Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/648009
6 4 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t cheese of the farm is Maggie's Round, inspired by the toma cheeses of the Italian Alps. e semi-firm texture gives way to earthy flavors and a citrusy back note. e wheels of Maggie's Round are visually stunning. Apparently cheese-maker Suzy Konecky gives as much thought to the appearance of her cheeses as she does to the flavors and textures. If you are lucky enough to find the extra aged Maggie's Reserve (aged between a year and 18 months) it is a true triumph of American cheese-making. e Maggie's Reserve is only available in the autumn months and early winter. It is a deeply complex and redolent cheese. When I questioned Suzy about her priorities in cheese- making, she replied without hesitation that the most important factor is high-quality raw milk. Aligned with that philosophy is using only milk from the Cricket Creek Farm cows, a herd that Suzy and her team know well. is approach to making cheese is the very definition of "farmstead" cheese and in my view it parallels wine producers who will only use the grapes that they grow themselves to make their wine. Whether it is cheese or wine, the product is created from start to finish on the same land that nourishes the animals and the vines. At the farmer's market on the front lawn of the capital building in Montpelier, Vermont, I met Stan Biasini, the always smiling cheese-maker of Mt. Mansfield Creamery, in Morrisville, Vermont. Stan's wife, Debora, takes care of and milks their herd of thirty Swiss Brown and Holstein cows. ese cows live a charmed life in rural northern Vermont, grazing on healthy native grasses all summer and hay from the same source in winter. Stan's approach to cheese is rooted in tradition, but I got the sense that he is not afraid to experiment. Many of his cheeses are modeled aer European classics: Alpine-style raw milk cheeses from France and Austria, and although they are serious farmstead cheeses, Stan names some of them with ski terms, a nod to his other passion. His semi-firm cheese Halfpipe smells of fresh cream and wild flowers and has an appealing medium bodied texture and lingering fruity finish. Another stellar Mt. Mansfield Creamery cheese is called inspiration; it is a wash rind recipe from Corsica. But committed to his community, Stan uses only local Vermont beers to wash the rind, a process that he does multiple times to create a more complex cheese. I remember well over a decade ago when the first Jasper Hill cheeses arrived in San Francisco; every cheese lover I knew was COURTESY OF CRICKET CREEK FARM Maggie's Round is a semi-firm, raw milk cheese inspired by the toma cheeses of the Ital- ian Alps. Cornell University–educated cheese-maker Suzy Konecky with one of the young dairy calves at Cricket Creek Farm. COURTESY OF CRICKET CREEK FARM COURTESY OF CRICKET CREEK FARM