#nettle meadow

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Irish soda bread better late than never

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New Cheeses from Nettle Meadow

In celebration of summer we’re bringing in three new seasonal cheeses from Nettle Meadow. 

 Sappy Ewe

Sappy Ewe, made from a blend of sheep and cow’s milk, gets its “sappy” moniker from its maple infusion and black coating of pine ash. Striking on a cheese plate, Sappy Ewe brings hints of sweet cream, button mushrooms, herbs and earth to the table. Its center is dense and slightly chalking, yielding with age.

 Fromage Frais – Blueberry Lemon or Pineapple Cilantro

A light and fluffy combination of cow and goats’ milk, Fromage Frais is fresh, clean and mild. Cows’ milk provides sweetness, while goats’ milk adds a refreshing lemony finish. Nettle Meadow’s high quality milk and ingredients are what really makes this an exemplary fresh cheese. It’s also one of the benefits in purchasing from small artisan and farmstead operations such as theirs. We’re bringing in two new flavors: Blueberry Lemon and Pineapple Cilantro. Like all of Nettle Meadow’s Fromage Frais line, we feel these two use high quality ingredients in good balance, creating a premium cheese in convenient, consumer-friendly packaging.  

  Now in stock – Isigny Bio (Organic) Butter

We have just started selling a Bio (Europe’s version of organic) Butter from Isigny. Made with organic cream from grass-fed cows, this butter is cultured and slowly matured, resulting in a silky texture and smooth sweet cream flavor. With an attractive package and approachable retail price point, this new butter has been well-received through our first couple of orders.

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Special availability via pre-order – seasonal cheeses from Alemar and Nettle Meadow

U1685 Alemar Sakatah – 12 / 8 oz.

Alemar’s newest cheese is an American cow’s milk ode to Banon or Mothais-sur-Feuille. Sakatah is made with 100% grass-fed milk, coated with a Geotrichum candidum rind and wrapped in brandy-soaked Marquette grape leaves from Chankaska Creek Ranch and Winery in Minnesota. The result is a buttery, mild cheese with a vegetal, eggy aroma and a crème fraiche and mushroom finish.

A1625 Nettle Meadow Cranberry Fromage Frais – 8 / 5 oz.

Made from a combination of goat and cow’s milk, Nettle Meadow Fromage Frais strikes a lovely balance between tangy, fluffy chèvre and sweet, fresh whipped cream cheese. Cranberry Fromage Frais is enhanced with cranberries, maple syrup and orange zest. Their year-round flavors have proven to be popular, so we’re excited to offer this seasonal flavor via New England pre-order for a limited time.

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The Return of Spring Cheese:  A Tale of Two Meadows

With the return of warm weather comes nutrient-rich grasses and flowers upon which animals return to graze. The first cheeses of the year are brighter and lighter. The cheeses with the greatest expression of its springtime terroir tend to be those produced by smaller farms with shorter aging times. This month, we are highlighting two farms displaying some of the best of the season.

Meadowood Farms

Located in Cazenovia, New York is Meadowood Farms. Situated on 225 acres just outside of Syracuse, Meadowood is home to a flock of East Friesian sheep. Their cheeses are hand-crafted by Veronica Pedraza (previously the Creamery Manager for Jasper Hill) made from their farmstead milk. Their creations take inspiration from northern Italy, and are styled after cheeses such as Robiola, Fontina Val d’Aosta and Taleggio.

 B1770 Strawbridge – 6/8 oz.

Strawbridge is a soft-ripened bloomy cheese aged for 2-4 weeks. The higher milkfat content of sheep's milk highlights this cheese’s buttery characteristics. Strawbridge is more along the textural lines of a triple crème Brie, but with the vegetal notes of Camembert. You’ll notice its aromas of earth and hay and flavors hinting at broccoli and hazelnuts.

 B1780 Ledyard – 6/8 oz.

Patterned after Robiola, this hand-ladled, soft-ripened pasteurized sheep’s milk cheese is aged for 2 weeks before being wrapped in grape leaves soaked in beer. Local brewery, Empire Brewing, supplies Meadowood with a beer called Deep Purple, which is made with concord grapes. After additional aging, the resulting aroma and flavor of Ledyard is lactic, woodsy and fruity, with a bit of of barnyard funk. Its paste is fudgy in texture, softening with age, and is surrounded by a wrinkly rind. Ledyard won 1st in its category at the 2016 ACS competition in Des Moines, Iowa.

 B1740 Juvindale – 6/8oz.

Juvindale is Meadowood’s soft-ripened ode to Reblochon. Nearby Juvindale Farm provides the Holstein cows’ milk used to make this namesake cheese. The protein and butterfat composition of Juvindale’s milk makes for a silky, rich paste. Young wheels are washed with local Riesling wine and develops a peachy hue while its Penicillum candidum flourishes. The flavor is bright with notes of crème fraiche, garlic and hay.

 Nettle Meadow Farm

Located in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, Nettle Meadow milks their own herd of 300 cross-bred goats and a couple dozen sheep. For their feed, they use only organic hay, grain, wild herbs and kelp. Retired milkers are allowed to spend the rest of their years on the farm, quite different from most commercial operations that slaughter the unproductive animals. In fact, part of core mission of Nettle Meadow is their animal sanctuary that takes in and rehabilitates injured or abandoned animals that would otherwise be put down.

 A1470 Simply Sheep – 6/8oz. round

Simply Sheep is a bloomy disc made from the milk of the couple dozen sheep raised on the Nettle Meadow Farm. The exemplary diet of organic feed produces a milk that is higher in butterfat and, in turn, a full-flavored cheese. Simply Sheep has an edible rind with a more assertive, barny flavor profile appreciated by cheese aficionados.

 A1480 Three Sisters – 6/6oz.

Three Sisters is a cylindrical, bloomy mixed milk cheese, and exemplefies the best qualities in each of the milk type’s differences. Cow’s milk displays a sweet cream flavor, goat’s milk adds a bit of lemony tang and sheep’s milk adds a grassy, floral aspect with a rich, buttery finish. The beauty of Three Sisters is that no single milk profile overpowers the others.

 A1670 Briar Summit – 9/5 oz.

Briar Summit is a creamy pyramid of goat milk, cow milk, sheep milk and cow cream infused with raspberry leaf tea. The cheese is finished with a bloomy rind. For concerned customers, it is important to note that Nettle Meadow uses organic vegetarian rennet to coagulate their cheese. Although aged between 2 and 6 weeks, this cheese is best around the 12-week mark once the paste becomes gooey and lush. Briar Summit subtly brings together the best of each milk type’s notes in a cheese that has balanced sweet, buttery and bright notes.

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Check out this video on Nettle Meadow Farm!

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From the Adirondack region of upstate New York, comes Kunik, courtesy of Nettle Meadow Goat Farm and cheesemaker Sheila Flanagan. 

A mixed-milk triple-creme, the Kunik is a blend of goat's milk and the cream of Jersey cows, resulting in a decadent, lush white molded experience. The fat globules in goat's milk are naturally much smaller than in cow's milk, which means that the fat is naturally homogenized. This makes it extremely challenging to separate out the cream (you cant just pop it in the fridge and wait for the cream to separate, like cow's milk), so pure goat's milk triple-cremes are rare. Fortunately, as Nettle Meadow discovered, you can use cow's milk cream to bring up the butterfat content of your goat's milk, allowing you to bring the flavor characteristics of a goat's milk cheese together with the delightful excess of a triple-creme.

In order to be classified as a triple-creme, a cheese must have at least 75% butterfat content. Just to be clear though, that means 75% in the "dry matter" of the cheese, so the actual fat content, once you factor in the high moisture content of a soft cheese like this, actually clocks in closer to 40%. Butter comes in at between 80-86% total fat, as a point of comparison. And to put it in perspective, a 1" cube of Parmaggiano or other hard cheese would actually have a higher fat content than a 1" cube of a triple-creme, because the moisture content of such a cheese is WAY lower, so you're getting concentrated dry matter. 

All of which is to say, don't let that "triple cream" labeling freak you out! If you're eating cheese at all, a triple-creme is only marginally higher (and sometimes lower) in fat than most of the other cheeses you're eating.

If you want to learn more about what exactly makes a cheese a triple-creme (or double-creme), Formaggio Kitchen's blog has an in-depth post on the subject that's worth a read. 

This Kunik was soft to the touch, the liquid, oozing creamline surrounding a slightly firmer core. This is a cheese that develops complexity as it ages, so go for the older wheels if you can, when the inside has started to really ripen and become molten. With a musty, milky aroma, the moist, velvety paste is tangy, mushroomy and mineral with a buttery, decadent pungency and mouthfeel.

Purchased at Murray's Cheese.