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By Gordon Edgar\u2014<\/p>\n
Last month, I took some time away from Rainbow to attend the annual American Cheese Society (ACS) Conference\u00a0in\u00a0Louisville, Kentucky.\u00a0When folks come into the store and ask me where I have been, and\u00a0I\u00a0respond \u201cCheeseCon!\u201d\u00a0they\u00a0seem to want to know more. Maybe you\u00a0do too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The American Cheese Society Conference\u00a0includes three days of education, tasting, and\u00a0cheesy camaraderie.\u00a0Of course,\u00a0I tasted lots of great cheeses\u2014and I will write about those when they start coming into the store\u2014but mostly what is\u00a0so special\u00a0about this conference is that, while it brings together cheese professionals from all over the hemisphere, it is more conference than trade show.\u00a0The spirit is\u00a0cooperative,\u00a0and the mission is education;\u00a0the idea being that sharing information benefits everyone in the cheese world.<\/p>\n
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This year, not for the first time, there was a lot of talk of environmental impacts of dairy and how to mitigate\u00a0problems both for the survival of cheesemakers and survival of the planet.\u00a0Probably my\u00a0favorite panel was on building the future of grass-based dairy.\u00a0Not only were the speakers Alice Melendez and Joe\u00a0Tomandi tremendous, but also the Dairy Grazing Alliance seems to want to push forward a legal definition for grass-based dairy, something that has never existed before.\u00a0It will take years, but as a\u00a0cheesemonger\u00a0who\u00a0has\u00a0to\u00a0explain to\u00a0customers why\u00a0meat has a grass-based certification and dairy doesn\u2019t, this is something I have wanted for years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also attended a great panel about Mexican and Mexican-style cheeses and the challenges they\u00a0face\u00a0on retail shelves. Two of the cheese makers we like\u2014Quesos Navarro\u00a0from Jalisco, Mexico, and Don Froylan Creamery from Oregon\u2014discussed the quality problems they face getting their cheese to consumers with mongers unaccustomed to dealing with such fresh cheeses and styles that non-Latine stores\u00a0don\u2019t know enough about.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Possibly the\u00a0most fun panel\u00a0I went to\u00a0was getting a guided tour\u00a0of the\u00a0panelist\u2019s visit to\u00a0cheese caves in the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0\u00a0Olivia Haver won\u00a0a Daphne\u00a0Zepos\u00a0Teaching Endowment award to spend a\u00a0 year researching different operations.\u00a0 I have been to a lot of cheese rooms and cheese caves\u00a0over the years, but even\u00a0I\u00a0got to see\u00a0pictures and hear stories of\u00a0a few places I have never\u00a0been to before.\u00a0Like most of the panels, cooperation\u00a0was\u00a0stressed.\u00a0When you do something very uncommon on this continent\u2014like building or converting a\u00a0cave for\u00a0cheese aging\u2014you have to talk to some of the other few people who do it as well.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lastly, I\u00a0got to attend a workshop on\u00a0British\u00a0cheddars.\u00a0The idea,\u00a0about nine months\u00a0ago,\u00a0was\u00a0to get a bunch of the traditional\u00a0cheddar makers\u00a0together and make a few vats of cheese using the same milk, but using different traditional methods to see what would happen.\u00a0To be honest, it was a little early to taste and draw huge\u00a0conclusions, but\u00a0the workshop has already been instructive for the cheesemakers themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Cheesemaking can be an isolated job, geographically speaking, and\u00a0many of the\u00a0makers\u00a0were surprised to find out that not everyone\u00a0took the same steps to produce what\u00a0is considered to be\u00a0the same style of cheese. This kind of cross-pollination by people who,\u00a0in other\u00a0industries,\u00a0would be considered\u00a0rivals\u00a0is what makes the ACS conference so special. And, as someone who\u00a0wrote\u00a0a book about the history of American cheddar, I can tell you that\u00a0these moments of communication have big impacts historically speaking.\u00a0They are\u00a0why cheddar was the most popular cheese in the U.S. for 150 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gathering together has value in a lot of ways and one of the things that came out of the conference was\u00a0a new Queer Cheese\u00a0Guilde.\u00a0The\u00a0Guilde\u00a0is still in the process of\u00a0forming, but\u00a0their statement post-conference was, \u201cThe goal of the Queer Cheese\u00a0Guilde\u00a0is to give safe space, power, and voice to those like us who are looking to build community in an\u00a0ever-growing\u00a0industry.\u201d\u00a0If you are a cheese professional, you can find their\u00a0Instagram\u00a0page under that name\u00a0and check it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u00a0am glad to be back in San Francisco, but I think you can see why the conference is always a highlight of\u00a0my\u00a0cheese year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gordon Edgar loves cheese and worker co-ops and has been combining these infatuations as the cheese buyer for Rainbow Grocery Cooperative since 1994. He serves on the American Cheese Society Judging and Competition Committee and is a member of the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers. Edgar has written two books on cheese\u2014\u201dCheesemonger\u201d\u00a0(2010) and \u201cCheddar\u201d (2015)\u2014and lives in San Francisco with his adorable white mini schnauzer named Fillmore Grumble. He writes about grief, and sometimes cheese, at\u00a0https:\/\/bit.ly\/42IwYf0<\/a><\/p>\n Over the Rainbow Cheese Counter
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