Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/731784
12 The Cheese Guide traditional European cheeses on the world market. To force cheesemakers to rely on modern pasteurization rather than ancient knowledge of cheesemaking arts coupled with high-tech monitoring of the process with modern laboratory equipment would kill, not just pathogens, but also the qualities that give artisanal American cheeses their value in the marketplace. Beru's message to the cheesemakers this year was that after an 18- month campaign of collecting and analyzing samples of both domestic and imported raw milk cheese, the FDA found not much to worry about. What problems the agency did find were met with immediate corrective action, and no illnesses are known to have resulted. Out of 1,606 samples tested, the FDA detected Salmonella in three samples, two of them exported to the U.S. from France and the third exported from Italy. Listeria monocytogenes was detected in 10 samples, five in domestically produced raw milk cheese and five in imported samples. Of the contaminated samples that were domestically produced, three of the five came from a single company. The FDA detected Shiga toxin- producing E. coli in 11 of the 1,606 samples tested and determined just one of those samples to be pathogenic. "The contamination rate for each target pathogen was less than 1 percent," Beru said. After taking a look at the data, the FDA has declared a sort of temporary truce, stopping its large-scale sampling of raw milk cheese while the ACS continues to collect its own data on the practices that today's cheesemakers are following to protect their products and the consumers who eventually eat the cheese. "We do not anticipate further large-scale raw milk cheese sampling," Beru said. "We want to actively work with the industry to develop a plan to minimize the chances of contamination.... We intend to continue engaging in stakeholder dialog as we do with ACS.... FDA is committed to working with ACS on food safety." The second time during the conference that I saw a tear in Jirik's eye came when he stepped onto the stage to accept his award in the best of show category for a cheese he made together with Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Jeff Wideman of Maple Leaf Cheese. First place in the category was won by Little Mountain from the Roelli Cheese Company in Wisconsin. Second place was a tie between Bleating Heart Cheese's Buff Blue and St. Malachi Reserve from The Farm at Doe Run in Pennsylvania, and Jeffs' Select Gouda, the cheese made by Wideman and Jirik, tied for third place with Greensward, from Murray's Cheese. Given the strength of the competition, a third-place tie was an enviable distinction, and Jirik was grateful that the award came while he still has cheese in the pipeline and could ramp up his production to handle the increased demand that was bound to result from the award. "I'll be 60 years old next spring, and I'd never been in a best of show category before," he said the morning after he'd accepted the county fair-type ribbon that's what the ACS gives out to its winners. "Today I can't see for walking on air." Jirik is the Vice President of of Quality and Product Development for Swiss Valley Farms. In 2001, he and a couple of partners had bought Caves of Faribault, fabled in American cheese lore as the place where the first commercial American blue cheese was made but which had been closed when the large cheese company that owned it decided to take production elsewhere. "We started goofing around with aging cheese," he said. They were looking for ways to enlist the cooperation of all the beneficial microorganisms that have flourished in the caves ever since they were used as a brewery before Prohibition shut down the nation's beer business. Even today, brewers yeast is still present inside the caves, according to Jirik. "Caves have fantastic memory," he said. That was how Caves of Faribault came to Wideman's attention. He was at the 2003 ACS meeting, and Jirik was wandering around trying to sell other cheesemakers on the idea of bringing some of their cheese to Caves of Faribault for extra affinage – the process of aging cheese. "He was talking about the magic of the caves," Wideman says. Jirik urged Wideman to come up to Minnesota from his home in Green County, Wisconsin, and see his facility built into the St. Peter sandstone bluffs at Faribault, Minnesota. Wideman started out his career making Swiss cheese and eventually moved on to Maple Leaf Cheese in 1981. "I knew we couldn't survive making block Swiss and Monterey Jack," he said. He got started making Gouda after a visit to Holland in which he bought 10 Gouda forms for $50, and he's made a lot of Gouda in the years since then. After he met Jirik in 2003, it took a couple of years before he could make it up to Minnesota for a visit, but once he did, he agreed to send Jirik some of his Maple Leaf Cheese Gouda to see what he could make of it. "When he gave me that Gouda – I absolutely love that cheese," Jirik said. Jirik's first step was coming to terms with the possibility that he'd take that cheese and ruin it. "As cheesemakers, we want to be on the edge," he said. "There's a hazard to that, and it's that sometimes you go down the wrong path." He took Wideman's Gouda into the aging room for the blue cheeses that have made Caves of Faribault a legend and let it age there. "It took off like a rocket," he said. "The cheese hit nine months, and all of a sudden, we got a hint of caramel. That is a very difficult flavor to capture." Ecstatic, he sent off a sample to Wideman, who called right back to say that that Jirik had sent him the "best piece of cheese he'd ever put in his mouth," and the two of them decided they were onto something that should be shared. "I couldn't leave it alone," Jirik said. "We were going to divvy it up and give it to some of our friends for Christmas." That's exactly what happened to that batch of cheese, but when you're a Midwestern cheesemaker of long standing, some of your best friends sell cheese for a living. "I got a call from one of those people to ask how many pallets of that he could get," he said. "We are truly a community." They called the cheese Jeffs' Select Gouda, a name they intended only as a working title until they could think of something better, but by the time they had to fill out the paperwork to enter it into the contest, no better ideas had come along, so "Jeffs' Select Gouda" it was. Now, of course, the name has been permanently christened by the award. Wideman is no longer active in the day-to-day business of Maple Leaf Cheese, so this win in the best of show category was a crowning achievement to a long career as a cheesemaker. "My wife and I never had children, but I've got so many children in this industry," he said. "The marriage between Maple Leaf Cheese and Caves of Faribault has been wonderful."