Want a fun and tasty vacation? Say cheese

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 6, 2004 | by Juliana Barbassa Associated Press

HANFORD, Calif. -- California is finally producing artisanal cheeses that mix Old World expertise with bold, local flavors that are worthy of sharing the table with its world-class wines.

A combination of factors fueled by the economic boom in the 1990s has helped those who dreamed of exploring the world beyond mozzarella increase the number of cheeses produced in California from 70 to 250 since 1995.

Travelers meandering through the Northern California wine country or shooting along Highway 99 between San Francisco and Los Angeles frequently pass within minutes of dairies where farmers add new twists to old traditions or create California originals with local flavors. Many welcome visitors for a tasting, sometimes within view of the cows that produced the milk.

"California cheese is where wine was in the 1970s," said Nancy Fletcher of the California Milk Advisory Board. "It's really gaining recognition for its quality."

And slowly, the public has been convinced that good cheese -- like good wine -- can be found close to home.

"American tastes became really homogenized over the last few decades -- you could have the same food here and two states away," said Matteo Watkins, the chef and owner of Acequia on Main restaurant in Visalia. "But this is booming. Lodi, Modesto, Madera are like Napa was 20 years ago, and people who aren't afraid to try what's new know something really interesting is going on."

The state's specialty cheeses, born of its year-round sunny pastures, are molded by its immigrants and encouraged by California's novelty-hungry food culture.

Like wine, cheese came to California with the Spanish missionaries. By 1882, one of the old mission recipes was adapted by Monterey businessman David Jacks into one of the state's best known originals: Monterey Jack.

Today, Monterey Jack, both fresh and aged, is still the pride of cheesemakers like Ignacio Vella.

Ignacio's father, Tom Vella, had been making cheese since he first arrived from Sicily. In 1931, prohibition had closed a turn-of-the- century brewery, and the Vellas set up their company in the cool, roomy building.

Ignacio Vella grew up around cheese vats and knows Jack. His buttery wheels soften at room temperature, unlocking the sweetness of the cream and accentuating added flavors, like fresh rosemary or the basil in the Pesto Jack.

But the family name was made on Dry Jack. Pale yellow, sweet and nutty, their version is rubbed in cocoa and pepper, then aged up to four years. Vella's Special Select is the result of patient tweaking of an old recipe over many years -- and the discerning palate of Vella's wife and daughter, the first and harshest judges of his experiments, Vella said.

Visitors who wander into the old stone building are rewarded by the variety of cheese -- and the friendly help in choosing the right one.

"With a pear or a fig, this is instant gratification," said Chris Elms, who stopped by on a bike ride around Sonoma. Elms took a block of Vella's Old Sport -- a sharp, raw milk cheese -- and a new blue, also Vella's recipe.

Farther down the state, dairies acquire a Portuguese flair. There are more than 330,000 Portuguese in California. Bullfights draw crowds in the summer months, and even the cheese harks back to the Azores -- small, rocky islands hundreds of miles from the Iberian coast, the ancestral home of most of California's Portuguese.

In small farming towns like Hanford, families like the Fagundes, Azorean immigrants who settled in the Central Valley nearly a century ago, handcraft Old-World specialties like their crumbly, piquant St. Jorge -- a traditional recipe with a "dangerous" bite, according to Watkins.

California's gift to good eating isn't just about carrying on traditions. This is a place where Swiss immigrants can join with a Paraguayan affineur, or aged cheese specialist, and use the strictest English tradition to produce a cheddar that won the country's best farmhouse cheese prize the last two years.

Mariano Gonzalez hand-cuts, stacks and restacks the curds from raw, unpasteurized milk. The 60-pound wheels are bandage-wrapped, turned every day for a month, and aged for two years. Over time, the cheddar becomes crumbly, darkens into a buttery color and settles into nutty, caramel flavors that fill the palate without losing their edge. All this on the 1914 Modesto farm where John Fiscallini grew up tending his family's herd.

Like many other fledgling specialty cheesemakers, the Fiscallinis say they've yet to see a profit as they try to establish themselves in a state that produces 1.83 billion pounds of cheese annually.

"We're farmers, cheesemakers, not salesmen," Fiscallini said. "But I wouldn't be in this business if I weren't making something really special."