Kiri Fisher’s cheese journey has been a difficult one, to say the least, marked by tragedy, natural disaster and rude awakenings. But Fisher, the spunky proprietor of the Cheese School of San Francisco and the new Fisher’s Cheese & Wine, which opens this week in California’s Marin County, has yet to hit a pothole she couldn’t get past.
Read moreWorth the Wait
Because we can always grab a quart of milk at the store, most of us don’t think of milk as seasonal. But cheesemakers do, especially if they work with goats or sheep. A dairy goat’s output dips and rises as the seasons change. Milk quality goes up and down. In summer, goats are generous but the milk is lean. In winter, supply plunges as farmers let pregnant goats go dry. For flavor and selection, spring is prime time. To experience the year’s finest fresh goat cheeses, leap now.
Read moreVintage Cheese
Meg Smith Photography
My high-school French teacher introduced me to Roquefort, and I remember that she served it with butter. Purists will wince but the butter softened the bite, and it helped my teenage palate enjoy the experience. I still think it’s a good trick for a blue that’s too strong. But you won’t want butter with Bleu 1924. This luscious new French blue tastes like it has butter in it.
Read moreSecret No Longer
It would be impossible to name a favorite cheese, but a favorite style? That’s easy. Aged sheep’s milk cheeses---from anywhere—are the ones that disappear first at my house. They get more savory as they mature, not sweeter, so they’re like salted peanuts to me. One bite and I need another. Good news for like minds: we have a new cheese to love.
Read morePresidential Cheese Plate
“I stole the idea from George Washington,” admits Bill Owens, the Northern California brewer credited with popularizing pumpkin ale. Historians tell us that our first President was a beer enthusiast, and that he brewed ale from gourds. Now, 250 years later, pumpkin beers are an annual American rite and a sudsy segue into autumn. Pair them with a few of the cheeses they like and there’s your debate-night platter.
Read moreNew Beauty from Basque Country
Innovation isn’t a word I associate with Basque cheesemakers, but the sublime sheep’s-milk Arpea is reason to rethink that. Created about three years ago by the Fromagerie Agour, Arpea resembles no other Basque cheese I know. A small, semisoft disk from an area known almost exclusively for hard aged wheels, it represents new thinking in this tradition-bound region.
Read moreWhy So Expensive?
(left to right) Oveja Negra Manchego ($30/lb); Pecorino di Filiano ($20/lb); Bellwether Farms Pepato ($40/lb)
“For years, we’ve held our price down,” the cheesemaker told me. But he couldn’t hold the line any longer. The economics of aged sheep’s milk cheese was forcing him to bump up prices, and not by a little. What I didn’t understand, and what the cheesemaker convincingly explained, was why comparable wheels from Europe often cost much less.
Read moreEncore, Encore
You’re right. This is the same cheese pictured in last week’s Planet Cheese. But that was a teaser. I identified it then but didn’t describe it, and this is a cheese you want to know. Goat’s milk blues aren’t that common, and great ones like Persillé de Rambouillet are rarer still. Where has this cheese been all my life?
Read moreShow Time
The annual Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January is equal parts delight and dread for me. While it’s energizing to see so many amazing cheeses and cheese people in one place, my appetite always peters out before the cheese does. It’s agonizing at the end of the day to look at gorgeous mountain wheels from some new Swiss affineur and think, “I just can’t.”
Read moreHigh Spirits
I know I’m late to this party, but I’m just learning how appealing a fine brandy can be with cheese. Not every cheese, of course, but many firm aged cheeses have roasted nut, caramel and brown-butter notes that complement the heady aromas in a brandy glass.
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