Cheesemakers in this area shine
Award-winning area cheesemakers shine
Amethyst grew protective, shielding her kids as visitors approached. She’d given birth about 25 minutes earlier to a boy and a girl, who may go by “Amaryllis.”
“The amaryllis in our house just finished blooming,” reasoned Catherine Renzi of Yellow Springs Farm in Chester Springs, where goats like Amethyst supply milk for award-winning cheeses.
“I really hope we can help people understand why local cheese is local,” she said. “I use the phrase ‘connecting landscape and foodscape.’ The food reflects the land, soil, air and water that’s here. The flavors are specific to this place.”
Area artisans are reinventing the (cheese) wheel. There’s even a Pennsylvania Cheese Guild.
“Most of us can’t seem to produce enough to meet the demand, and that’s so exciting to me,” said board member Stefanie Angstadt of Valley Milkhouse in Oley. “It’s an inspiring time. There’s good momentum around the industry in the state right now.”
Her best seller: Thistle, a second-place winner at this year’s Pennsylvania Farm Show and “definitely not your store-brought Brie.”
“It’s a cheese that is soft and has buttery flavors,” she described, “and because of the white mold also has some earthy, mushroomy flavors that come out as it ages.”
At The Farm at Doe Run in Coatesville, additional aging produced a cheese that’s “gotten some really great recognition over the past few months,” said cheesemaker Samuel Kennedy.
St. Malachi Reserve, “named after a small church up the street,” won second place best of show at the American Cheese Society competition and gold at the World Cheese Awards.
“It’s our hybrid version of a Gouda,” he explained. “Every little nuance is foreseen in a wheel of cheese,” including the weather and “the attitude of the person milking that day.”
“We’re really happy with the result when we get about 20 months into the aging process,” added fellow cheesemaker Matt Hettlinger. “You get some nice toffee notes, hazelnuts, nuts, caramel. It’s a cheese everyone seems to like.”
Fans include Christine Kondra of Cornerstone BYOB & Artisanal Market in Wayne, who sells Doe Run cheeses and serves them in the restaurant.
“The level of production of what they’re doing is amazing,” she said. “I feel like their techniques are very European in style, but they’ve made them their own.”
Back at Yellow Springs Farm, offerings include Fieldstone and Black Diamond — both American Cheese Society and recent Farm Show winners.
“We’ll also make a cheese this year using native wildflowers,” Renzi revealed. And “we have a new cheese that’s an Alpine style, which we’re going to call Pickering Creek.’”
Stay tuned, cheese lovers. Stay tuned.