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East Coast cheese tour: Vermont Shepherd
May. 11th, 2006 09:25 am Vermont Shepherd was the last real stop on my cheese tour. Cindy and David Major were some of the first people I met in the cheese business outside the Bay Area and people I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with whenever we’ve been in strange cities together for cheese events.
No sooner had we parked our car than I was helping David carry cheese from the aging room into the cheese cave. Their cave is impressive, dug into a natural hillside and decorated with big stones. Unfortunately you won’t see a picture of this because I opened the back of my camera while rewinding my film. Oops.
Vermont Shepherd is basically a Basque-style sheep cheese made from raw milk. That is one of my all-time favorite styles of cheese so I was pre-disposed to like it before I even tried it a decade ago. While retaining the basic aspects of an Ossau-Iraty, Vermont Shepherd is sharper, sweeter, and more gamey than all but the most dramatic raw milk varieties. I think most Ossau-Iratys are more balanced, and creamy textured than the Vermont Shepherd, but like I said, I love them all.
David about to transport cheese to the aging room
Vermont Shepherd is also a beautiful cheese that is obviously hand-made. It looks like some of those mysterious flying saucer pictures from an old episode of "In Search of…": round but convex at the sides. The rind is brown, flaky and befriended by cheese mites. Unfortunately, David has just started production for the year, and they sell-out their cheese every year, so there was nothing to take pictures of in the cave’s aging room. In some ways that was good. A room full of their rough-looking cheese on their homemade wooden shelves would be almost too much to bear. I wouldn’t have ever wanted to leave. I don’t think I’m important enough to make the cheese trade papers if the cops had to come remove me from the aging room, but the gossip would have spread.
We stayed with Cindy, and had a feast. Because Sheana had heard stories of my baked mac and cheese she insisted I make it for the party, partly because our goal was to cook more food than could be eaten in a week. Made with our last lb. of Teleme , two lbs. of Vermont Shepherd, and a pint of half and half, we realized that as a restaurant portion it would probably be about $15 a portion. This is when I love working in the food business.
( sheep porn and me )
No sooner had we parked our car than I was helping David carry cheese from the aging room into the cheese cave. Their cave is impressive, dug into a natural hillside and decorated with big stones. Unfortunately you won’t see a picture of this because I opened the back of my camera while rewinding my film. Oops.
Vermont Shepherd is basically a Basque-style sheep cheese made from raw milk. That is one of my all-time favorite styles of cheese so I was pre-disposed to like it before I even tried it a decade ago. While retaining the basic aspects of an Ossau-Iraty, Vermont Shepherd is sharper, sweeter, and more gamey than all but the most dramatic raw milk varieties. I think most Ossau-Iratys are more balanced, and creamy textured than the Vermont Shepherd, but like I said, I love them all.
David about to transport cheese to the aging room
Vermont Shepherd is also a beautiful cheese that is obviously hand-made. It looks like some of those mysterious flying saucer pictures from an old episode of "In Search of…": round but convex at the sides. The rind is brown, flaky and befriended by cheese mites. Unfortunately, David has just started production for the year, and they sell-out their cheese every year, so there was nothing to take pictures of in the cave’s aging room. In some ways that was good. A room full of their rough-looking cheese on their homemade wooden shelves would be almost too much to bear. I wouldn’t have ever wanted to leave. I don’t think I’m important enough to make the cheese trade papers if the cops had to come remove me from the aging room, but the gossip would have spread.
We stayed with Cindy, and had a feast. Because Sheana had heard stories of my baked mac and cheese she insisted I make it for the party, partly because our goal was to cook more food than could be eaten in a week. Made with our last lb. of Teleme , two lbs. of Vermont Shepherd, and a pint of half and half, we realized that as a restaurant portion it would probably be about $15 a portion. This is when I love working in the food business.
( sheep porn and me )
