The NY Times has an interesting story today about the problems American cheesemakers face in making sheep cheeses. This goes a long way toward explaining why there are so few sheep cheeses made here, and why they are so expensive.
For me, the takeaways are:
A lot of cheesemakers are operating on too small a scale. In many cases, they are back-to-the-land folks who don’t want to scale up. At 200 animals, they could make money, even with more labor for milking, but they don’t want to go beyond 50.
Sheep don’t produce a lot of milk and they don’t produce it year-round, but you have to feed them and you have milking equipment sitting idle.
Sheep breeds in the US were chosen for meat or wool and aren’t big milk producers and it hasn’t been possible to import the right types. Just as interest in domestic artisinal cheese was taking off in the late 1990s, the mad cow crisis in Britain prompted the Food and Drug Administration to ban the importation of breeding sheep and to sharply limit the importation of semen for breeding. So, basically, we’ve been stuck with the wrong kind of sheep.
Meanwhile, in Europe many farms have been family-owned for centuries, while many American cheesemakers are relatively to farming and have to absorb the capital costs of land.
For anyone interested in cheese (and business), it’s an interesting read and seems quite thoroughly reported.
I have just one unanswered question: Do the sheep use the trampolines in this photo?
thank you for posting. some of these issues are the same differences between restaurants and wineries in Europe versus America too. As a whole American winemakers and chef-restauranteurs tend not to have taken up the family business which means buying new land, equipment, leases, etc versus the relatively lower cost of inheriting those. It’s one of the reasons there’s so much value in European wine and food.
Additionally, the lanolin, lingering, mouth coating taste isn’t an obvious fit with many Americans, either.
Really? Interesting. I’ve always found that people rave about Manchego when it’s offered in a selection of cheeses, for instance. Or Pyrenees brebis or Tuscan pecorino. And I love the mixed-milk cheeses of Piedmont.
Yep, really. I like good aged manchego well enough, but I only buy it for specific dishes/events, never because it’s what I’m craving. For the most part, sheep cheeses taste dull and flat to me, and the salt is often off for my palate.
With due respect to your nonna, I’ve had a ton of it, in various parts of Italy on my dozens of trips there, and great imports. It doesn’t do it for me.
I never had a cheese I didn’t like, but I’m with Sarah in that sheep is low on my personal rating scale. If I want the non-cow tang, I look for goat. The only pairing I’ve found that works with sheep cheeses is cider and a few sour beers. It will absolutely destroy a wine.
The popularity of Manchego I believe has more to do with the texture than the aroma or taste which have been neutered by pasteurization and cold storage.
Cool article, neat to consider the economics involved. Even if Parmigiano is the “king” of cheeses, Roquefort would be on my short list of finalists for “queen” .
Actually, manchego cheese is made of raw milk, never pasteurized. I completely disagree when you say it will destroy a wine. I attended a tasting a few weeks ago which mixed manchego wine and manchego cheese and it was amazing, especially the one with manchego in olive oil and red Gran Reserva.
One’s least favorite category of a thing by definition includes everything in that category, yes. The existence of one or two exceptional items within that category does not negate my judgement of the category overall. Nor does deeming a category my least favorite imply that I prefer every item within that category less than every item within categories that I prefer more.
So, my statement stands. But yes - I do like Roquefort.
Interesting that so many people aren’t crazy about sheep cheese. As I said, from years of hosting tastings and dinners, my experience was the people gravitate toward the sheep cheeses.
I wonder why they would pasteurize the milk? The FDA rule is that it has to be pasteurized only if it’s aged less than 60 days, I believe, and all Manchego we see here is older than that I think. So a lot of the imported hard cheeses we get are made from unpasteurized milk.
I agree for the most part. I’d personally add a couple more exceptions: Traditional Roman pasta dishes that use Pecorino. And Pecorino Moliterno for eating. And Greek sheep cheeses, which I eat daily when in Greece. Otherwise, I prefer cow and goat.
.