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BY LORRIE BAUMANN A finalist for a 2015 sofi Award for its Burnt Sugar and Fennel Shortbread, Lark Fine Foods will be back at the Summer Fancy Food Show this year with Salted Caramel Almond Chocolate Pearl shortbread cookies. This cookie starts with a traditional chocolate chip cookie and kicks the recipe up a notch with Valrhona Choco- late Pearls – little crispy nuggets enrobed in chocolate and mixed into the cookie dough along with crackly bits of salted caramel and almond brittle. "There are noticeable chunks of caramel throughout the cookie," said Lark Manag- BY LORRIE BAUMANN This is the second part of a two- part story that started in the May issue of Gourmet News. By the time you see this part of the story in print, you'll be able to find it in its entirety on GourmetNews.com. I opened my laptop computer as soon as our tour group boarded the bus the next morning and started writing about Chalet Cheese Co-op's Limburger while our bus wound its way through the Wisconsin countryside to Waterloo. An hour later, our tour group trooped off the bus and A Guided Tour Through Wisconsin Dairyland Continued on PAGE 12 Continued on PAGE 8 into a white-painted building to be greeted by George Crave, Farmer and Cheesemaker, and his wife Debbie. George is one of four brothers who'd been farm- ing here for about 20 years, and by 2001 they were milking 600 cows and thinking about how they could grow their farm business. They were mak- ing a living, but what they really wanted to make was a future, so they'd figured that they needed to become vertically integrated by finding a value- added product that they could make on the farm from their milk. That's all it took to set George's wheels in motion, and after some more kicking the idea around, the brothers decided to build a creamery and make cheese, and George would run the operation. "We started a little naively," George said. "We said, 'We have cows and milk. You think we might as well make cheese?' That makes about as much sense as a farmer who says, 'Hey, we have hay and corn; we might as well make milk.'" The creamery started making Fresh Mozzarella cheese in 2002. These days, the operation has branched out just a bit, and Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese also makes Queso Oaxaca, which is the Mexican version of moz- zarella, and Mascarpone. And this Frantoio Grove Wins Best in Class in New York Competition Summer Fancy Food Show Promises Delights ing Partner Bob Carroll, who describes this as "a chocolate cookie for grownups." A 5.5- ounce package containing about 10 of the cookies has a sug- gested retail price of $6, and this new cookie flavor is ship- ping now. Lark Fine Foods is also de- buting three flavors of its all- natural shortbread cookies in a single-serving size. Each 1.5- ounce package contains two cookies in either Salted Caramel Almond Chocolate Pearl, Salted Rosemary or Coconut Butter va- rieties. Carroll says the Salted Rosemary cookie makes a great accompaniment for cheese, and all three of the single-serve packs are positioned for sale as snack items. They're also avail- able for immediate shipment. Manicaretti Italian Food Im- porters won a sofi Award in 2015 with Sicilian Pistachio Spread and has fresh victories with four gold awards at the New York International Olive Oil Competition. Manicaretti will have those oils, including Titoni DOP, an organic extra virgin olive oil from Sicily, and Crudo, a bright green oil with strong yellow undertones. "Every year it wins awards, both in the U.S. and in international competitions. It stands out in terms of profile and in terms of BY LORRIE BAUMANN Bellwether Farms' Blackstone was released to the market in small quantities just this January, and despite the very limited re- lease it's had so far, the cheese al- ready has a small but growing fan base. It's a mixed milk cheese that's made from two-thirds Jer- sey cow milk and one-third sheep milk, with black peppercorns in- corporated into the paste and a hand-rubbed black rind that combines rosemary and black pepper with vegetable ash. Continued on PAGE 6 Bellwether Farms Rings the Bell with Blackstone The three-pound wheel has the elegant eminence of Patrick Stew- art declaiming Shakespeare. When it's cut, slices from the wedge have a thin black border that lends a satisfying weight to even the thinnest of slices and a color contrast that adds beauty to their arrangement on the cheese board. Blackstone's flavor is strongly influenced by the tang of the sheep milk – think Manchego – with extra zing and texture from the peppercorns along with caramel notes and a rich and sat- isfying mouthfeel that come from the Jersey milk. It pairs BY LORRIE BAUMANN Fifteen years ago, Jeff Martin was a California real estate developer with 100 acres near Silicon Valley zoned for residential use on five- acre lots. Today, he's the creator of Frantoio Grove, one of the two American olive oils to win Best in Class awards at this year's New York International Olive Oil Competition, and he doesn't plan to go back to building houses for a living. Tasting notes for the medium frantoio oil from the United States noted "aromas of fruit, green grass, almond and notes of pear. Taste exhibits abundant fruiti- ness, green grass, sweetness, bit- terness, vigorous pungency and notes of artichoke, with excep- tional harmony, a high complex- ity and a high persistence." Frantoio Grove oils have previ- ously won gold awards in the 2015 and 2014 NYIOOC and a silver award in the 2013 competi- tion. Frantoio Grove made only about 4,000 gallons of the oil this year, with most of it destined to be sold by California retailers in the San Francisco Bay area. That market is big enough to use all VOLUME 81, NUMBER 6 JUNE 2016 n $7.00 SUPPLEMENT n Summer Fancy Food Show Preview PAGE 17 NEWS & NOTES PAGE 6 RETAILER NEWS n Kaune's Neighborhood Market PAGE 13 SUPPLIER BUSINESS n Premium Tonic Waters PAGE 14 NATURALLY HEALTHY n Farmer's Pantry PAGE 22 CALENDAR n Upcoming Shows PAGE 27 News & Notes.................................6 Smorgasbord ................................27 Ad Index .......................................27 www.gourmetnews.com G OURMET N EWS T H E B U S I N E S S N E W S P A P E R F O R T H E G O U R M E T I N D U S T R Y ® Continued on PAGE 12

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