East Coast cheese tour Part 4: Franklin Peluso (Mid Coast Cheese)

One of the endearing things about cheesemakers is that few really have any idea that to a small subculture of people, they are rockstars. Franklin Peluso is a 3rd generation California cheesemaker who recently moved all the way from Los Banos to Rockport Maine. This didn’t stop him from being honored last year at the founding meeting of the California Artisan Cheese Guild for lifetime achievement. People wanted to honor him so much that they just didn’t mention that relocation thing.

Here’s Franklin Peluso, Cheese Superstar, hard at work


While he is also working on a new cheese, Franklin is known for Teleme. It’s a soft oozy cheese with the best rind in the world, a thin, chewy curust that is rubbed with rice flour. The cheese itself is mild, sour, tangy and milky. It’s one of the few cheeses that has the smell of fresh milk at the dairy. It’s most similar to an Italian Crescenza, taste-wise but you could also think of it as a Taleggio without the ugly and the stink.

Teleme has never (aside from the recent CAGC award) gotten the recognition it deserves. One of the things about American specialty cheese fans is that they tend to want strong cheese, as if to prove they can take it. There is a cultural lack of confidence with fancy cheese as if the harder a cheese is to eat, the better it must be. Teleme is easy. It goes with almost any fruit, any bread, any cracker. It makes an amazing fondue. When it’s ripe, it’ll be the first thing gone from the cheese plate, guaranteed.

One of the best parts of the trip was just hanging out with Franklin while he made 1000 pounds of cheese. He has someone helping him flip cheese in the aging room, but basically he does it all himself. At 8 AM he draws the milk into the vat, at 1 PM he has 100 wheels ready to age. We talked about how few people live in Maine, how California has changed, how he’s adjusting to life in the middle of nowhere. At one point Sheana or I commented on the stream of whey he was making by pulling the curds up on the sides of the vat saying it looked like the California Aqueduct. "Yes," he said, "It’s like an aqueduct, the Roman aqueduct. "

I love the old Italian cheesmakers.

( Here’s his aqueduct of whey )

Having said how much I love this cheese, I should mention that it’s not always easy to get good Teleme. It is really susceptible to molding on the rind, Obviously, this can take a lot of the joy of the cheese away. We actually developed a couple of customers willing to buy wheels as-is at a deep discount because it happened so often. And if your Teleme is bitter, it’s too old. Take it back where you got it. Part of this problem was that Franklin sold his California factory with the name "Peluso’s Teleme" and, at least coincidentally, quality control went way downhill. Look for "Mid Coast Cheese Company" rice flour Teleme made in Maine.

Of course, last week, after four perfect wheels, I got a pink-rinded one. Despite the Maine connection, I didn’t think it was lobster-flavored so I sent it back.

Franklin is sharing space with the State of Maine Cheese Company which, for the record, is not owned by the state of Maine. They make some really nice UK-style cheeses including an awesome Caerphilly. I spent a lot of time in their gift shop trying to figure out exactly which kinds of maple candies I should bring home. I also found these weird chocolate things called Needhams that had potato as the first ingredient. When I asked what the hell they were the counter folks were shocked I had never heard of them and guaranteed me that they were a Maine treat. When I got them home I presented them to animikwaan, my arbiter of all things Maine, and she had no idea what they were. Go figure.

( But hey, the curds are ready. )