The Little Falls Cheese Festival - Oct. 7
It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times at the Little Falls Cheese Festival on Saturday, October 7 earlier this month.
Why would a woman who spends her weekends working at a cheese shop and writes a blog about cheese have the worst of times at a festival whose sole purpose is to celebrate and encourage her passion? you might ask. Dear reader, it was indeed the worst of times because the backpack cooler I brought couldn’t contain anywhere near the number of cheeses I so desperately wanted to pick up that day!
With nearly 25 creameries and makers in attendance offering their cheesy bounties, plus nearly 40 additional purveyors of gourmet food items, my senses were working in overdrive for the 2+ hours I walked around the Little Falls Cheese Festival with my family. This was the first proper cheese-only event I’ve ever attended, and I am absolutely thrilled to share that it lived up to every expectation I had. Just imagine, cheese upon cheese upon more cheese as far as the eye can see!
There were makers from Central New York, the Finger Lakes, and the Hudson Valley representing their cheeses, plus others from around the state sprinkled in. There was cow’s milk cheese, goat’s milk cheese and sheep’s milk cheese. There was (obviously) cheese, but there was also butter and milk and creams and yogurt and all the amazing dairy creations one might desire. The makers were all incredibly down to earth, no pretense or exclusion here. It was the kind of festival celebrating a very specific, and at times niche, community at which you’d have just as much fun as a seasoned professional or a complete novice who wants to experience more.
I should mention, our head cheesemonger at my shop gave me a budget of $50 to bring back the most spectacular cheeses I could find so that he could try them and consider ordering them for the shop. This felt like a promotion, and I was incredibly proud that he trusted my judgment and cheese knack! Word to the wise: buying cheese is even more exciting when someone else is footing the bill.
Let’s dive into the makers and cheeses that I had the immense pleasure of trying, or returning to, at the Little Falls Cheese Festival.
Chaseholm Creamery
Shtayburne Farm
Lively Run Dairy
Old Chatham Creamery
Edgwick Farm
Painted Goat Farm
Nettle Meadow Artisan Cheese
Let’s begin with an old favorite of mine. I happen to have grown up just 30 minutes from Chaseholm Farm Creamery in the Hudson Valley, and only had the pleasure of discovering this maker earlier in the year. As the farm behind one of my favorite cheeses in the entire world, Nimbus - a singularly dreamy triple creme cow’s milk wheel that, at room temperature, tastes like creamy butter - I was very excited to see them as one of the first booths in line at the festival. Not only did they have Nimbus on offer, (if you’d like to read more on Nimbus check out one of my previous blogs where I do a deep-dive towards the end!) they also had two others I wanted to bring back home to my boss. First up, Stella Vallis, a tomme-style cheese that’s made using the French tradition of tommes. After collecting the milk, the farmers would skim the milk to separate the cream. Since cream (and the products it makes, such as butter) has historically been the most valuable component, the farmers would sell the cream and then make cheese with the leftover skimmed milk, which contained far less fat. What comes is a hard cheese where, in my experience, you can taste the grass that the cows grazed on and the nuances of the land far clearer than in many other styles. Second, Chaseholm had Moonlight, a Chaource-style cheese that really blew my boss’s mind (and mine!). First of all, I did indeed have to Google what a Chaource-style cheese is. As it turns out, Chaource is a town in France in the Champagne region where this cheese was originally produced. It’s made using cow’s milk, but ripens, looks astonishingly similar to, and even tastes similar to a bloomy goat’s milk cheese, so I was fooled for a while! Moonlight is sprinkled with a thin layer of ash before ripening, which helps to develop the rind and flavors within. It has a beautiful creamline and paste separation, and truly does mimic a goat’s milk cheese in a lot of ways! My boss said he’s going to try and order this one for the shop.
Next up we have Shtayburne Farm Creamery, located just west of Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes region. When I went on a girls’ wine trip to the Finger Lakes in 2019, I had the opportunity to visit the farm where they make not only cheese but ice cream, too! They offered flights of ice and cheese together, which was (obviously) absolutely fabulous. Plus, it was one of the most beautiful panoramic views I’ve ever seen. At the Little Falls Cheese Festival, Shtayburne offered the most aged cheddar I came across, which was a 10-year cheddar. They also had an extensive selection of flavored cheddars and flavored cheese curds, for those of us who like big flavors. We ended up grabbing one of the 10-years, and a vacuum-sealed bag of butter garlic cheese curds, which gave all the squeaky squeaks you’d expect!
Moving on to Lively Run Dairy, also located in the Finger Lakes, this is perhaps one of New York state’s most lauded and illustrious goat dairy farms. Lively Run is located a little off the beaten path in the Finger Lakes region, so although I wasn’t able to see the farm in person I am very glad to have finally been able to taste their cheeses at the festival! Not many cheese shops that I’ve seen outside of New York state carry Lively Run (maybe I’m just not going to the right ones!) so I was looking forward to finally having the chance to taste for myself. First, I tried the Finger Lakes Gold aged goat cheese. Aged for at least 4 months, it gives a slightly salty, not unpleasantly chewy texture and tastes of bright, tangy goat’s milk. The aging process definitely took off some of the tang you’d find with a fresh goat’s milk cheese, and overall it’s a nice find. I think it’d go well with a rustic yet light red wine, or a bright, citrusy wine like Izolia. I also tried the Cayuga Blue blue cheese, which won first place in its class at the 2017 American Cheese Society conference. I don’t believe I’d ever tried blue cheese made entirely from goat’s milk, and it was definitely interesting! I do like my blue cheeses creamier, but still where the blue packs a bit of a punch. I thought you didn’t get much of a blue flavor since the goat’s milk is far stronger than cow’s milk, and the milk itself may have overpowered the mold. I’ll have to give it another try sometime!
Our next creamery is Old Chatham Creamery, which you may very likely see in your local Whole Foods. Once when I was living in Miami, I saw Old Chatham Creamery in the reach-in cheese cooler at my neighborhood Whole Foods, which was really cool and definitely solidified how popular this maker is throughout the East Coast! At the festival, my first choice of their cheese was Nancy’s Hudson Valley Camembert, which is made using sheep’s milk, cow’s milk, and cow’s cream. I’ll preface my comments by saying that usually I don’t love Camembert; when it’s factory-made it feels play-doughy and severely lacking in flavor, and when it’s made by hand in artisanal ways, the flavor gives me too much for comfort and I still don’t love the texture. Maybe I’ve simply never encountered a well done Camembert, but I freaking LOVED this iteration from Old Chatham Creamery. The texture is reminiscent of a triple creme - very high water content, so much to the point that it practically dissolves in your mouth, probably owing to the fact that sheep’s milk is so much higher in fat than cow’s milk. The taste gave classic cow’s milk and cream, but I also got a salty, sweaty factor at the front of my mouth when I tasted it. I reeeeeally like Nancy’s Hudson Valley Camembert, and I’m definitely going to be on the lookout for it again. It pairs beautifully with apricot & pistachio crackers, and I also heard from someone that for a beverage, I should try pairing it with hot chocolate…. I can already picture it, and I am excited to get my hands on some more! I also tried Old Chatham’s Three Milk Gouda, which was kind of a revelation. It uses all three milks, is the color of deep straw, and has an out-of-this-world crystallization. The only other Gouda I can compare the crystallization to is a 5-year Gouda from Holland, but it’s far creamier and doesn’t break apart as easily. The aroma gives you classic nuttiness, but also hints at the gaminess of the sheep’s milk used. The taste also gives a nice toasted nut, but for sure gives you plenty of taste from the sheep’s milk and goat’s milk. It’s very well done, and it was cool to try something I’d never had before!
Journeying over to Edgwick Farm’s booth, I had an experience that went far beyond the cheeses they had on offer, and one that will forever define my life as it relates to fresh goat cheeses; I had a practically transcendent experience at Edgwick Farm table. That is because in all of my years of eating chevre, in one single bite I came to the realization that I had never once experienced actual fresh goat cheese. Reader, I can hardly find the words to describe how one single bite made my eyes pop open, as if seeing the cheese world for the first time. Now let it be known, I have absolutely nothing against the vacuum-sealed chevre logs offered nationally by the likes of Vermont Creamery or Cypress Grove, and will continue to buy them for my own enjoyment and that of friends during parties. But when the purveyor of Edgwick Farm told me that the goat cheese I was sampling was made using milk from less than a week ago, I knew instantly that I’d never be able to appreciate not-quite-fresh “fresh” goat’s milk cheese again. The texture was exquisite, the taste more grassy than I ever knew goat’s milk could be, yet with the characteristic, lovely tang. I need to stop writing, or risk beginning to weep at the beauty of this truly fresh goat cheese.
Our penultimate cheese maker was Painted Goat Farm from Garrettsville, NY, about halfway between Albany and the Finger Lakes. I tried two cheeses from Painted Goat - Cabrita and Cinderella. Both were bloomy goat’s milk cheeses, which is my boss at the shop’s absolutely favorite type of cheese. Though I took terrible notes on both these cheeses to reflect back on, I do remember loving both of them, and thinking that the Cabrita is similar to a Le Pico-style cheese, with an ooey, gooey creamline and a dense, fresh paste. When my boss tried both, he mimed fainting in ecstasy, so that’s really all you need to know!
And finally on our cheese journey at the Little Falls Cheese Festival, we have Nettle Meadow Artisan Cheese, a much lauded maker hailing from just outside Lake George. I tried their Adiron-Jack cheese, which is made with Jersey cow's milk and cream, plus apple jack brandy that they soak the curd in. There’s also sea salt listed in the ingredients, and I actually tasted it very much in the rind! This cheese is one of my new favorite cheeses, because it’s a delectable triple creme cheese, and the addition of the apple brandy really makes it unique and worthy of celebration. You can detect a note of sour apple in both the nose and in the mouth, and it is truly a lovely cheese. It feels as soft as silk on your tongue, and the harder rind offers a grounding contrast. I’ll look for it in my local Whole Foods the next time I stop by, for sure.
