by Austin Coe Butler
Many of the world’s great cheeses are named after the places they are made–Stilton, Manchego, Roquefort, Parmigiano–and for good reason. Traditional and artisanal cheeses are inseparable from the climate, culture, and land they are made on. Chemists can analyze cow’s milk and tell by distinct terpenes if they have been grazing on the flora of the Asiago Plateau. Roquefort’s iconic blue-gray crumble is the marriage of the saprotrophic fungus Penicillium roqueforti that is endemic to the Combalou caves the cheese is aged in and the milk of the ewe’s that graze the surrounding fields. To put it simply, making cheese includes the geology and microbiology of a place (and everything in between). Pleasant Ridge Reserve is another cheese named its place of origin, a long, rolling ridge in the Driftless Region .
The Driftless Region takes its name from the absence of “drift” or glacial deposits of sediment and erratics (large boulders) left during the retreat of glaciers. Resistant hills to the northeast and the basins of the Great Lakes diverted glaciation three times from the region, sparing it from being scraped flat by thousands of feet of ice and resulting in the region’s characteristic landscape: hills, dramatic bluffs, rock outcrops, and valleys that were deeply trenched by streams carrying torrents of meltwater when the immense glacial lakes to the north shattered their dams of ice. North of Dodgeville, Wisconsin is one of these long, rolling ridges named Pleasant Ridge.
At the base of this ridge is Uplands Cheese Company where Pleasant Ridge Reserve is made. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a cow’s milk alpine-style cheese in the alpage tradition. From May to October, the closed, crossbred herd of cows tended by Scott Mericka are rotated to a new acre of pasturage every day, and every day Andy and his staff make a batch, approximately 96 wheels, of Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Each day, right before dinner as the cows are coming out of the barn having just been milked, Andy walks the pasturage they’ve grazed and notes what’s growing. Maybe one day the cows dined heavily on orchard grass and mineral lambsquarters; the next day on sweet red clover, bitter dandelions, and meadow fescue. This pasturage results in rich, raw, minutes-old milk that is always complex and different from the previous day’s and is why Andy makes cheese seven days a week, adjusting the salt and rennet in the vat according to the milk, using his hands to feel the texture of the curd, and coaxing the cheese towards different flavors and textures. After the curd is separated from the whey, pressed into molds, and rubbed with salt, the wheels are then aged between ten and fourteen months, and every week every wheel is washed by hand. (Andy says the cheese makes good company in the winter.)
This cheese is a celebration of the seasons and that ephemeral yet essential expression of the land captured in crystalline French: terroir. Each batch and wheel of Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a perfect moment in the pasture and in the dairy. Every season’s cheese is different. Every batch is different. What will this year’s cheese taste like with it’s hot, dry weather? What will next year’s cheese? These are the joys of cheesemakers, mongers, and eaters to ponder. But if each batch is different from the next, how do you choose which one to buy?
Batches of Pleasant Ridge aging in Uplands’ own cellars (Photo by Maura Rice)
Every year around March or April, staff from France 44 drive down to Dodgeville to visit Uplands Dairy and have dinner with Andy and his family. We sample five wheels from five different batches. Tasting these batches side by side is a truly remarkable experience. Each wheel is incredibly complex and balanced between the sweet and savory, but the differences, while subtle, are significant. Some have a gentle, fruity sweetness, others are malty and toasted. In some, the texture is granular, while in others it’s fudgy, toothsome. For all these qualities, Pleasant Ridge Reserve has received many accolades–it is the most awarded cheese in the United States–though none of these awards make it taste better.
Andy Hatch preparing wheels of Pleasant Ridge for the F44 staff to sample (Photo by Maura Rice)
During a year when many people have struggled, especially small farmers and cheesemakers, there’s been a vital sense of urgency to sell cheese from the people we know and are close to. Pleasant Ridge Reserve has been in the cheese case here at France 44 since day one. We know Andy and his family. This year we did not have dinner with Andy and his family. We did not go to Dodgeville. We retreated to the vacant dining room and lay the five wheels side by side and sampled them. This year we selected the batches made on July 14th and 28th. Come see why we thought these two batches were special.