This weekend we enjoyed three very special cheeses from Meadow Creek Dairy. This is a family farm, located in the mountains of southwest Virginia, an idyllic setting with deep soils and mineral-rich grass to ensure high quality of the dairy cows' milk. The farm uses ecologically-sound farming practices using no chemicals. The farm owners describe their farm as:
A seasonal grazing dairy, milking from March through December, timing peak nutritional needs of the cattle with the peak of grass growth. We make cheese April through November. As we progress through the milking season, the grass and therefore the main diet of the cows changes, enabling us to make unique cheeses with seasonal variations. The deep yellow color of our cheese reflects this grass based diet and the high beta carotene content of our milk.
All of the cheeses are made with raw milk that comes from Jersey cows and aged naturally from sixty days to over a year.
We started our cheese tasting with Meadow Creek Mountaineer, a firm cheese with the texture of cheddar and a gorgeous brown rind. This mild cheese has a savory and earthy taste with hints of hazelnuts and caramel and a creamy finish. It is a solid offering with a hint of the wild hay flavor that became more pronounced in the next two cheeses.
Our second cheese was Appalachian Tomme, a semi-soft white rind cheese with a wonderful creamy texture, softer than the cheddar-like Mountaineer. This cheese is rich and buttery with notes of honey and wild flowers. This unique and delicious cheese was our favorite of the three we tasted.
We finished with the Meadow Creek Grayson cheese, the most gentle and fragrant of the three cheeses, almost melting beneath its natural-washed, bright orange rind exterior. This cheese reminds us very much of other high mountain pasture, trappist-style cheeses like Chaumes from France or Taleggio from Italy. Creamy and supple, Grayson has a wonderfully pungent aroma of mushrooms and wild yeast. Its taste is slightly meaty with subtle tones of nuts and sweet hay. We learned, in fact, that this complex cheese has just won 1st place in the 2008 American Cheese Society competition in its category.
We thought all three cheeses from Meadow Creek Dairy were excellent. It was an enjoyable experience tasting these local raw cows' milk artisan cheeses, and fortunately Meadow Creek cheeses can be found across much of the country when it's in season.
Do you have special local favorite cheeses from your area? I would love to hear about them.
