The Essential Book of Fermentation (22 page)

“Cheese is ready,” he said to a worker, and the worker handed up the cheese harp. This is a stainless-steel frame about three feet square—just the size of the vat—with seventy-two wires strung across it. Each wire is about a half inch from its neighbor, and there are three thicker wires that separate the thin wires into four sections of eighteen wires each. With Liam on one side of the vat and the worker on the other, they each grasped a side of the harp and lowered it vertically into one end of the vat, with the wires in latitudinal (horizontal) positions across the vat. They quickly drew the harp, holding it vertical, toward the other end, slicing the entire curd into half-inch horizontal slabs. They took the harp out of the vat and turned it 90 degrees so the wires were vertical, then drew it down the length of the vat in the same direction as the first pass. They lowered it vertically along one side of the vat and drew it across the curd to the other side, then reversed direction and drew it back toward the first side. They repeated this side-to-side action once more, then finished cutting the curd by drawing the harp from the far end of the vat back toward the front end where they first began cutting the curd. After the first horizontal cut, all the rest were done with the wires held vertically.

Then Liam and his worker did something that surprised me. They lowered their arms into the vat up to the elbows and began waving their arms and swirling them through the vat. “We have to mix by hand like this or the curd will clump back together,” Liam said. “This controls the final moisture of the cheese, because it helps the whey separate out from the curd.” They continued doing this for almost five minutes. Toward the end of this process, Liam said, “I can really feel the curds firming up—I can feel distinct bits of curd hitting my hands.”

After five minutes, they stopped and quickly got down off the grillwork to stand at the stainless-steel tables under the valve at the bottom of the vat. The tables were filled with round drain baskets about eight inches in diameter, perforated with many small holes and rounded on the bottom. A rectangular plastic form was placed over six of these baskets to hold them steady. Liam opened the valve on the vat, and curds and whey shot out into a large bucket. When the bucket was filled, the worker took it away and Cindy handed Liam another bucket for filling. The worker began pouring curds and whey into the drain baskets in the form, filling each basket and moving to the next. After he’d filled six baskets, another worker moved the form to the next six empty baskets. When the worker emptied his large bucket, Liam had another filled one waiting for him. And so the process continued until most of the drain baskets were filled with curds to within an inch of the top. At this point Liam grabbed a large container of black peppercorns and added a measured amount to a large bucket full of curds and whey, then mixed them up and began filling the rest of the drain baskets, which would become the Pepatos.

Meanwhile, the whey was draining furiously from the baskets onto the stainless-steel table, which had a slight tilt toward the far end. The whey, a yellowish gold color with a slight tinge of green, ran down into a drain and then through a hose into large plastic containers.

When the vat of curds and whey was emptied, fifty-four filled drain baskets sat on the table and eighty-five gallons of whey rested at the far end. Then the workers began to flip the baskets. Using quick, circular back-and-forth motions, they flipped the curds—which at this point looked like cottage cheese—inside the baskets to encourage more whey to run out. Liam said the baskets would be flipped like this every fifteen minutes for two hours, after which the curd would have condensed to form a nice, softly rounded fresh cheese. The cheeses would then be turned upside down and the baskets removed. No pressing is involved in making these cheeses. “Pressing would make them chalky,” Liam said.

To make Toscano, the cheeses are placed in a warm, 80ºF room for twenty-four hours, after which they go into the cold, humid ripening room. The San Andreas and Pepato cheeses go immediately into the ripening room. Because these cheeses are natural-rind cheeses, nothing further is done to the rinds.

On Pairing Cheese and Wine

Cheese is milk’s leap toward immortality.

—CLIFTON FADIMAN

When pairing wine with cheese, the best rule is to follow your own taste buds, but don’t let either overwhelm the other. So a rich, inky Zinfandel may swamp the flavors of fresh cheeses like a fromage blanc, a ricotta, or a farmer’s cheese. Similarly, very aggressively aromatic cheeses like Esrom and Limburger, very intense and sharp cheeses like aged cheddar and Swiss Appenzeller, and ripe soft cheeses like Italian Paglia and Toma may overpower delicate wines like a German Mosel. But then again, if you like your Limburger with Mosel . . .

The flavor of cheese depends in part on the milk used. In general, cheeses made from cow’s milk have the mildest flavors, while goat’s and sheep’s milk cheeses have more robust flavor. However, ripeness also determines the degree of flavor. An aged cow’s milk cheese will be stronger than young, fresh cheese made from either goat’s or sheep’s milk, and it’s the bacteria and yeast that turn fresh milk into ripe cheese bursting with flavor.

Wines also range from very light, such as Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Sémillon, and Riesling; through medium-bodied and medium-flavored like fruity Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Grenache, Counoise, and roses; to full-bodied and rich, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, Merlot, Syrah, Sangiovese, Mourvèdre, and some of the more concentrated Pinot Noirs. In a separate category are the sweet dessert wines: late harvest, botrytized, and fortified wines like ports, sherries, and sauternes. In Europe, wines are usually labeled by type or estate rather than grape variety.

While I certainly encourage you to try any combination that strikes your fancy, I find that matching light wine with light cheese, medium wine with medium cheese, and rich wine with intense cheese works well—however, the best overall rule of thumb is that cheeses go better with white wines than with reds. The very intense cheeses, like the blues, and sharp, nutty, salty, hard grating cheeses, such as Asiago, Pecorino Romano, and Parmigiano-Reggiano, pair best with the sweet dessert wines, including port.

Cheeses run from fresh cheese to soft-ripened, bloomy cheese (Brie and Camembert); semisoft washed-rind cheese like Époisses, Taleggio, and Spanish Mahon; semisoft cheese like the Dutch Gouda and Edam, Cantal, Cheshire, Fontina, Appenzeller, and Port Salut; hard cheese like Manchego, dry Jack, provolone, Swiss cheeses, and cheddar; and blue, such as Maytag, Cabrales, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and Stilton.

And sparkling wine? Best with any food, best with any cheese.

A Few Wine and Cheese Pairings

I would love to sit down in front of a crackling fire with some Tuma dla Paja, some
cognà
, and a wonderful, wood-aged barbera like Monti’s Barbera d’Alba. I would have this with an Italian rosetta roll, typical from Trieste. The creamy, moldy complexity of the Tuma is offset by the richness and sweetness of the
cognà
, and it goes perfectly with the rosetta bread, which puffs up like a rose and remains empty on the inside but pure and crunchy on the outside. The deep, berry-like qualities of the barbera wash all of it down—a delicious combination.

(Note: Tuma dla Paja is a superb Piemontese cow’s milk cheese that comes tied up with straw. Cognà is a mixture of fresh and dried fruits stewed in wine for six to twelve hours.)

—Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, TV cooking show host and chef-owner of Felidia, Del Posto, Esca, and Becco restaurants, New York

Great Hill blue cheese from Marion, Massachusetts, drizzled with chestnut honey, with candied and ground chestnuts on the plate, served with walnut-date bread and a 1971 Climens Barsac.

—Daniel Patterson, chef-owner of Coi, San Francisco

Our Mont St. Francis aged raw milk goat cheese sliced very thin with a pain au levain and a Ridge Zinfandel.

—Judy Schad, cheesemaker, Capriole Goat Cheese, Greenville, Indiana

Our blue mold rind aged goat cheese with a crusty French baguette and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

—Greg Sava, cheesemaker, Brier Run Farm, Birch River, West Virginia

Grafton Village Classic Reserve Extra Sharp Vermont cheddar with a crusty, Eastern European–style rye bread, like they sell at Orwasher’s Bakery on 78th Street in New York City, with . . . hmm, a big cheese needs a big wine . . . a big Cabernet Sauvignon.

—Peter Mohn, vice president, Grafton Village Cheese Company, Grafton, Vermont

My Bear Flag Brand Dry Jack with bread from the Basque Boulangerie here in Sonoma when it’s fresh from the oven, with Chateau St. Jean’s Orange Muscat.

—Ig Vella, Vella Cheese Company, Sonoma, California

When I was a kid, my grandmother would serve Teleme, and she also had crusty Tuscan bread made without salt. I love them with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

—Tim Mondavi, winemaker-owner, Continuum Estate, St. Helena, California

CHAPTER 10

Wine

When I moved to the wine country in 1985, it was by pure chance that I bought a house a few hundred yards from the vineyards of Joe Swan, one of the great pioneers of the reemergence of fine winemaking in California, and the man who brought Pinot Noir to the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County. I was fortunate to know Joe for a few years before he died, and to taste some of his wines. One in particular struck me as a mighty drink—dark as the skin of ripe Bing cherries, spicy and rich as a crème brûlée, with fruit-forward flavors of blueberries, dusty blackberries, and plums. It was a bottle of Joseph Swan Vineyards 1970 Gamay, at that time fifteen years old, that Joe had made from fruit grown in the Dry Creek Valley fifteen miles north of his property. I never forgot that glass of wine, but it struck me as curious that a Gamay—usually a light, fruity, inconsequential wine—could be so powerful and massive.

And herein lies a tale: A number of years ago, I dropped in on a party where the host was pouring a thirty-one-year-old bottle of, yep, 1970 Joseph Swan Gamay (probably the last bottle in existence, I thought). Amazingly, it was still as young and fresh-tasting as I remembered from sixteen years before, just as jammy and flavor-packed, but now silkier with age, and with an aroma that had only improved with time. I had discovered along the way that the grape variety wasn’t Gamay at all; it was Napa Gamay, a name that had been given long ago to a mystery grape that no one could recognize. In the late 1980s, however, the great French ampelographer (a scientist who identifies grape varieties) Pierre Galet visited the United States, and on his tour of California identified Napa Gamay as a French variety called Valdiguié. Amazingly, the very next night I attended a dinner party where one of the guests brought, yep again, a bottle of 1970 Swan Gamay. He claimed to have several more bottles stashed in his wine cellar. He also told me that Andy Cutter of Duxoup Winery in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley has been making wine for years from the same Valdiguié vineyard where Joe Swan bought his fruit thirty-one years ago. I called Andy to see if he was still making the wine, and he reported rather sadly that the vineyard owner ripped out the vines after the 2000 vintage, replanting it with Syrah and Sangiovese, two varieties more in favor these days.

Andy said that thirty years ago, Valdiguié was bringing a premium price, because Gallo, the huge winery in Modesto, used to purchase the variety to add to its Cabernets to boost their acidity (Valdiguié is known for its high acidity, and high acidity leads to long ageability in wine, hence Joe’s 1970 Valdiguié’s staying power) and to pump up their flavor. When Joe Swan made his Valdiguié in 1970, there were about four thousand acres of the variety planted in California, used mostly in blends, as Gallo was doing. Today, there are so few acres that the state records don’t show any. Most if not all of the vines have been uprooted and replanted with hot-selling varieties like Syrah, Chardonnay, Merlot, Sangiovese, Viognier, and Cabernet Sauvignon.