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Back in my ye olde days, I used to be enough of a political activist to travel around the country and stay at the houses of relative strangers for a Good Cause. I’ve done some punk rock travel too which generally involved harder, but not dirtier, floors and less sleep. Imagine my surprise to find out that the cheese world offers a similar travel plan. The big difference, as you would guess, is that the food is a lot better.
From Westfield Farm we decided to drive down to Buzzard’s Bay, Ma to visit Great Hill Blue. Great Hill Blue is one of my favorite domestic blues. It’s made from raw milk. It’s creamy, fruity and not over-salted. It is a seriously underrated cheese and versatile enough for any blue need. It won’t bur y you in pungency but it has more complexity than you think when you look at its relatively generic-looking 6 lb. wheel format.
Sheana and I had befriended the cheesemaker and his wife at the Milwaukee cheese conference* and they had invited her to stay if she ever came to town. Unfortunately they were moving into a new house and we had some communications problems, so we ended up not knowing whether they expected us to arrive on that night or the next. We couldn’t make it to the dairy before closing, and really cheesemakers are usually gone by early afternoon anyway, so we drove the five hours south figuring we’d probably get a motel room and go visit the dairy in the morning.
Thanks to Mapquest and Great Hill Dairy’s billing address we knew how to get to the cheese plant. We decided to see if anyone was around and could give us their new phone number. As we approached, it was hard to believe their was going to be a cheese company around. On the road to Buzzard’s Bay all we could see were tall fences, big houses and obvious summer homes. I hoped that the address wasn’t just a maildrop.
It wasn’t. It was the owner’s* private home which was behind a huge fence and next to the cheese plant on I don’t know how many acres of land. A lot. Evidently this property had been owned by the owners family well before the beginning of the last century and well before it became a tourist destination. After some initial embarrassment on our part, and nothing but helpfulness on the part of the owner’s wife, we managed to reach our potential hosts on the phone who ordered us to come over immediately.
In the 15 minutes it took to get their, David, the cheesemaker had gone to the store to get the ingredients for a New England clam chowder so Priscilla, his, wife, welcomed us as the first visitors to their brand new home. David turned out to be one of those gracious hosts who apologizes for things like not digging the clams himself as he made the most amazing chowder I’d ever tasted. Then he apologized his way through an improvised dessert of crepe suzette. Turns out he was a chef in Boston before he got the cheesemaking job. Yeah guys, when you visit the city, we’ll be going to a restaurant, ok?
As the cooking got going we sat around eating Westfield Farm cheese and drinking the limited edition wine Sheana made which we lugged out from San Francisco, it was time for Sheana to do a live call in to her weekly Sonoma County radio show From Farm to Table *** The wine and lack of sleep had gotten to me by the time Sheana shoved the phone in my face and told me I was on live, but I think I did ok. Hopefully I didn’t sound too dumb or drunky-drunky.
In what was to be a pattern, we kept a cheesemaker up past their bedtime drinking and had to feel a little guilty the next morning when we heard their alarm go off at 4:30 AM. Not guilty enough to not go back to sleep, but still…
At around 8 AM we made it back to Great Hill and got a tour of the make room as David cut the curds. We tasted more Great Hill, mocked the salty and insipid Danish Blue, met the incredibly nice folks who package and ship the cheese, and tasted David’s home-made hard cider before we were off to Maine.
While Great Hill is one of my favorites, I do wanna mention some issues I have with their canned press release before we leave Massachusetts. To be fair, I don’t think that this text has been changed since they started making cheese two decades ago. But hey, it might be time for an update.
Located on the shores of Buzzard's Bay, 50 Miles south of Boston, Great Hill Dairy in Marion has been known for its outstanding herd of Guernsey cows as well as its prize winning Acacia and Orchid collections. Note the tricky tense of the verbs. "Has been" is true because they have bought milk solely from local farmers for about 20 years. They have three remaining Guernseys which are decorative more than anything else. They serve that purpose because they are three of the most big, beautiful cows (hott bbcs!) I’ve ever seen. Still, it is worth mentioning that 2/3 of their actual cows are represented on their cheese label.
Great Hill is now introducing a unique tasting blue cheese made in its turn-of-the-century barn. Great Hill Blue is an internally ripened variety made with raw, unhomogenized milk resulting in a true gourmet quality cheese. The cheese has a slightly more dense and yellow curd as no bleach or food colorings are added. Again technically true, but I don’t know anyone who homogenizes their milk before cheesemaking. As for not "bleaching" their milk, it makes the reader think that that might be common practice. Uh, no.
Still, it’s an amazing cheese made by wonderful and hospitable folks. Our Cheese Tour was off to an amazing start.
(Next: Peluso’s Teleme)
*Longtime readers may remember that I was kinda laid-low at that conference from food poisoning so Sheana did better schmoozing than I did.
**Obviously at this plant the owner and the cheesemaker are not the same people.
***The show in question was 4/18 which you clever folks can probably figure out how to listen to if you really want to. Hear me exclaim, "The houses here have basements!"
From Westfield Farm we decided to drive down to Buzzard’s Bay, Ma to visit Great Hill Blue. Great Hill Blue is one of my favorite domestic blues. It’s made from raw milk. It’s creamy, fruity and not over-salted. It is a seriously underrated cheese and versatile enough for any blue need. It won’t bur y you in pungency but it has more complexity than you think when you look at its relatively generic-looking 6 lb. wheel format.
Sheana and I had befriended the cheesemaker and his wife at the Milwaukee cheese conference* and they had invited her to stay if she ever came to town. Unfortunately they were moving into a new house and we had some communications problems, so we ended up not knowing whether they expected us to arrive on that night or the next. We couldn’t make it to the dairy before closing, and really cheesemakers are usually gone by early afternoon anyway, so we drove the five hours south figuring we’d probably get a motel room and go visit the dairy in the morning.
Thanks to Mapquest and Great Hill Dairy’s billing address we knew how to get to the cheese plant. We decided to see if anyone was around and could give us their new phone number. As we approached, it was hard to believe their was going to be a cheese company around. On the road to Buzzard’s Bay all we could see were tall fences, big houses and obvious summer homes. I hoped that the address wasn’t just a maildrop.
It wasn’t. It was the owner’s* private home which was behind a huge fence and next to the cheese plant on I don’t know how many acres of land. A lot. Evidently this property had been owned by the owners family well before the beginning of the last century and well before it became a tourist destination. After some initial embarrassment on our part, and nothing but helpfulness on the part of the owner’s wife, we managed to reach our potential hosts on the phone who ordered us to come over immediately.
In the 15 minutes it took to get their, David, the cheesemaker had gone to the store to get the ingredients for a New England clam chowder so Priscilla, his, wife, welcomed us as the first visitors to their brand new home. David turned out to be one of those gracious hosts who apologizes for things like not digging the clams himself as he made the most amazing chowder I’d ever tasted. Then he apologized his way through an improvised dessert of crepe suzette. Turns out he was a chef in Boston before he got the cheesemaking job. Yeah guys, when you visit the city, we’ll be going to a restaurant, ok?
As the cooking got going we sat around eating Westfield Farm cheese and drinking the limited edition wine Sheana made which we lugged out from San Francisco, it was time for Sheana to do a live call in to her weekly Sonoma County radio show From Farm to Table *** The wine and lack of sleep had gotten to me by the time Sheana shoved the phone in my face and told me I was on live, but I think I did ok. Hopefully I didn’t sound too dumb or drunky-drunky.
In what was to be a pattern, we kept a cheesemaker up past their bedtime drinking and had to feel a little guilty the next morning when we heard their alarm go off at 4:30 AM. Not guilty enough to not go back to sleep, but still…
At around 8 AM we made it back to Great Hill and got a tour of the make room as David cut the curds. We tasted more Great Hill, mocked the salty and insipid Danish Blue, met the incredibly nice folks who package and ship the cheese, and tasted David’s home-made hard cider before we were off to Maine.
While Great Hill is one of my favorites, I do wanna mention some issues I have with their canned press release before we leave Massachusetts. To be fair, I don’t think that this text has been changed since they started making cheese two decades ago. But hey, it might be time for an update.
Located on the shores of Buzzard's Bay, 50 Miles south of Boston, Great Hill Dairy in Marion has been known for its outstanding herd of Guernsey cows as well as its prize winning Acacia and Orchid collections. Note the tricky tense of the verbs. "Has been" is true because they have bought milk solely from local farmers for about 20 years. They have three remaining Guernseys which are decorative more than anything else. They serve that purpose because they are three of the most big, beautiful cows (hott bbcs!) I’ve ever seen. Still, it is worth mentioning that 2/3 of their actual cows are represented on their cheese label.
Great Hill is now introducing a unique tasting blue cheese made in its turn-of-the-century barn. Great Hill Blue is an internally ripened variety made with raw, unhomogenized milk resulting in a true gourmet quality cheese. The cheese has a slightly more dense and yellow curd as no bleach or food colorings are added. Again technically true, but I don’t know anyone who homogenizes their milk before cheesemaking. As for not "bleaching" their milk, it makes the reader think that that might be common practice. Uh, no.
Still, it’s an amazing cheese made by wonderful and hospitable folks. Our Cheese Tour was off to an amazing start.
(Next: Peluso’s Teleme)
*Longtime readers may remember that I was kinda laid-low at that conference from food poisoning so Sheana did better schmoozing than I did.
**Obviously at this plant the owner and the cheesemaker are not the same people.
***The show in question was 4/18 which you clever folks can probably figure out how to listen to if you really want to. Hear me exclaim, "The houses here have basements!"
