Eat All About It

Writing about cheese is as tough as writing about wine. Try describing five of your favorite cheeses, and see: Once you get past past the basics of nutty, tangy, creamy, and all, it’s surprisingly difficult to explain to a reader just what you’re eating. That’s why I’ve  always been impressed by Tami Parr and her Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, which stood out from its 2004 start with its descriptive tasting notes. In my look here at Parr’s new book, Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest: A Discovery Guide,  I wrote that Parr is one of the rare writers capable of translating cheese’s flavors into words. (The blog, actually, goes more into the tastes; the book concentrates more on the cheesemakers.)

We had an e-mail exchange on blogs, books, and Northwest cheese, and only a fraction of Parr’s comments could fit in my review. I’ve included much more of her lengthy, thoughtful replies below. And if anyone wants to take a stab at cheese description in the comments, write in your favorites!

Q: How did the blog turn into a book, and how (& whether) did your goals for them differ? 

A: The initial goal for the blog was just to have a creative outlet…I wasn’t really sure where it was going. I have always considered myself a ‘writer’ on some level and the type of writing I was doing as a lawyer was, well….not quite the writing that I’d envisioned myself doing. I was in such a state with my job at the time (and, not incidentally, turning 40!) & so the blog represented a lifeline, doing the blog meant that I had something else, that I really was not stuck in the world. So that was the initial goal, and I seized on the topic of cheese because I was interested in it and I didn’t see anyone else talking about it. (And my family is from Wisconsin, and I’d grown up around farms and helping out on my aunt and uncle’s dairy farm so I felt comfortable and familiar with the topic of cheese/dairy in general.) 

But as I started doing the blog, it seemed that if I was really going to talk about cheese I was going to have to do it right – talk to cheesemakers, learn about how cheese is made and all of that. I felt like it would be a disservice to do it any other way. (And I wasn’t interested in just navel gazing, either – oh here’s what cheese I ate today. And the next day. And the next day.).  

So the goal changed pretty quickly into becoming a resource for myself and other people interested in locally made/regionally made cheese. I think that’s where it started to take off…people read it and it became a platform for just that. And that particular goal kind of crosses genres – it was a logical extension for me to then start writing print articles about cheese, and then the book.  

In part I wanted to do a book because I think that print medium brings the cheese ‘gospel’ to a broader audience. Not every consumer reads blogs or is hooked into the internet. They can take a book on a road trip with them, stop at farms or farmer’s markets, mark it up, it has a certain usability that my blog doesn’t. And the topic of cheese – the cheeses, the farms, the regions etc – kind of suggests ‘book’ or ‘guide.’ I had originally titled my book “Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest: A Discovery Guide” and that part after the colon sort of sums it up. That’s what I want the book to be.  

The blog will always retain a certain newsiness, topicality, breeziness and kind of on the spot observation that the book can’t have and that’s its strength -  but some of what I gathered in the blog over time is this record of cheeses and cheesemakers that wouldn’t really have been fully realized had it not become a book.

Q: Beyond geography, are there any qualities that unite Northwest cheeses? And, how did you decide to include British Columbia in the definition? 

A: Today’s technology allows you to pretty much make every kind of cheese anywhere you want. So you can order cultures from the culture company and make a gruyere in Washington or Alabama or Switzerland. That being said, each of those three will be somewhat different because of the cheesemaker, the milk, and the conditions in the area where it’s made…but still recognizably similar. 

In other words, I don’t think you can say there is a characteristic Northwest cheese or style. I wish there was, because I think it would have made a cool theme for my book. But we have some unique regional characteristics – diversity of climate, for one. We have coastal climates, mountain climates and desert climates which I think has all sorts of potential – mostly unrealized at this point – for producing an incredible diversity of styles and flavors of cheese. 

There is a guy at UC Davis (Moshe Rosenberg) who is doing work on the chemistry of terroir…they can do studies and determine from gas chromatography (I think) whether or not something is organic, etc. I went to a talk of his and he is working on applying that to the concept of regional terroir and an AOC type system of protected classes of products like cheese. You could develop a regional cheese (the way they do in Europe) and then use forensic chemistry to determine whether or not a cheese really came from a certain region, etc. The OR cheesemakers in the audience were really against it because they want to make what they want to make and felt that this kind of thing would hinder their creativity. Yet having a regional product could be really interesting and a money making endeavor for cheesemakers and for the region….so anyway I think that’s a concept that’s a few decades away. 

On British Columbia, historically, the Pacific Northwest was a broad swath of territory that included what is now BC…it wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that things got sorted out into ‘Canada’ and ‘America’.  If you put the political boundaries to one side, we have everything in common with BC. Same climate, same diversity of geography, etc etc. It always seemed completely obvious to me that I had to do BC, I think the concept of Northwest regionality demands it.  

Also, I’ve always liked the idea of ‘Cascadia’ the sort of utopian/ecotopian vision of the Pacific NW that includes BC.  

That being said, the cheesemaking world is different up there. They are regulated differently – they have a two tier licensing system (provincial vs. federal) which allows a small cheesemaker to get into the business on a provincial level, and only sell their stuff within the province. It’s less expensive than the federal, but you can’t sell in the entire country or export without the federal license.  

Also, there are a lot of European immigrants up there making cheese with a lot of expertise (e.g. a couple of folks from Switzerland, Donat Koller and Paul Sutter) and we don’t have much of that kind of thing down in the states. The whole feel of the cheesemaking community is more European, you see cheesemakers who are familiar with cheese styles and tend to have a clearer idea of what they want to do and make.  

I also think there is more appreciation of cheese generally up there, cheese is not as mysterious of a product to consumers as it is down here. I mean, Les Amis du Fromage is by far the best cheese shop in the Pacific Northwest and they have, what, three locations in Vancouver now? It’s insane! I wanted to tap into that a little bit, perhaps give US people an glimpse of something different that’s in their own back yard. 

Q: How much research did the book take beyond the blog, and was the reception you received any different working on a “book” versus a “blog” or article?

A: As you know, the great thing about the blog is that you can write what you want when you want. That is also the worst thing…..the book forced me to be disciplined and more rigorous about the whole thing. A deadline imposed from the outside did wonders for my motivation.

The book represents every single cheesemaker in the PNW as of last summer (there are already six new ones! Ack!) and I visited almost every single one (except the ones that didn’t want me to come). The task of doing a book pushed me to contact those cheesemakers I hadn’t ever spoken to, made me travel where I probably wouldn’t have – i.e. out to the Okanagan Valley in Canada where I’d never been just because it’s such a drive…stuff like that. I can also say for certain that I never would have had the courage to contact Sally Jackson otherwise! 

So the book added a certain rigor and pushed me to make the ‘project’ whole and complete on some level. I could have otherwise dallied around for years, interviewing cheesemakers on a sort of casual offhand basis and never really pulled it all together.  

And once I’d gathered all of that data, I have been able to view things on a higher plane, to be able to see the entire movement, such as it is, to really see what cheeses are being made where, to get a really comprehensive idea of what’s going on… 

Reception – definitely different…the fact that I had a website/blog was not super impressive to cheesemakers. There is a certain gravitas to a book that seems to change people’s impression of what I’m doing.  (And they say that print media is dead!) 

Q: A blog has limited space… were there any cheeses you desperately wanted to include in the book that had to be cut? 

A: Not really, I had a lot of latitude as far as space. So thankfully, that wasn’t an issue at all! I mean, in a perfect world I would have been able to a) have all of the photos in color and b) have a multiple page photo spread of all of the cheeses from every producer. But hey. 

Q: What do you see coming up for the region’s cheeses? 

A: More producers. We have 3 new ones in WA and 3 in OR so far in 2009 and I know that we could easily have at least 3-4 more in OR by the end of the year. It’s crazy, you would think that the recession would cause people to hold off or wait until things look up - but I think 2009 will be one of the biggest years in a decade for numbers of cheesemakers starting up. 

More diversity of cheeses. There’s too much fresh chevre and too much Gouda! I mean, these are popular styles and people like them, for sure. But I think that with the numbers of new producers coming on line, makers are going to have to diversify to distinguish themselves from the pack.  I think we’ll see more technically complex cheeses like washed rinds, blues, more soft ripened cheeses – stuff like that. 

Better cheese. With the selection that consumers have now, and the increasing awareness of local cheese– consumers are becoming more discriminating. Cheesemakers are going to have to improve their consistency and their technical skills in order to appeal to an increasingly educated public. Competition will force them to. 

BTW, the American Cheese Society convention will be in Seattle in 2010 so I think that will be a great opportunity for the PNW. Kurt (Dammeier) is one of the festival chairs and I think he’s got some great ideas for involving the community, bringing in the BC cheesemakers and etc. So that’s in the future too.