What Is a Cheesemonger?

This year during the conference held in Seattle the ACS held their 2nd annual Cheesemonger competition. Cesar, our senior buyer and head fromager and myself-Cristi, the store manager at our French Market location- paired up to represent Pastoral.

The competition is modeled on the internationally recognized Caseus Competition held every other year in France. Some of the other retailers involved came from Whole Foods, Murrays, DeLaurenti and St. James Cheese. There were four areas, critical to the job requirements as cheesemonger on which we were judged: building a cheese case, wrapping, customer service and product presentation.

Building the cheese case was the first event of the day. Each team were given twenty cheeses of differing sizes and formats and two hours in which to build a case. Instead of the open case that we have at each of our stores, we had to work with a closed case. A bit tricky, but we worked hard to not just make the case beautiful, but to keep it close to what you see represented in our stores every day.

Up next was the wrapping challenge. Cesar took the reigns here. He was given five pieces of cheese paper and five cheese of various sizes and shapes. There was a scant 10 minutes on the clock in which to wrap all of the cheeses without using tape of any kind. Wrapping cheese perfectly under the experienced and watchful eyes of David Lockwood of Neal's Yard Dairy wasn't easy, but Cesar did a fantastic job and finished in record time.

Customer service is one of our strengths here at the shops and we brought those skills to Seattle. While Cesar was busy wrapping the cheese I was engaged in an exercise with three of the judges. For 10 minutes I was ask a series of situational questions designed to coax out the kind of responses we would give in a real world situation. While answering questions like "What's the difference between soft and hard cheeses?" and "I'm having a party for five people, what would you recommend I serve?" are easy to answer in the shops, trying to sell cheese to Herve Mons-one of the judges and easily one of the most well respect affineurs in France- was quite unnerving.

Finally came the product presentation. Cesar and I chose to do our 10 minute presentation on Pleasant Ridge Reserve (the eventual winner of Best of Show) from Uplands Cheese Company in Dodgeville, WI. For us picking that seasonally-made, farmstead cheese was the obvious choice. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a prime example of what we at Pastoral strive to represent: small handmade batches of cheese made in a traditional manner by cheesemakers who are not just extraordinary craftsmen, but excellent stewards of their land and their herd.

In the end the fantastic team from DeLaurenti's in Seattle won the competition. We did walk away having learned something, and with a reaffirmation of why we do the things we do, and the way we do them. We are very proud of the work that we did and look forward to the competition next year. Montreal, here we come!

This part of the competition was at 7am. We look perky and focused though don't we?

-Cristi

Pairing and ACS

This week the annual ACS conference is happening in Seattle. In addition to the fantastic seminars, meet-ups, book-signings and Festival of Cheese there was a Cheesemonger competition that took place on Thursday. While the official results won't be revealed until tomorrow we're immensely proud of Cesar and Cristi for the fabulous job they did representing Pastoral. We've got our fingers crossed for you guys!

Housekeeping Note:

This is our lost posting on the Blogger platform as we are moving our blog over to Wordpress. Stay tuned for the new site. It's going to be bigger, better, super awesome and rad!

For our pairing this week we're going north and south.

The cheese comes to us from Fromagerie Tournevent in Quebec, Canada. Chevre Noir is a goat's milk cheddar aged for approximately one year. In 1976 Lucie and Rene quit their city jobs to move to the rolling hills of Chesterville, Quebec where they started a dairy goat farm.

As many dairy farmers before them, they soon realized that they had more fluid milk than they could market and decided to focus on cheesemaking as a way to use the surplus milk. In 2007, Tournevent was purchased by Damafro, another cheese company in Quebec.

Made in the Cheddar style and aged for a year this goat's milk cheese continuously surprises. Hard and crumbly, with a long finish and refreshingly fruity flavors, this cheese inevitably gets people's attention. This wine is perfect with Chinon or Chenin Blanc wines.

We've decided to go to South Africa for the wine.

Rietvallei Chenin Blanc is an honest expression of one of South Africa's signature white grapes. Rietvallei is also one of the oldest family-owned estates in Robertson, located in the Western Cape, South Africa's premier whine growing region.

Chenin Blanc is originally from the Loire Valley and has a high acidity that makes is suitable for creating everything from sparkling wines to dessert wines. It's also known in South Africa as "Steen" where it is the country's most planted grape variety.

The Rietvallei Chenin Blanc is comprised of old-wine, hand picked grapes. The juice is then stainless steel fermented at a low temperature until considered a dry wine. The result: a fruity, cristp Chenin Blanc with lovely floral aromas of dried apple and musk sweets. The palate is full-bodied with a balanced acidity complemented with a lingering aftertaste.

The rich, creamy texture of the Chevre Noir Cheddar is a great juxtaposition for the Chenin's fruit-like acidity. The subtle nutty flavors in the cheese give a salty boost to the pairing when it meets with the sweeter quince-like notes that are exhibited in the wine. Salty+Sweet=Yum!