BRATTLEBORO — There are many ways cheesemakers describe their cheeses, but “spoiled little brats” is one I had never heard in my 19 years of cheesemongery, at least until I sat down to talk with Nancy Bergman and Kyle Frey of Spoonwood Cabin Creamery in Jacksonville. (I actually spoke more with Frey, as Bergman was up to her elbows in curds.)
Spoonwood Cabin Creamery makes about 10 different cheeses, depending on season and demand, using goats' and cows' milk. All are either fresh or soft-ripened, except for the feta. The majority have bloomy or ashed rinds (or both), and a few are smear-ripened (also known as “washed-rind”). Other than the feta, whose recipe originated in Greece, all are inspired by French cheeses.
In the “cow” category, Spoonwood's Cabinbert is the Vermont version of mushroomy Camembert; Cuvette, modeled after petit washed-rind Langres, has the distinctive “fontaine” on top, into which one pours champagne; Monkster is an homage to buttery, pungent Alsatian munster; and St. Em takes after lactic, spreadable St. Marcellin.
Spoonwood Cabin's goat cheeses include Frustum, loosely based on Burgundian Maçonnais, a squat, vaguely bell-shaped, ashed cheese. Neige is its rendition of puck-shaped, ashed-rind Selles-sur-Cher; and when a New York City chef asked Bergman and Frey if they could make a cheese like Charollais, the squat, soft-ripened cylinder from Burgundy, they came up with Snow White. All of these cheeses sport the “brain-like” Geotrichum rind.
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I was recently at the Saturday Brattleboro Farmers' Market, saying hello to Frey and Bergman, when they handed me a bright orange daylily bloom and instructed me to eat it.
Stuffed inside was a pocket of their fresh chèvre, into which Bergman had stirred fresh herbs. The neat little package was tied with a single, long strand of something green.
“It's a chive,” Bergman said. “It's our version of a [jalapeño] popper.”
As I was happily chewing, incredulous that daylilies were edible - I'm still alive, so they must be - Michael Fuller of T.J. Buckley's Uptown Dining happened by.
Bergman handed him a few tubs of the fresh chèvre I had just eaten in my “popper,” sans the herbs and flower.
“What are you using that for, Michael?” I asked him.
“Oh, this? Yeah! This is going into the smoked trout tartlets at the restaurant,” he replied, with the satisfied chuckle of a man who had just learned of a choice secret.
For anyone seeking Spoonwood Cabin Creamery cheeses, they might seem like the product of some juicy gossip. You hear about them but can't confirm their existence. No store around here sells their cheeses.
This isn't because nobody wants the cheeses. It's because Bergman and Frey are choosy about which counters their “spoiled little brats” are sold across. If the shop won't or can't properly store, merchandise, and sell their cheeses, they don't want their product misrepresented.
Plus, the couple makes about a tenth of the amount most small-production cheesemakers produce in a week - they call their operation a “micro-creamery.”
“We don't really keep inventory... and we don't plan to expand because we like the size we are at,” Frey said. “We make our cheeses often, and we make them according to cheesemonger and chef demand.”
Most of the cheeses are sent to New York City to two beloved bistros: the Upper West Side's Café Luxembourg, and at Tribeca's The Odeon, “Spoonwood Cabin Goat Cheese Salad” appears on the dinner menu.
There's not much left for local sale, and most of that moves through their booth at the Saturday Brattleboro Farmers' Market.
The only retail store from which Frey and Bergman sell their cheeses is their own, in the front room of their cheesemaking facility, in “downtown” Jacksonville, right next to the Jacksonville General Store.
Owing to Frey's past life as a world-class sommelier, the shop also features 55 wines that “nobody carries around here,” says Frey. The hours are somewhat limited, as Frey and Bergman have to fit retail sales into their production, along with marketing, shipping, and Farmers' Market schedules.
On Fridays and Saturdays from 4 to 7 p.m., and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m., you can meet the couple, eat their cheeses, and bombard them with questions.
Frey reported “great” response to their new store, which opened in mid-July. It's as if the “educated, excited clientele... were waiting for something like this,” he said.
Frey and Bergman would like to slowly expand into a café, offering “wine, cheese, and tapas in a relaxing, low-key setting. Possibly add a few local beers. This area has great local beers and hard ciders.”
The cheese-appreciation classes the couple taught at Stinky Brooklyn's new Chelsea outpost went well, and they might offer a similar program in the café.
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Smart business planning explains why the couple decided to make only fussy, labor-intensive cheeses in their Jacksonville facility: “We found the bloomy-rind cheeses are lacking in the United States... And the 'Frenchies' arrive in rough shape.”
See niche, fill niche.
Even Vermont, which some would strongly argue is the country's artisan-cheese-making capital, is known primarily for cheddar and other firmer, aged cheeses.
Far fewer makers are producing small-format, lactic-set cheeses because of the extra “pain-in-the-butt” factors.
As the New England Cheesemaking Supply explains: “Lactic cheese or acid-set cheese differs from the firmer rennet-set cheeses in that they rely primarily on the activity of the bacteria converting lactose to lactic acid causing the proteins to cling together and thus form a curd.”
This causes a weaker curd, requiring the maker to produce only small-format cheeses in this category. And what sounds more labor-intensive? One 40-pound wheel of cheese, or 80 eight-ounce wheels of cheese?
In addition, lactic-set cheeses require a dizzying array of requirements during production, aging, and transportation, even more than firmer, rennet-set cheeses. There is no room for error, even though the milk itself often presents variation because of the time of the year and what the animals are eating.
Frey explained: “All the steps are constantly monitored and are scientific. If any steps are wrong, you won't get a good cheese.”
After listening to Frey describe all the variables, “spoiled little brats” doesn't seem to be such hyperbole.
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Prior to settling year-round in this remote, sparsely-populated section of southern Windham County (222 people counted Jacksonville as home, as of 2012), the couple had been living in New York City, working at some of the highest-rated Manhattan restaurants, and singing.
Frey said: “We met singing opera. We sang across from one another in La Traviata... I promised myself I'd never fall in love with another soprano, but there you go!”
Frey ran the wine and cheese programs for Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, and recalled the problems with trying to get delicate, soft-ripened French goat and cow cheeses in this country.
“How many times did the French cheeses get stuck in port [by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration]? How many hands did the cheese pass through, how many times were they mishandled? How many times did the temperature go up and down? By the time you get [the cheese], I don't think it's what the cheesemaker meant.”
When they were still just weekend “second-homeowners” at their Laurel Lake cabin, Bergman began taking classes at the University of Vermont's Vermont Institute For Artisan Cheese (VIAC).
She knew that being maître d'hôtel at the Modern (The Museum of Modern Art's restaurant) - or anywhere - was not what she wanted to do much longer, and the couple wanted to become full-time Vermonters. That meant finding some other line of work to support their new life.
Working in such high-pressure atmospheres as Michelin-rated Manhattan restaurants strengthened Frey's and Bergman's attention to detail and desire for exceptionally high-quality foods and beverages, so one could say making the “spoiled little brats” of the cheese world came naturally.
Another consideration was the available milk from this region.
Frey said: “We're thrilled with the milk here in Vermont. I truly believe it's the best milk in the United States.”
“We're sitting on some of the best soil in the United States - in the world, really - for farmers,” he continued. “We've got 15 feet of topsoil in the valley [near Brattleboro]. You can't compete with that. Schist, alluvial soil... all add up to great vegetation and diet for cows and goats.”
“I'm a trained sommelier. I went around tasting milk. And I was thrilled to find the best-tasting milk right here in our backyard.”
The cheeses the couple makes are some of the best for conveying the nuances and quality of milk. Ingredients and processes integral to producing aged cheeses change the organoleptic properties of the finished product significantly from the raw material: milk. It's part of the magic.
So, fresh, and lactic-set cheeses can't rely on things like rennet, which adds its own flavor, and aging, which further develops the cheese's flavor. The milk has to start out excellent, or the cheese will reveal the milk's boring, substandard, or mishandled condition.
Spoonwood Cabin Creamery sources their goats' milk “mostly from Big Picture Farm in Townsend,” and the operation also gets raw, organic, Jersey cows' milk from Malcolm Sumner's “old family farm” in Halifax, Frey said.
That the milk doesn't travel far from farm to creamery is also a plus: when milk travels, the jostling adversely affects the microbiology, resulting in unwanted, unpleasant flavors.
Of course, Frey and Bergman could have chosen to raise their own dairy animals for their cheese, but they opted not to.
“We have science and food backgrounds. We'd rather use our expertise to make the best cheese possible,” said Frey. “Plus, raising animals is so labor-intensive. We'd have two full-time jobs!”
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Cheese production for Spoonwood Cabin Creamery began in an actual cabin -- the one the couple has called “home” (formerly part-time, now full-time) for just under 10 years. Once they decided their home kitchen was no longer big enough, they found a new cheesemaking home in an old restaurant in “downtown” Jacksonville.
And then a tropical storm got in the way.
The welcoming wooden brick-red building, where all of Spoonwood Cabin Creamery's production and sales originate, sits right next to East Branch of the North River. When I visited in mid-August, I almost laughed to learn that serene little babbling brook was officially a river.
Had I been there three years ago, I would have thought differently, as Tropical Storm Irene filled Spoonwood Cabin Creamery's new home with six feet of water. (Actually, I probably would have thought something unfit to print in this paper, while running, screaming, from the rising flood.)
While some would have thrown up their hands and chosen another career path, Frey and Bergman saw opportunity. This was their chance to completely rebuild the interior - including the floor - to suit their needs. The couple worked closely with the architects and builders to design and construct a solid, sanitary, practical home for their fledgling operation.
One could say it's the house that Irene built.