The October Cheese Explorer

The October Cheese Explorer

October is my favorite month of the year, the time where the last gasp of humidity is gone from the summer, and we’re fully into the comforts of a New England fall. The leaves start to turn brilliant shades of red, yellow, and orange, and there’s a general sense of conviviality. It’s also historically the time of harvest, and in the cheese world, it marks the starting block of when cheese makers start to bring their cows in from the pasture and give them hay that they’ve accrued over the previous months instead of the green grass of summer. The result is a richer, less sweet milk, and cheeses that suit that style.

Since we are at just the beginning of this transition, I wanted to bring you some cheeses that signal the last bit of the summer and ones that are perfect for the days and nights ahead.

High Lawn Farm in Lee, MA.

We start in the Berkshires, a place that must have been decided upon by the powers that be as the perfect place for fall foliage. Located in the Massachusetts town of Lee, High Lawn Farm has been producing pure Jersey cow milk at their family owned farm since 1923, but they’ve only recently begun to expand their cheese-making operation beyond local farmers markets.

Set over a rolling 1,500 acres of, well, high lawns, the farm take a lot of pride in their Jersey cows, with some of their herd having a traceable lineage going back 15 generations.

Why Jerseys? In High Lawn’s words, “There’s a bunch of reasons why we love Jersey’s so much. Their milk is packed with nutrients and the abundance of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats don’t just make it a healthier choice for you and your family, they translate into the taste as well — giving the milk a rich and creamy texture that’s naturally sweet. And these smaller, brown cows use less land and resources, which contributes to a more sustainable operation, leaving a smaller carbon footprint.”

Comanche Queen, Image Courtesy of High Lawn Farm

This month’s club comes with a fresh round of Comanche Queen, named for one of the ladies in their herd who has a history of award-winning milk. Aged just over 3 - 4 weeks, the interior of this cheese has the texture of soft butter and a sharp tang and the rind has yeasty, fresh dough notes. As this bloomy cheese ages, the interior texture matures into creamy, melted cheese and the rind takes on a hint of mushroom.

Some of the cheeses Peter Dixon makes by hand at Parish Hill Creamery. Image Courtesy of Putney Crafts

Hitch a ride some one hundred miles north up I-91, and you’ll come to the quaint Vermont town of Westminster, where Peter and Rachel Dixon run Parish Hill Creamery. When you begin dipping your toes into the cheese making universe of Vermont, you start to hear a lot about Peter Dixon, spoken of, in reverent terms, as a cheese whisperer.

The couple makes nine cheeses in all, Humble, Kashar, Hermit, Vermont Herdsman, Suffolk Punch, West West Blue, Idyll, Cornerstone, and Reverie, made using exclusively raw milk from the Elm Lea Farm at the Putney school some five miles away, and sources cultures directly from the herd as well.

The Dixons believe in making cheese in the old ways, and the majority of their cheese is made based on classic French or Italian techniques. No cheese is uniform, and each wheel is representative of the flora and fauna that was captured on the day of its make, down to the weather.

Reverie from Parish Hill Creamery

Reverie, selected for this month’s club, is Parish Hill’s take on the classic mountain ‘toma’ style. and true to nature, looks almost like a craggy grey stone you’d find on a walk up the hill. Aged just over 5 months, this cheese has a piquant, almost lemon curd like flavor while young that develops into more robust onion and garlic like flavors as it ages.

Orb Weaver Farm. Image Courtesy of the Middlebury Co-op.

Speaking of tradition, another one hundred miles to the northeast, in the heart of the Champlain Valley, we find Orb Weaver Farm and Creamery in New Haven, Vermont. The farmhouse here is over 200 years old, the cheese cave carved into the hillside, and the rocky mount of Camel’s Hump is visible from the patchwork pasture dotted with hay bales and, wouldn’t you know, Jersey cows.

Marjorie Susman (left) and Marian Pollack (right), the founders of Orb Weaver. Image Courtesy of Seven Days VT.

Marjorie Susman and Marian Pollack began their cheese-making journey in the late 70s, as Marjorie would recall, “I was helping out on a dairy farm and we started making cheese in the kitchen from cows I was milking, and we loved that too. Something in all this clicked on a very deep level and we decided that we wanted to live close to the land. Not sure how to make this a reality,  we started looking around to see what other folks were doing for inspiration. Some friends were selling produce to restaurants, others were milking a few animals and making cheese. Cows, cheese, veggies....sure, why not? 

And so, with all of the arrogance of youth, we loaded up a U-haul, our 2 dogs, Tomar and Gabby and headed north to Vermont where we assumed there would be others who shared our vision of making a farmhouse cheese and selling veggies to restaurants. Imagine our surprise when we arrived to find that although there were lots of great farmers in Vt., none were making cheese on the scale we envisioned for ourselves along with veggies too.”

The Orb Weaver Cheese Cave. Image Courtesy of Orb Weaver Farm

They made their first batch of cheese in 1982, the first true artisan farmstead cheese of its kind in all of Vermont. They never dreamed of expanding beyond what the two of them could do on their own, and so the herds remained small, and the focus was put on sustainable farming. It was only in 2019, as the pair, well within their 70s, decided to hand off the cheese-making reins.

From left: Kate Turcotte, Zach Munzer, Marjorie Susman, Marian Pollack of Orb Weaver Farm. Image Courtesy of Abby Portman

Kate Turcotte and Zack Munzer knew of Orb Weavers work through time spent in the Vermont cheese-making community , as Kate had worked at Shelburne Farms as head cheesemaker, and Zack was a cow breeder and “lover of all things bovine”, as Marjorie put it. They have been hard at work developing new cheeses from their micro-dairy, and Frolic is their latest creation, a washed rind, slightly funky and buttery cheese that borrows more than a whiff from the classic Italian Taleggio. Made in roughly 1 pound squares by hand, Frolic is named after Marjorie and Marian’s favorite cow.

Rote Hexe, or Red Witch.

What would an October club be without some sort of reference to its most famous holiday, especially in New England? That’s why we sought out one of the more interesting Swiss cheeses on the market, called Rote Hexe (“Red Witch”). Made by Christian Oberli in the Canton Saint Gallen region of Switzerland, the cheese is made with an Appenzeller recipe before being aged 5 to 8 months, and the rind is coated with paprika. This cheese is velvety smooth, buttery, meaty, and slightly funky, and just downright perfect with anything you want to pair with it.

Featured Accouterments:

Fresh and Fermented Strawberry Preserves from Tasting Counter.

Fermented & Fresh Strawberry Preserves - Tasting Counter

This preserve from our friends at Tasting Counter in Somerville is made in the Japanese “umeboshi” style. This sweet and salty preserve is made by taking fresh green strawberries and fermenting them for a year, where they are then combined with fresh red strawberries to create a balance of sweet and salty flavor. A traditional part of onigri, this balance of flavors pairs perfectly with cheese.