Comments on: Cheese is Hot, or at least warm!

By: Rona Myers Sullivan

Rona Myers Sullivan — Fri, 11 May 2012 08:34:21 +0000

I so appreciate your experience and dedication to the proper care of cheese. As a farmstead cheesemaker it breaks my heart to see cheeses handled improperly simply from a lack of understanding and information. I can only hope that your books, seminars and blogs continue to inform and influence the masses!

There is so much work on the front end of a farmstead operation from caring for the animals, to developing make styles and proper aging, and then getting them sampled out to create a demand. These processes generally take years, but any operation with livestock can only be sustainable through good cash flow….

SO, if you are fortunate enough to get your cheeses to that point of sustainable demand, it is then quite disheartening to deliver them to a venue only to see your leaf wrapped cheeses promptly disrobed, slapped in plastic and into 38f .. well, you can imagine the visceral pain a cheesemaker might experience. Speaking to one cheesemonger about this issue, they told me they had come to this practice because otherwise they'd have to continue to unwrap them occasionally, wipe off natural the molds, and then RE-WRAP in the leaves! Oh my!

We appreciate having a defender like yourself bridging the gap between the cheesemakers and retailers to raise American standards. Thank you!

By: patricia michelson

patricia michelson — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:22:27 +0000

Such a heartfelt article, and one that makes me both sad and angry. However, I met up with Philippe Olivier and Roland Barthelemy in Paris at the Salon du Fromage in Paris recently where a discussion took place with 8 others about forming a European Confederation of Cheese Retailers. This I hope will become worldwide, where we, as cheesemongers and affineurs (refiners and maturers) can have a say in how we run our businesses and especially the way we keep cheeses. I am hopeful that in future people like Max and I can run our businesses in a way that maximizes what we are doing to the cheeses as well as setting ourselves apart from the mass market.

By: Bill Krieger

Bill Krieger — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:11:24 +0000

Max,

Thank you for another useful and encouraging post (despite the sad news about the Pichiline Cheese Cave which I had the very good fortune to experience a few years ago). Your post is encouraging because it urges all of us who care about real cheese to do what we can to educate and persuade health departments and food inspectors to understand that not all cheeses are the same, not all cheeses need to be kept at 38-42F, and that few if any real cheeses have caused sickness or other ill effects in consumers. In Washington State, along with the Washington Food Industry Association and representatives from the ACS, we are being asked to consider the economic impacts that relate to more restrictions on real cheese, especially soft-ripened varieties. The biggest problem in this action relates to the issue at the heart of your current blog: the idea that all cheeses are alike and should be kept in like conditions. I hope that we can make some progress on this point and on the 60-day rule for unpasteurized milk cheeses. Thank you for your efforts and condolences for the loss of the cheese cave.

William (Bill) Krieger, PhD and cheesemonger at Cheese Louise in Richland, WA