oregon cheese, California cheese, goat cheese, coronavirus and cheese, farmstead cheese, Pennyroyal Farm, Briar Rose Creamery, Anderson Valley
14 Comments

100-Point Cheese

October 29, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com
Planet Cheese 53 _DSC9940.jpg

Perfection. You can’t do better than that. For Rogue Creamery’s Rogue River Blue, the perfect score rocketed it to the top of the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy, earlier this month. A grape leaf-wrapped cow’s milk wheel from Oregon, this luscious blue is now the 2019 World Champion Cheese, the first time a U.S. cheese has earned that honor. Created less than 20 years ago, it vanquished international cheeses with decades of history. Ironically, the winning wheel was not the one that Rogue president David Gremmels intended to enter.

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In From: U.S., Milk: Cow Tags Rogue Creamery, David Gremmels, Rogue River Blue, World Cheeses Awards, Oregon cheese, blue cheese
6 Comments

Top Five States for Cheese

April 30, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com
Left to right: Bellwether Farms Pepato, Roth Grand Cru, Von Trapp Oma

Left to right: Bellwether Farms Pepato, Roth Grand Cru, Von Trapp Oma

Can you name America’s top five milk-producing states by volume? Let me help you: California, Wisconsin, New York, Idaho and Texas. Are these also the top five states for artisan cheese? Not if you ask me. Considering not only the quality of what’s produced in the state but also how enlightened its retailers are, I’ve compiled a different list. See if you agree with me.

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In From: U.S. Tags Vermont cheese, New York cheese, California cheese, Wisconsin cheese, Oregon cheese, American cheese, dairy states, American dairy, artisan cheese
11 Comments

Rogue Creamery’s Next Chapter

June 12, 2018 janet@janetfletcher.com
Planet Cheese 60 _DSC4898.jpg

Rogue Creamery the Oregon producer of some of America’s most acclaimed blue cheeses, has a new partner: the French dairy giant Savencia. Good news? I wasn’t sure. I’ve been a huge fan of Rogue since David Gremmels and Cary Bryant bought it, in 2002, from Ig Vella, whose father founded it. Gremmels and Bryant had zero cheese experience. But Gremmels had the marketing chops and Bryant, who knew microbiology, quickly mastered the cheesemaking. Ig mentored them both until his death in 2011. 

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In From: U.S., Milk: Cow Tags Rogue Creamery, David Gremmels, Oregon cheese, Savencia, blue cheese, American blue cheese, Flora Nelle, Caveman Blue, Oregonzola, Rogue River Blue, American Cheese Society
14 Comments

Masterful Cheese from Magic Milk

May 22, 2018 janet@janetfletcher.com
Planet Cheese 16 _DSC4605.jpg

Dinner guests don’t usually bring me cheese. Coals to Newcastle and all that. But recently some friends showed up with a new Oregon creation, and let me just say they are welcome back any time. The wedge was luscious, aromatic and unusual—potentially a great new American cheese. But could the cheesemaker repeat the feat? Yes. Would I love it as much the second, third and fourth time? Yes.

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In From: U.S., Milk: Cow, Milk: Goat Tags Oregon cheese, Briar Rose creamery, American cheese, Lorelai, Maia, Ayrshire cow
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Welcome to my world: a fragrant, fascinating universe devoted to great cheese. In this and future Planet Cheese posts, you’ll find profiles of the world’s best cheeses plus insights into everything cheese: shops, recipes, interviews, pairing discoveries, classes, videos, travel. If you haven’t already done so, sign up here - it’s complimentary - and join me in learning something new about cheese every week.


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     Photographs: Douglas Fletcher, Ed Anderson, Megan Clouse, Faith Echtermeyer, Eva Kolenko,
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