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GOURMET NEWS JANUARY 2015 www.gourmetnews.com BUYERS GUIDE BUYERS GUIDE 2 4 S O U P S This listing is compiled from a survey conducted by Gourmet News and sent to all manufacturers known to the staff. Inclusion in this section is based on a company's response to our request for information. Information included in this listing is provided by the featured companies. A M E R I C A N C H E E S E Cellars at Jasper Hill Cellars at Jasper Hill LLC recently announced that its Bayley Hazen Blue cheese was awarded World's Best Unpasteurized Cheese at the World Cheese Awards in London. The World Cheese Awards, now in its 26th year, hosted an international panel of judges comprised of over 250 cheese experts from 26 different countries. Bayley Hazen Blue won a Super Gold award and subsequently made it into the final round of 16 cheeses, where it was officially recognized as a trophy winner under the heading of World's Best Unpasteurized Cheese. Bayley Hazen Blue is a Jasper Hill Farm original and is made from high-quality whole raw milk. It is named for an old military road commissioned by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Bayley has a fudge-like tex- ture, toasted-nut sweetness, and anise spice character. The paste is dense and creamy, with well-distributed blue veins. The usual peppery character of blue cheese is subdued, giving way to the grassy, nutty flavors in the milk. Cellars at Jasper Hill www.jasperhillfarm.com/cheese Green Valley Organics In response to increasing demand for delicious, lactose-free dairy prod- ucts, Green Valley Organics ® is expanding its award-winning line with the introduction of the first real dairy, lactose-free cream cheese available in the U.S. market. Green Valley Organics Cream Cheese will be available nationwide at a suggested retail price of $3.49 at Whole Foods Markets, with a wider availability in other natural food stores in early 2015. Green Valley Organics Cream Cheese is made with only four ingredients: pure organic cream, sea salt, lactase enzyme and live, active cultures. It con- tains no additives and is free of milk powder, fillers, gum thickeners or other unnecessary ingredients. Flourish ® , the company's proprietary blend of 10 different probiotics, provides the live and active cultures in this delicious new cream cheese. The quality and outstanding taste of all Green Valley Organics products start with the milk, which comes from a certified organic family farm in the heart of Sonoma County, located north of San Francisco along the California coast. The Sonoma County climate, so similar to the Mediterranean with its warm summers and mild winters, offers lush, green winter pastures that are among the most diverse grasslands in the country. These pastures provide perfect nourishment for humanely raised dairy cows. Green Valley Organics www.greenvalleylactosefree.com Cheesemakers Continued from PAGE 1 According to the ACS definition, Ameri- can originals are "cheeses recognized … as uniquely American in their original forms … or unique in their recipe or formulation and which do not strictly conform to the guidelines of other acknowledged recipes for cheese types." For many American orig- inal cheeses, the recipe is entirely new, or it represents a significant redirection from an existing recipe. There may be an inter- esting diversion in terms of milk type, tex- ture or rind development. In addition, the cheese may offer a unique flavor profile that is not representative of any other cheese type. For U.S. foodies always seeking out the next big thing, the growing popularity of American originals reflects the consumer desire to experiment with fresh, new prod- ucts and flavors. "What I've found is with cheese buyers, they always want something new." said author and maître fromager Max McCalman. "It's not that they don't have fa- vorites, of course, but they also want to try something new or something that's re- lated." Still, one cannot narrow down the root of the growing success of American original cheeses in the U.S. specialty food market- place simply to consumer fatigue with Eu- ropean-style staples. This ignores the fact that American cheesemakers are in fact doing something truly special with their craft. Whereas European cheesemakers are often severely limited in how they formu- late their products, American cheesemak- ers are free to experiment and reimagine how the finished cheese should look, smell, feel and taste. "We have the opportunities to do differ- ent things. This is the advantage that Amer- ican producers have against what is mostly imported from Europe," said McCalman. "For example, [in Europe,] recipes are fairly well established, especially for the DOP cheeses – cheeses that do have some sort of protection. The recipe is often very strictly defined. It may be a little different one Comté from another Comté, but they don't have the grand diversity of things that customers look for. They're looking for something new." In addition to drawing in greater num- bers of adventurous American eaters, U.S. cheesemakers crafting original prod- ucts also benefit from being able to charge a premium for a special product that has no immediate equal on the shelf. In short, whereas an American producer of Cheddar or Parmesan is operating in an immensely competitive field, Fat Bot- tom Girl and Humboldt Fog have created their own categories. These types of products are therefore able to secure a more advantageous price than if they were simply placed on the shelf as yet an- other Gouda or Brie. "If a local cheesemaker comes to me, and it's their seventh cheese … and it's a Mon- terey Jack with jalapeños added, and that's the name of the cheese, my customer has instant recognition. My customer has a lot of different points of comparison," said John Antonelli, founder of Antonelli's Cheese Shop in Austin, Texas. "There's probably a Monterey Jack with jalapeños that's being produced at $3 a pound. And this artisanal cheesemaker, while they are making a special cheese, and they're doing it by hand, and they're getting really great milk sourced, they've kind of created a po- tential downward pressure on [the price of] their product by making that choice. It's something that we can't fight." Of course, there are also potential pitfalls a cheesemaker can fall into when she or he makes the decision to eschew a European name or recipe for a product and opt for something original. Emmanuel Voissard, Vice President of Retail Sales for Emmi Roth USA, recounts how sales of his com- pany's flagship Grand Cru fell after the company decided to remove the name Gruyere from the label. "We do a lot of sales in supermarkets, and people no longer have any idea what Grand Cru is, so that has been very dra- matic for us, because we're trying to call it Alpine-style or whatever, but nobody knows what Alpine-style means," he said. "In my opinion, if you try to sell large vol- umes of a product, you need to identify that product to something people know. If you try to do original recipe, and you intend on keeping a fairly low volume, then you can educate the stores that sell your product. But if it has to go on the shelf on its own, it's very difficult. People don't relate to the product somehow." Andy Hatch, owner, General Manager and Lead Cheesemaker at Uplands Cheese Company, dealt with this same issue when he made the decision to mar- ket his company's award-winning cheese as Pleasant Ridge Reserve, avoiding ex- plicitly comparing it to the Alpine-style cheeses like Gruyere and Beaufort that loosely inspired it. However, he ac- knowledges that this could have been a disaster. "You can make an Alpine-style cheese, as I do, that is intentionally tak- ing its own route and is not trying to copy anything. At the same time, you could market that as a Gruyere-style cheese. I might argue that may be neces- sary. It would offer you certain advan- tages when you're sitting on a shelf, and a customer just needs to look at that label and make a decision based on the label. You may need those queues," he said. For cheesemakers and cheese retailers looking to sell American originals to a con- sumer base that is much more familiar with mozzarella, Muenster and mascarpone, the key is to hand-sell the product. One cannot simply place a new product with an unfa- miliar name on a shelf and hope that con- sumers will pick it up and try it. The customer needs to be educated about the product. "When something is hand-sold, the monitor has an opportunity to say, well this is Pleasant Ridge Reserve. They make it on their farm only in the summer. It's Alpine style. That's very different from a customer walking by a wrap sitting on a shelf that says Pleasant Ridge Reserve. They have no idea what that means," said Hatch. "Strik- ing out on your own and making an origi- nal cheese that's not obviously tied to a recognizable precedent – Gruyere, Ched- dar, Colby, Monterey Jack – is a risky proposition when you get to bigger volume and your cheese isn't being hand-sold." For Rachel Cohen, San Francisco City Lead at specialty food retailer Good Eggs, it is much easier to sell American original specialty cheeses in her store, when she knows the cheesemaker's story and she has something fun and engaging to share with her customers. "When I first told the story of Fat Bottom Girl, I had such joy, because it has such a lovely story," she said. "That's something to consider too is that most mongers want to say more than just the name of the cheese, the producer and the place. If you can give them something else that goes with that, they will do that much better for you." With the EU seeking in recent trade negotiations with the United States a ban on the use of traditional European prod- uct names for a variety of U.S.-produced foods and beverages, including cheeses, American cheesemakers are now being forced to consider, whether they like it or not, if they are to abandon imported monikers and recipes in favor of crafting an American original. Fortunately, Amer- ican consumers are now requesting Point Reyes Bay Blue and Coach Farm Raw- struck just as they once requested Gor- gonzola and chevre. This is a trend that is bound to continue as much out of con- sumer preference as out of political-eco- nomic necessity. "If you're starting now, in six months, we might be finding ourselves in a challenging spot, where we can't use [these names]," said Antonelli. "A great example [is] Gruyere. Emmi Roth has already decided to take it out of their name, and there's some significant branding that was lost. The momentum stopped for them. So take that into consideration as you're going out to decide. Even if you do mimic a cheese exactly, you don't have to name it Gruyere. You can name it something else. You can choose that and allow cheesemongers around the country to do the work for you marketing it. Just keep that in mind … The naming might become a big challenge in the future." GN

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