The Art and Science of Cheese with Matt Rubiner

Send us a text

Listen as Matt Rubiner recounts nearly two decades in the cheese business, evolving from the early days at a Boston cheese shop to his own store's growth, including the opening of a café to handle seasonal market challenges. His dedication to old-world cheese care methods and high-quality grocery offerings shines through, painting a vivid picture of Rubiner's Cheese Mongers' unique identity. The episode also uncovers the meticulous process behind aging a special Gruyère cheese from Switzerland, exploring the science of crystalline formations in aged cheeses and the artistry involved in cheese judging.
Matt's insights into the artisan cheese industry's growth and challenges are a testament to the passion and perseverance required in this field. From navigating import regulations post-9/11 to the surge in culinary craftsmanship since the 90s, the conversation provides a comprehensive look at the evolution of American cheese culture. The episode wraps up with the inspiring story of Jasper Hill in Vermont and their innovative educational initiatives, reflecting the dedication needed to thrive in the artisan cheese world despite economic hurdles and the impact of COVID-19. Tune in for an engaging and informative chat with a true cheese maestro.

Thank you to our listeners!!

Contact & More Info:
https:/www.chefmassey.com
https://www.instagram.com/chef_massey/
Other Sponsors & Discount Programs:
https://www.chefmassey.com/services-9


Podcast Disclaimer:
We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host, guest or the management. All right reserved under Chef Sense Podcast and Chef Massey, LLC.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hey everyone, welcome to Chef Sense.
I'm your host, Chef Massey.
Alright, so welcome to thepodcast.
We have Matt Rubiner here fromRubiner's Cheese Mongers Next
door.
And this is probably thelongest I've sat with you.
This is probably the most timewe've spent.
I feel bad.
No, I'm teasing.
What are you talking about?
This goes both ways right.
So how are you?
I'm good, you're good, yeah,nice.

(00:36):
So you are, you're the cheesewizard.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I am a cheesemonger by.
I rarely throw around the Wword.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm telling you I mean because you know, talking
to Jasper Hill and people youknow, and I've talked to some
other amazing people on thepodcast, there's people that I
feel are predestined forsomething special.
I think you're in that categoryin my book.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
When's it going to happen?
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Oh, Scott, come on.
No, I mean, but it's inspiring.
It's like let's kind of delveinto, Matt Rubner, where this
started for you and how thistook off.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I hope my wife's not listening, because if I tell,
this story one more time she'sgoing to fall asleep driving oh,
uh-oh.
So I got into this business.
I mean, my mother claims thatas an early child I showed hints
of future cheesemongerism.
She says I declared at somepoint six, seven, eight years

(01:34):
old that someday I'm going toown a cheese shop.
That's awesome.
I have no recollection of that.
Okay Right, and then mygrandfather was in the food
business.
So I always had an appreciationI always felt at home in kind,
of the food retail world.
I loved supermarkets.

(01:54):
Still love supermarkets whichis weird because you know in so
many ways the anti-supermarket.
But he was anyway.
But I didn't get into thisuntil I was nearly 30 oh wow,
yeah, maybe even 30.
Well, who knows, um, I was doingother work, not super satisfied
, you know, not entirelydissatisfied, but feeling like

(02:15):
there was something that might,you know, satisfy a different,
different interest, differentpassion.
And I was in living in bostonat the time, okay, um, and I was
working at mit and I decided Iwas just, you know, I was very
interested in food, I was kindof bored with my mit friends
hope you're not listening, umand so I would you know, don, I
was a single, you know, youngishman, so I would doll myself up

(02:38):
and, uh, you know my finestattire, and I'd go to the
fanciest restaurant, restaurantI could find in town and nice,
and, you know, caring, aspretentious as a book I could
find in some language I couldn'tread and I'd sit at the bar and
um, or get a table and order abottle of wine, imagining myself
to be some connoisseur which,looking back on it, was absurd.

(02:59):
Um and um, I just started tomeet people.
I met chefs and I met, you know, sommeliers.
I met, you know, front of thehouse people.
I met chefs and I metsommeliers.
I met front of the house people.
I met wine sales people.
I met producers and it justbecame clear to me that these
were just incredibly.
You don't go around throwingaround the passion word too much
, but these were just deeplypassionate people who just

(03:21):
seemed, I think, they werereally satisfied with their work
, with the common denominatorbeing, you know, artisan food
and grapefruit.
And I kept doing that and I gota, you know kind of a whole
group of friends in thatbusiness.
And then, once, um, a friendwho's a wine sales guy at the
time, um, was like hey, we're,we're sitting in the north end

(03:42):
of boston, you know the italianneighborhood, and sitting in
Cafe de la Sport, which has tostill be there, you know,
watching soccer on TV and musingwe really should just go to
Italy, we really should just goto Italy.
So he's like, well, you know, Ican probably wrangle a trip,
you know, through work.
You work for this company, so alot of it will be paid for and
you can just tag along.
So, so a lot of it would bepaid for and you can just tag

(04:03):
along.
So he set up this trip and youknow, I swear to God, it was,
you know, within a couple hoursoff the plane as we're settling
into his friend's wonderful pinkhotel on the shores of Lake
Como, where I was like I'mmissing out on something here.
You know, I want this to bepart of my job.
And then, you know, the next daywe went to this restaurant
where his brother was doing astage.

(04:24):
He was a chef, still is and wasdoing a stage at a restaurant
in a town called Magrate, Ithink it was called, on the
other side of Lake Como, okay,where we were treated.
We didn't know we were beingtreated.
Thank God we were.
We would have blown the budgetfor the entire trip.
But you know, I don't know ifthe restaurant's still there,
but michelin like two-starrestaurant and the, the.
We were out on this porch andit was a cliff overlooking lake

(04:47):
como and it was the mostgorgeous day and um, and and the
food just kept coming out.
It was just absolute.
Everything was perfect.
You know trout from the localstream and you know this rabbit
kidney salad from the.
You know the and and beautiful,beautiful wines from the region
, and I was like you know theand and beautiful, beautiful
wines from the region, and I waslike you know what that's it.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
That's it, I'm done.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
We have to.
I got to get in this business.
So right then, and there Iboldly declared I'm getting in
the food business.
And then I, you know, I cameback and I was like all right,
now, I got to get in the foodbusiness.
You know, I said it in front ofpeople yeah, open the door,
exactly.

(05:29):
And so I kind of um, did alittle research, tried to figure
out well, what do I want to doin the food business?
Do I want to be in the winebusiness?
Maybe, but I really don't wantto be a salesman.
I'm not much of a salesman.
Um, do I want to be a chef?

Speaker 1 (05:37):
god, no, there's just not a there's not a bone in my
body that could tolerate that.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
No, I just yeah, it's best for everybody that I never
attempted to be a chef, yeah,or do I work for an importer?
Do I do this, do that?
And then a friend of mine saidyou know what about cheese?
You know there's a great cheeseshop in town.
This place called FormaggioKitchen in Cambridge, very
famous now.
Oh yeah.
It was famous then Wow.

(06:03):
But it was a very differentworld back then In the
appreciation of cheese and foodin general, I think.
In restaurants and retail was onthe ascendance and so a friend
arranged she was having a winedinner a winemaker dinner, I
don't remember the maker and hadme sit down next to you know,

(06:25):
sat me next to the owner of thisstore and I chatted with him a
little bit and then, you know, aweek or so later went into the
store and was like, hey look,I'm thinking of leaving my job.
You know, think you might hireme here.
And I think, you know, well, Iknow, now that you know people
come into your store all thetime and they're like, hey, you
know, this looks fun, I'd loveto pick up a couple of shifts.
And you're like it's not fun,dude I mean it is fun, but it's

(06:47):
also grueling work, right, youknow, um.
And so I'm sure he felt likethat.
You know, he has some kid, youknow, coming in here.
He's got a perfectly fine,presumably higher paying job
than what I could get.
And he's like, yeah, you canwork here, um, but I need you
full time and I'll pay you sixbucks an hour, which was the
minimum wage at the time.

(07:07):
So I was like, sure, let's doit.
Yeah, and I don't remember howlong after that point, but
within a month or so, startedwork at the cheese shop, quit my
other job, got out of my notfancy, out of my not fancy, but

(07:29):
you know, my, my little, uh, um,my little garret on top of a
building in a beacon hill in newyork and had to bail from that
because I'm not new york.
Boston couldn't afford that.
So I moved in with a bunch ofmed students in a flop house and
you know, the central square,not precisely a flop house, but
anyway, yeah.
And then I was in the foodbusiness.
Wow, and that's it.
And so I was there, that store,for, you know, six years or so,
okay and it was just at a timeum, where not just that store

(07:53):
but, as I was saying, the foodbusiness in general and you know
, you know it's like this iswe're talking now the early 90s,
oh, yeah you know, and andcelebrity chefs became a thing
yeah, food tv became a thing andpeople were.
And food TV became a thing andpeople were more traveled and
maybe people were wealthier andbeginning to understand food and
you began to see things likeyou know, artisan cheeses and

(08:15):
other foods being produced at alevel, albeit on a smaller scale
, but at a level similar toEurope.
Yeah, and so it was just thiskind of very sharp curve and
rode that for a while at thestore and then I was bodily
thrown from the premises aftersix, seven years and you know if
I, if that's one of the reasonsI started my own store if I had
to work for anybody, I'd befired in five, five minutes.

(08:38):
Um, anyway.
So then I did a littleconsulting, you know, actual
consulting, not just I'munemployed, so I'm a consultant.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
You're right.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Consulting, yeah.
And then I had this opportunityto move out here and open a
store, which isn't the store I'min now.
Okay, it was a store inRichmond, oh yeah, in the only
commercial building in Richmondwhere Jim's got his.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Is that where Gop's at now?
Yeah, used to be Marty's Local.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, yeah, marty's local, yeah, so before it was
marty's local and before it waswhatever the hell else was there
?
Right, it was the richmondstore, okay um, which I opened
with some partners, okay, um,they had a cafe in the
downstairs kind of back called amono, and they were former and
there's a story as to how Ifound them, but I knew them as
they were caterers in b.
We used to work with them at thestore where I worked and we
became friendly and they werelike, hey, we got this old

(09:30):
general store up there.
There's nothing in it, we justuse it for storage next to the
post office there, where gymstuff is now.
And they were like, hey, do youwant to come out here and open
a store?
And we were like sure.
And we did a little quick back,uh, back of the envelope math.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
You know how much money could we make here?
How's the clientele?

Speaker 2 (09:51):
And we took one look at that and threw it in the
trash and was like, yeah, we'lldo it, cause that doesn't make
any sense.
Um, and we moved out.
My wife uh left her job andbecame a freelancer she's a
clothing designer, yeah and uh.
So he opened that store inrichmond and that was in 2000
2000 should know this, becauseit's it was right about the time

(10:11):
we got married so 2001.
Okay, um, and then that therelation with the partners there
lasted, you know, a few weeks,for, you know, went to hell, and
then we uh managed to stick itout for a couple of years and
then left there and we're like,okay, no more bosses, no more
partners, we're going to open upa store and we lucked into that

(10:34):
space on Main Street.
We've been there for we'recoming up on God next week, two
weeks from now, coming up on 20years.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh, congratulations, that's huge.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
I mean it's huge.
In the sense that I mean it'shuge, I guess, but it's huge in
the sense that you know ithasn't been smooth going.
You know it's not, it's a neat,it's one thing.
I'm looking back and I'm like,wow, I'm kind of proud of that.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
You know it's like you, gut it out for 20 years.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
I know, but it's like you know, plugging away, Wow,
trying to stay alive, yeah.
And the next thing you know,you're an OG.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
You know you've been there for a generation, right,
jeez, no, that's amazing.
And you have rubies in the backright.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
We have rubies in the back, yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
So you I'm assuming just cross-utilization of
inventory, you'll see it.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
I mean, I've gone over there times and yeah, yeah,
I mean the cafe, which is theyopen about the same time.
We knew we couldn't open bothright at the same time, so the
cafe opened the following julyum and the cafe was something
you know.
We'd never been in the in theum, you know the restaurant
quote-unquote business.
But we really felt, and justbased on my experience, both as
somebody who worked in thecheese business at that point

(11:46):
for seven or eight years, butalso somebody who knew people
who had restaurants and clientsof mine when I consulted, I
really felt that a store likemine where you're selling these
rarefied, often extremelyperishable ingredients, you need
some kind of food serviceoutlet.
And that could be.
If you had the right facilitiesfor it and the right skills,

(12:07):
you could do a prepared foodprogram.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
But that's so difficult, especially out here.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
And the other thing is we had no idea the seasonal.
I mean, we had been told aboutthe seasonal cycle in the
Berkshires.
It's a difficult place to run abusiness.
Give people as many reasons aspossible to come in.
We needed something that wouldmake some money when the store
was never going to early in themorning, yeah, you know um

(12:33):
Wednesday midday kind of thing.
So we realized we need a cafe.
Yeah, so we opened the cafe andit was kind of hilarious.
We had, uh, alex Platt, youknow from South.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Oh, yeah, okay, A couple other people were our.
He worked for me in Richmondwhen he was one of our first
baristas.
Oh, okay, that makes sense nowwhen I see him gunslinging back
there, Right exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
He was a great one.
We felt we needed this cafe.
And it more, or less workedaccording to plan and the store
was, you know, in the time ofyear where the store just wasn't
going to make any money.
People still need their coffee,people still want their
sandwiches, and then it has thevery mundane function of, um,
kind of preempting waste.
You know, if we're going tosell fancy hams, that's we need

(13:16):
to move more of that than we canactually probably sell to
customers.
Right, to keep it pristine.
Yeah so we have a program whereeverything's not like.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
We're using butt ends for the cafe no, quite the
opposite, where they're takingall their meats and stuff
directly out of our inventory.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, that's what I was so it keeps everything super
fresh, um and uh, and it workslike as a restaurant.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
I think we have really little waste yeah, that's
phenomenal, that that's a youknow, top discussion nowadays in
the last few years.
So, looking at your store, doyou want to share with the
listeners kind of actual, theactual gourmet variety that your
store?
Because, because you recentlygot your liquor, like you have
wine.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, we got a wine and beer license after a decade
and a half trying.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
That was a big deal too.
Well, that was the biggest.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
I mean, with hindsight, that was the biggest
deal Like we're doing muchbetter now as a business now in
the last few years since we'vegotten that license, than any of
the years before, and thatreally rounded out the picture
and that was our intent to getthat license when we moved here
20-something years ago, but itjust wasn't going to happen.

(14:22):
We tried periodically.
It just wasn't going to happen.
You know, politics and kind ofcompeting competitive interests
were shutting us out of that.
That kind of fell apart in thelast few years, and so we were
able to finally score, you know,a very deft legal argument, and
so we thought that we made overand over, and, over and over

(14:43):
again as to why we should get alicense.
Just fell on deaf ears for along time and then finally
things opened up.
So, you know, the store haslike we.
You know, we call ourselves umcheesemongers and grocers and we
call it, you know, rubiner'scheesemongers and grocers, and
we had a whole list of cutesynames for the business, um and.

(15:03):
But in the end we were like youknow what this is going to be
my store, um, everything in thestore is going to be however you
want to put it.
You know, some people saycurated or whatever.
I like to think of as more askind of um, filtered or tested
by my palate yeah, I'm onlyabsolutely in a lot of that
that's just not like entirelyjust kind of pomp and ego.

(15:25):
Certainly is to some extent, I'msure, but but it's uh, it's um,
I can't sell stuff I don't like.
Yeah, you know, I can'tcustomer, I can't.
You know, I can't have acustomer come in and I'm, and
I'm pushing a product that Ithink the market will like, even
though I myself don't believeit right.
I just can't do that you know Ijust physically cannot do it
right.
I'm just not gonna lie to thecustomer.

(15:46):
So it's much easier for me, it'smuch easier for my staff to
just sell things that we trulybelieve in.
So I was like, all right, well,I'm just gonna put my name on
the, I'm just gonna callrupiners, yeah, you know.
So people just know this is me,this is my taste, this is my
palate.
I want you to come in, I wantyou to try it.
Maybe you'll like the samethings that I do, maybe you
won't, um, but it's all I know,it's, I'm gonna do it.

(16:08):
So.
And then we were like well,we're going to use cheesemongers
because instead of cheeseshoppers, you know something
like that and it was a termthat's in much more currency now
, but it really wasn't then.
I mean, obviously it's an old,old, old expression, you know
cheesemonger, ironmonger,whatever.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Fishmonger.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, but it means somebody who, you know, gathers
a product or commodity andbrings it to market.
Yeah, and we felt that the waywe were going to go about this
business was going to be astraditional as possible.
You know, our mentors and ourinspirations were old European
shops and a few American storesthat were really doing it in

(16:44):
that very old fashioned hands on, cut to order, caring for the
cheese, ripening the cheese.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
So we decided to call it.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Cheesemongers, and then we decided to append to
that grocers because we didn'twant to limit ourselves to that.
There's so much more in thefood world that was of interest
to me.
Obviously, for business reasons, you want to diversify somewhat
, but also we take that rolevery seriously of kind of old
school roll up your sleeves.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
We're a grocer.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
I think we sometimes get branded, you know, as kind
of fancy or elite or whatever,and it's just.
It's just the nature of the bizand the sort of products that
we sell, even though I can sayas an aside here that the most
expensive cheese, the mostexpensive olive oil are that way
because of the virtuallypeasant tiny scale at which
they're produced, which is anexpensive proposition.
It's not like we're justselling kind of frilly right of

(17:31):
the virtually peasant tiny scaleat which they're produced,
which is an expensiveproposition.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
It's not like we're just selling kind of frilly
fancy stuff for the most part.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
But we want people to think of it.
Not everybody's going to, butwe want people to think of it as
a grocery store, Not just amuseum of food, not some
boutique that has kind of thisand that on the shelves we want
it to be a grocery store, albeitkind you know kind of a fancy
grocery store, but a grocerystore.
So that guides, that principleguides the sort of areas that we

(17:59):
you know of food that we sell.
So there's obviously curedmeats and things like that
You're excellent at all of it.
And then there's you know lotsof ingredients, and then you
know candies and cookies and nowwine.
You know lots of ingredients,and then you know candies and
cookies and now wine.
Um, the only thing we neverreally pulled the trigger on,
and never will, is, uh, freshmeat, um, yeah, fresh produce,

(18:20):
except in an extremely boutiqueway.
You know there's yeah, somebodybrings in some gorgeous like
moon in the pond dom yeah, well,dominic, yeah, so that's a we
we kind of just give him ourfront porch there.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
He's awesome.
He's such a.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
He's one of my best friends out here in this
business, love it, yeah, he'sgreat.
So we say you know it'sRubiner's, it's kind of filtered
through me Cheesemonger's,we're an old world cheesemonger,
we're an old world cheesemerchant.
And grocer's, because weconsider ourselves to be A
grocery store, even if not youreveryday grocery store, but you
know groceries, but you alsohave a finishing or ripening

(18:55):
room too.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
that you added.
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (18:57):
We did yeah, so that's a big deal, that's a
really big deal.
That's still a that issomething we're learning to
harness.
You know, right it's.
You know the space, as you know, is a bank.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, originally it wasn't a bank.
It was a bank.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Originally it wasn't a bank, it was the town
newspaper.
Oh, okay, it was a butchercourier, oh cool, okay, and I
don't know if the courier becamesomething else or just
disappeared and that buildingwas built.
I should know this because thedates are literally carved in
the building, but I can'tremember what they said.
I drive by it too.
No-transcript, I drive by ittoo.
So 1867, 1869, maybe it wasbuilt and it didn't have the

(19:33):
pillars, okay, the overhang andthe pillars.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Oh really, yeah, no kidding I'll show you pictures.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
But there were like wrought iron balconies.
Oh, there's this great picturewith people in like you know,
women in like hoop skirts.
On the second floor.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh, there you go.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
And then these kind of ghostly figures, because
presumably this wasn't thequickest shutter camera in 1869
or whatever.
So you know, you see these kindof weird ghostly images of
people walking by.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
It's just plasma.
Yeah, exactly, it's just plasma.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
And then at some point the courier moved.
I think it moved just acrossthe street, across the alleyway
there, oh, okay, and there wasactually a house.
There was a tiny little housein that alleyway.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh there, oh, okay there was actually a house.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
There was a tiny little house in that alleyway,
oh okay, and that house is now.
It was moved and it's now likeright off of route seven, like
on one of those roads that cutsback to the courthouse there oh
really, it's this tiny littlehouse it used to be at least
that's what the historians tellme yeah, anyway um and then it
became a bank in 1917, I thinkokay, um, that's the other date.

(20:33):
A grave on the side of thebuilding which I can't remember
and you know.
So we took over this space andthe space had been all but
abandoned.
You know it was going to be a.
If I got the story right, itwas set to become a toy museum.
Oh Of all things, oh my gosh.
And there was a guy who wasthis music impresario you know,

(20:54):
wrote a few Elvis songs guynamed Aaron Schroeder, um owned
the building and I'm I'm sureI'm getting the story wrong.
I never actually spoke with him, but bought the building,
started decking it out as like amuseum for his collection of
toys.
You know if there's anyrelatives of the Schroeder
family and I got this wrong.
I apologize Um and uh, but thenhe got sick, um and never
completed but held onto thebuilding forever.

(21:16):
So the building was more orless abandoned.
So we were able to.
When we left Richmond we wereable to lease it.
But you know it was an old bankso it had a vault in it.
Yeah, and you know the firstthought was like, hmm, how can
we get that vault out of there?
Oh, wow and we thought aboutthat for five seconds and then
everybody was like you can't getthat vault out of there.

(21:36):
And then so we're like, well,someday we'll make use of it.
And in fact it was funnyanother Southfield coincidence,
like Alex Rich Holbin who livesthere oh, okay, the bookstore,
he was our designer, he designedthe space, okay.
And we were actually when wemoved into the space we were
like we got to find a designerwho's who you know can put this

(21:59):
together the way functionally wewant.
But that, um, kind ofcelebrates the space.
And we were scouting aroundtalking to friends and we we
went to a friend's bakery inboston high-rise bakery,
cambridge, I should say and weloved the way that they'd use
this kind of nondescript,industrial-looking old liquor
store into this super cool space.

(22:20):
And so we were like, hey, whodesigned your space?
And he's like oh, the guy wholives out by you now is Rich
Holbin.
So we contacted him and then itturned out he had been
contacted by the then owner ofthat building about turning it
into a boutique hotel of somekind.
Oh and so where?
The front where the store is,was like the lobby.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
There used to be an elevator in there.
No.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, wow, I think the reason the place never sold
is because the elevator was soout of code and it would have
cost an absolute fortune to ripout the elevator and put in a
new elevator, but without thatthe rest of the building
couldn't be made likedisabilities compliance oh, it
was kind of this uh you know,just this kind of unsellable

(23:02):
space okay anyway, um, but hehad already specced out the
whole place you know, oh, okay,and he was he had a, if I'm
remembering correctly, and therewas going to be a little
martini bar in the vault oh wowyou know um and where the where
the cafe is now was going to bea little, you know a little,
coffee shop hotel and oh, anyway.
So I figured what the questionwas, but uh oh, just the cheese.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
The cheese, oh the cheese.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we always wanted to turn that into a cheese vault
.
I mean, it's perfect for it.
It's got three foot thickreinforced concrete walls and in
fact early on I asked somecontractors like what would it
take to put a drain in here?
And they're probably stilllaughing Because apparently the
under the vault is a 13 footthick slab of concrete All the

(23:48):
way down to the basement floorand is reinforced with, I'm told
, railroad rails.
Oh wow, Because they had tokeep, you know, the Three
Stooges from burrowingunderneath.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, so much for Ocean's Eleven.
I guess Exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
So, but we never had any money.
You know business, smallbusiness in a small town, is
tough, yeah, so you know wedidn't have a ton of money to
put into that, but then finallyin the last few years we've been
able to do that.
So we've turned that into our.
It's so much a cheese ripeningcave, I think.
You know.
We call it, you know, like theword in the cheese mongering

(24:19):
trade.
It's a French word affinage.
Yeah, okay, you know meaning toage and ripen cheese.
To finish.
The word means like to finishcheese.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, and even English-speaking countries
they'll often use the wordaffinage just because you know
in English you don't have agreat word.
Mature doesn't rule off thetongue like affinage, not even
close.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
So and I don't think we do that, except kind of
playing around you know, what wedo is we provide a storage
space for the cheese that mimicsthe sort of caves the cheese
would have spent its early daysin Okay.
And then, or early, many months,or early years for some of

(24:55):
these big cheeses, that willallow the cheese to continue to
develop.
You know, if you buy a cheeseand you just pop it in the
walk-in, yeah, kind of it, kindof, you know, retards its
development and growth, it's not, uh, the cheese doesn't
continue to develop.
But if you have it in a, um, ahumid environment, a slightly
warmer environment, yeah, um,that kind of mimics, you know,
uh, cellar temperatures or cavetemperatures like that 50 yeah,

(25:17):
it's, like you know, mid, mid,lowish, 50s, um, and really high
humidity for the stuff thatwe're putting in there.
So in the 90s it's a little hardto control.
We're still tweaking it, yeah,um, but uh yeah, and we had a
kid build the shelves, you knowwe're looking around for it
looks really cool.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
It's really nice in there.
I mean he built the most.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
It's funny that you know some people, you know some
of these like uh, I think I'd beoffending anybody, but it's
like.
It's like these steiner kids,you know the ones that go like
oh, yeah, yeah it's like they'reborn with, like advanced german
joinery techniques and stufflike that.
This guy's's like, yeah, I'llbuild shelving for you, and then
we look at his prototypes.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
I'm like oh my God, that's the most beautiful thing.
That's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, it looks so cool and so he built us the
shelves and it's great.
You know it's a lot of work,yeah, but it really does
something that you can't dowithout it.
That's kind of a vapid sentence, but happenstance, but you know
, just for example, we got Iposted this on instagram but we
got a very special gruyere.
So a big wheel of alpine cheesefrom bern and switzerland, um,

(26:18):
uh, made by a creamery calledfritzenhaus, and it's a cheese
that two years, um running, andthen every other year very close
to winning the world cheeseawards, wow, I mean, in which
are a serious set of I.
They're absurd, of course, tocall something the best cheese
in the world.
But that said it was called thebest cheese in the world you
know, and it came in and thiswas their Der Reife not their

(26:40):
most ripe, but their second tomost ripe.
But we bought it last November,maybe, you know, ordered it
many months in advance, comesmore or less straight from
switzerland, and we put in thecave and we we didn't set out to
say, hey, let's age this foranother six, seven months.
But you hit the off season, wehadn't cut it yet and we're like
you know what, let's just leaveit in there and see what it

(27:01):
does.
So we just cracked it open twodays ago, yeah, and it's
astonishing.
I mean, it's astonishing and wetasted it when it came in and
was astonishing then.
But but so now we have this20-month-old Gruyere.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
And it's just absolutely perfection.
All we did to it was you know,we have this horsehair brush
that we kind of scrape the moldoff and flip it every couple of
days.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
And for many months and then crack it open and hope
you didn't mess up this manythousands of dollar wheel of
cheese.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, no pressure.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
And it was perfect.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
And you know, we could never, we couldn't have
done that until we got that yeah, that's the room, or cheese
vault as we call it, and thatreally sets it apart.
So in your mind, in tasting thetwo differences, what were the
key components that you found?
Were they more complex and kindof further along in the palate
and hung out?
Yeah, I mean, you know it's.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
You know, I'd love to say we're more scientific about
kind of taking notes along theway, yeah, but we're not.
But the cheese was clearly.
I mean it was basically it wasfirmer.
Obviously it had lost somemoisture, the flavors, and we
know this cheese well in thesense that we've sold Gruyere
from that producer for manyyears.
So we have a good sense of theoverall profile.
Yeah, everything was much moreintense, but without losing.

(28:15):
You know, sometimes you get acheese or wine or anything where
it's like really intense butit's kind of monolithic.
You know you get intensity butat the expense of breadth and
richness and complexity, butnone of that it had managed to
become more and more intense,firmer, but still as complex.
And arguably, in those finalseveral months of its ripening,

(28:36):
as fats break down, proteinsbreak down, new, you know to
their kind of constituentcomponents that give it aroma,
give it flavor, you know, newthings are coming out of that
cheese which simply weren'tthere before, would never have
come out.
In fact, the importer emailedwhen he saw the picture.
he's like, uh, he's like I'mcoming up there, I want to taste
it because he's never tastedone, that old oh wow, um and um,

(28:58):
and then also, one of thecharms of those sorts of cheeses
is that they get very uh,crystalline there we go, these
little, these little crunchybits, and they're not really
salt there, but they're,although my chemist cousin, you
know, she was like well,technically they're, they're
assault, but um, she's likeeverybody, when they hear salt
they think sodium chloride.
But you know, this is thiscrystallization it's.
It's a um.

(29:19):
To the extent of my still weaktechnical understanding, it is a
crystallization of the aminoacid tyrosine.
Oh, okay, which also withtyrosine, tyro, tyros is is
greek cheese and tyrosine is youknow amino acid ends in that
I-N-E, but you'll see tyrosinein.
Do you ever cut a slice ofprosciutto?

Speaker 1 (29:38):
and you'll see a little white crystal in there
saying the same thing.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, it's actually considered a.
I'm not really sure why, butit's considered a flaw.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
It's considered a cheesy flaw.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Wow, I've had the pleasure and the honor of
judging cheese competitions fora long time.
And in a lot of thesecompetitions they pair a
so-called aesthetic judge whichwould be like me, where you're
judging a cheese on its look,its flavor, its aroma, maybe its
kind of prospects for themarket, that kind of thing and
then a technical judge who'sjudging it based on you know

(30:09):
kind of industry standards.
You know this is flawed becauseof this you know kind of
industry standards.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Oh, okay, you know this is flawed because of this.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
You know, this imperfection in the rind is a
flaw.
Ding, you know, take off thepoint there.
This particular flavor isconsidered an off flavor.
This aroma is considered an offaroma.
Ding, ding, you know, take acouple ticks off.
Crystallization ding take off.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
I would have never thought that, thought no, and I
remember having thisconversation.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
I'm sure he told me um very lucidly why it's a flaw.
I still don't understand, butit's so popular it's maybe the
most sought after component ofcheeses.
When somebody comes in thestore they're like we like hard
cheeses with those crystallinecrystals.
Yeah, and um, and people likeit for the crunch.

(30:50):
Yeah, I mean, people imagineit's like.
Some people come in and theythink it makes the cheese sweet.
They think the crystals mightbe sweet because when you age
the cheese carefully and in theright conditions, um, it will
often bring out a character ofthe cheese that is something
like sweetness.
Yeah, you know, and um, andsome people imagine it to be
salt because it just looks likesalt.

(31:11):
Yeah, it's like they threw in abunch of salt crystals, and a
cheese that's that aged willnecessarily be saltier than a
younger cheese.
You know pretty much all cheesehas salt in it for a lot of
good technical reasons, not justflavor, and so they imagine
these are kind of the saltcrystals coming out because the
cheese is notably salty.

(31:31):
Yeah, because it's been agingfor so long.
But no, if you were like toclip out a little one of those
crystals with the tip of a knifeand put it on your tongue and
bite it, it just tastes likeyou're biting into a piece of
chalk or something like that.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
It doesn't taste like anything.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Wow, okay, yeah, but yeah, it's crazy and you can see
it, you know you look at thecheese and people are like what
are your Christelius cheeses?
And we're like this one, thisone, this one.
But you can look, you know, allthose little white spots are
what you're crushing.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Oh, that's cool, wow, as you're kind of gauging,
because there's so much amazingselection and going in there is
it really is such a beautifulcraft that you do.
It takes you on this journeythat like I'm not even in Great
Barrington, like I'm not even asa chef the minute, even walking

(32:16):
in there, I can smell and itjust kind of there are certain
attractions to certain thingswhen you look at cheeses and you
develop your broad selections.
How do you work through all ofthat?
I mean it's probably monotonousand with a team and travel and
None of that sounds monotonousTravel Well, I mean.

(32:36):
We dash off to Switzerland.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
And no well, the cheeses I mean going back to
what I was saying before thecheeses are I sell.
I buy and sell what I like andbelieve in.
And so much of that is not justthe quality of the cheese, the
flavor and so forth.
It's the people who make it.
Or in some cases, the people whoimport it.
And so, though, the basis forwhat I do is based on having

(33:03):
worked in Southern store inCambridge, but also done a good
deal of traveling to the placesthese things were made and
meeting the people boththroughout the United States and
some of not as much as I wouldhave liked of Europe.
But you know, when you open astore in a small town or
anywhere, it kind of ties youdown.
Yeah, it takes up all yourmoney.
Right, and you can't just godashing off for a couple of
weeks, you know.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
So a lot of that is based on the relationships that
I made and the networks that Imade and I stay in touch with
these people, yeah, and welltrust is crucial, trust is key.
So, and that's not just thecheese, that's everything in the
store.
You know we have certain kindof actually written down
principles to our buying.
You know sometimes we violatebecause it's getting harder and
harder, but you know we'll neversell anything we say that is

(33:48):
owned by a parent company.
Say, you know, which is gettingtested?
Because big companies keepbuying American artisanal and
European artisanal cheesemakers.
Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
So it's getting.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
It's being sorely tested right now.
But no, that's actually, youknow you say monotonous, but
that's to me the most fun thingis finding new stuff and getting
it here however possible.
And you know there's a lot ofrestrictions and it's much
harder now than it used to be.
That's what I was going to askyou.
It used to be very looselyenforced.

(34:32):
If you played ball and weredoing anything stupid, yeah, so
you know you could bring in rawmilk camembert, as you could
bring in raw milk rib lechon,things like that.
Um and but after 9-11, whenthere were all new layers of
administration put onto themovement and import and selling
of food, in the name of likebioterrorism protection and
stuff.

(34:52):
Yeah, suddenly everybody atevery level has got to fill out
all these forms and it becamereally hard.
So it's hard to bring some ofthe things that we used to bring
in, but but, uh, okay, but youknow.
Again, it's like I have to lovethe cheese, I have to know how
it behaves.
Yeah, you know the thing aboutbeing a cheese monger and this
is true in so many jobs but thekey skill, I think, is building

(35:15):
in your head, in your senses,like a database of how a
particular cheese or particularstyle of cheese should behave.
Yeah, so that you can tell bylooking at a young cheese how
it's going to develop before youget into it, before you get
into it Before you get into it,in the sense that it's not real
science, but in the same sensethat a wine importer might go to
a vineyard and taste a barrelsample that's not going to be

(35:37):
bottled for years.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
But be able to, based on how many barrel samples of
that type of wine or maybe eventhat particular vineyard, you'll
get a sense of how it's goingto develop and you'll base your
decisions on that and thatreally you know as a cheese
monger, that really guideseverything you're doing with the
cheese.
You know there's some cheese Ilove but I just know they're not
going to hold up in theenvironment that I would have to
put them through.

(35:59):
And there are many things youknow.
When cheese comes in the door,the first line of defense and I
look at it and be like you knowit looks fine now.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
But there's something about the way, something I see
in the rind, something in thearoma, something that I can just
feel.
And I'm like no, I got torefuse this one, this one's not
going to work, or if I importedit myself more or less.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Can't really refuse it, but there might be a
particular way to handle it.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Okay, very interesting, but yeah, wow, and
so I know that there'scompetitions out there.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
More and more every day.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
I mean, are these going?
Are they once a year?
Is this going on all year?

Speaker 2 (36:30):
long.
What competition?
I didn't mean the competition.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Like cheese.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Oh oh oh Well, there are competitions.
Well, there's one big one inthe United States.
I guess there's another one.
There's like a world of cheesething that I've never
participated in, but theAmerican one is put on by the
American Cheese Society andthat's where I've done all of my

(36:54):
judging.
Okay, and that started out whenI first started judging, there
might have been, I think, 70 or80 cheeses entered.
Yeah, now there's thousandsentered into these competitions.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
As I talk to people in our industry as a whole, it's
so interesting that our skillset as chefs, our tools in our
kitchens, our people, you know,our craft people.
It almost was like early 90s,you know, maybe a little late
80s, but early 90s it juststarted erupting and it just

(37:24):
took off.
I think that's amazing to see,because in our country you know
I'm trying to wrap my headaround.
Well, in the first place, Iknow we're relatively a new
country.
Why was there such a stallbetween our founding and as we
grew as a country that our foodscene kind of just was there
like stuck in a sense?

(37:46):
And then all of a sudden therewas this eruption for everyone
in our industry to go, you know,wow, this is a whole new world.
And adding all these cheesesand all this product, I mean
that's, how do you feel aboutthat?
I mean it's, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
I mean, to me that was a thrilling time and I don't
know that it's ascending at thesame kind of rate or angle.
But you know, like you weresaying, starting in the early
90s, maybe in the 80s, I don'tknow I got in the business in
before.
You know, like I was referringto before, you suddenly saw like
when I was a little kid, goingto a fancy restaurant meant

(38:25):
going to like an old chop house.
You, you know, and your parentswould dress you up and you know
you'd have a filet mignon or abig potato or right and then, uh
, you know, or there was surfand turf and you have a chunk of
crab or lobster, something likethat, and that was fancy and it
was fancy but then where youknow, I'm really not much on
like the history of restaurantsand stuff but you began to see

(38:45):
people, you know, kind ofbreaking out of that sort of
traditional mold and I alwaysthought that this was, you know,
kind of just by sheer force ofthe personality of some, you
know, real genius chefs, rightas far as restaurants goes,
supported by a population that Idon't want to wax on too much
because I really don't know, butit's to me, because I

(39:06):
got in the business around thenand it just seemed like people
from the time that I started inthat shop to even just a year or
two later the knowledge thatcustomers had the birth of the
foodie, the travel that peoplehad done, the chefs who were.
You know, I was living inBoston or Cambridge and there
were a couple chefs who didthings that were just so

(39:28):
opposite of like the, you know,the nouvelle cuisine or
something like that, jasperWhite or Todd English and
Barbara Lynch and people likethat who were just like just
piling on incredible flavors andyou know doing stuff.
You know, yeah, exactly, and um,and it was like that in my
business as well.
Like people, a lot of thecheeses that we found quote

(39:48):
unquote were because a customerwould come in and they were like
oh, I was skiing and you knowwherever people ski.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
And I found I had this cheese and we'd be like,
all right, we're going to get it.
Yeah, so you know we'd make thecalls and we'd do this and we
started importing ourselves thisis back in Cambridge and just
bringing in these wild thingsthat we would not have known
about.
And then there was an audiencefor them willing to pay the
premium that it would take toget these things into the

(40:15):
country.
But also, suddenly, there'smovies about food, you know that
are wildly popular.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
You know, big Night.
You know, and exactly.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
And food TV.
Right and yeah, exactly, andthen and and food, tv right, and
you know a different generationof, you know people's, you know
appreciation of, maybe moreauthentic, you know what we
unfortunately still call likeethnic food and stuff yeah, it's
like suddenly italian fooddidn't mean just the red sauce
joint you know, there might be atuscan place.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
There might be exactly.
It was a really golden time,yeah and uh and then the store.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Just you, you know, not because of me, certainly,
but I was participating in, youknow, transformation of that
store.
Yeah, the way that cheese shopsdid business, there were a few
stores around the country thatwe worked with or were doing
similar things Not many.
Then, also, at the same time,there were factors that that led
to the development of a veryhigh quality american cheese

(41:09):
industry.
Yeah, you know, there was atime when there were simply no.
I mean, there were a couplethere were.
There were a few goat cheeses,you know simple things out there
.
Um, capriol in indiana, laurachanel, I mean some of these old
school, yeah, you know thesehippie chicks, you know, I
remember one from capriol whowas like you know there are,
there are chicks.
You know, I remember one fromCapriole who was like you know,
there are, there are two people,two types of people, who make

(41:32):
cheese.
You know the, the hippies whodon't mind poverty and the rich
guys who don't mind losing money.
Yeah, and, and she's like, whenyou see those big, you know
German guys in Wisconsin startmaking artisan cheese, you'll
know we've made it and you know,sure enough.

(41:53):
And but you began to see,because I think there's so many
factors, but there was thismovement away from the cities,
like people who you know wantedto kind of take to the country,
whether they were people who hadmoney or people who were just
kind of sick of the rat race.
Yeah, and, and started makingcheese and, though a very
difficult business to be in, forthe first time maybe ever there
was an understanding, or anincreasing understanding of what
they were doing and thereforean increasing market for what

(42:16):
they were doing and it's a slog,but I think you know I've never
been a cheesemaker but I knowit's a slog of a business, but
it's a business where people canmake a living.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
It's a lot of work, Whereas before it really wasn't
something like that.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
It was you know, you made a cheese and you took it to
the farmer's market.
You made a cheese and if it wasreally good and you lived in LA
or something, you sold it toyou know a chef, or you sold it
in Northern California.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
You sold it to Alice Waters or something like that.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, or in New.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
York.
You know similar things.
But now that vibrant industryfilled with, filled with really
wonderful cheeses that you knoware are, you know, shoulder to
shoulder with the best Europeancheese, which is phenomenal,
which is great to see,incredible, we're doing it.
So do you have any words ofwisdom?
I mean anything, none, nonethem.
I mean anything, none, none.
Oh, my god, don't do what I did.
Kids, yeah, yeah, you know, butI mean, like somebody that has
this, you know, affection forcheese and wanting to these
finer things and want to getinto the industry.
How do you nurture someonealong?

(43:19):
I mean, you have ben, yeah,which I actually have ben in my
cell phone.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
It's ben rubiner, by the way, yeah, yeah, a lot of
people think he's my son.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
But yeah, what are your words for that?
Like cutting your teeth and how?
I mean it's a lot of studyingright, a lot of tasting.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I mean depending on how deeply you want to go into
it, like there's no way to gointo it and really learn it,
whether that be as acheesemonger or a cheesemaker.
You know without.
I mean there's a there's agreat deal of knowledge that
needs to be, if not mastered.
You need to have a enough of aframework of the knowledge,
whether that be you know moretechnical or aesthetic

(43:56):
components of it or businesscomponents about the cheese,
that you can actually tell agood story.
You know, I don't the reason Iwent.
You know I may have skippedthis, but the reason I chose
cheese over all these otherprofessions was, you know I was
in kind of academia before thisand you know, and kind of a
student of history and and andand very interested without you
know kind of jack of all tradesand you know all sorts of

(44:19):
academic interests you know,interested in science just
enough to want to read a fewbooks about.
You know this and that and andwhen I went into.
You know and that and and whenI went into.
You know cheese for me, andwine is the same way, and many
other things, I'm sure.
But you can look at a cheesefrom so many different angles.
You can look at it, um, youknow just straight up kind of
the history of that cheese.
You can look it upscientifically.
You can look it up from, youknow, a geological perspective.

(44:41):
You can look it up as.
You can look at it through thelens of like the history of like
conquest.
You know the movements ofpeople, the.
You can look at it through the,um, you know through through
the.
You know the history of animalsin a particular region.
I mean there's a milliondifferent, um, ways to look at,
yeah, a piece of cheese.
I always said that a reallygood cheese monger might just be

(45:01):
making this up, but a reallygood cheese monger could look at
a cheese like a whole cheese.
Yeah, come up with a plausiblestory on how that cheese
developed just by looking at thecheese.
Okay, doesn't really work inamerica because, like you were
saying, our traditions here areso young.
So if you're making a cheese inamerica, you just make whatever
you want.
Basically, um you know whateveryour land will give you,
whatever your animals will giveyou how much space you have, how

(45:22):
much staff you know, whatevercapital, whereas in europe these
traditions are so old.
That's why you know in oneplace they're all making a
similar cheese and thisparticular cheese developed in
the mountains and thisparticular cheese, developed in
the hot islands in themediterranean and you know
everyone and every cheese inthis region is made with sheep
milk.
You know no cheese above theloire valley, with some
exceptions made of goat's milk.

(45:44):
You know, um, you know thericher places, big monastic land
holdings and stuff were cow'smilk because you know the, the
peasant, the poor couldn'tafford a herd of cow, you know,
or the land to graze them.
So again, I think I've wanderedoff on a cheese tangent but oh
no, so getting in the business.
So if you really want to get inthe business as a career, yeah,

(46:04):
um, which a lot of people do,but not as many as you need um,
yeah you really got to, um, youreally got to dig in okay pretty
deep and try to understand thisstuff right, there's no
shortage of avenues into it.
You know there's no such thingas a cheese shop in this country
, a good cheese shop in thiscountry that's not looking for
help, and there's no such thingas a cheesemaker that you know,

(46:26):
or at least a decent sized onethat doesn't take an intern or
always need some help, or ittakes a certain type, just like
it takes a really weird type togo become a chef, you know yeah,
right.
Sign up for that, and it's likeyeah right.
Now the chance of you makinggreat money doing it is right.
Probably not great overall.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
And you know the hours are absurd and there's all
kinds of pressures, and thenthe actual running of a
restaurant or a small cheeseshop or a cheesemaker, something
like that is pretty brutal, nomatter where you are.
I see more stores in big citiesgoing out of business than I do
little country cheese stores,because it has its own pressures

(47:14):
, so I think anybody wants toget into it.
There's no, there's no shortageof kind of entryways, yeah,
into it.
Um, you know, find a good cheeseshop or find a good um.
And then there's lots of youknow support out there these
days, right, um, they're theamerican cheese society, which
has gotten quite big, maybe alittle too big for my taste, but
, like anything else, you've gotto fund it.
If you've got to fund it,you've got to run it with people
with money.
The people who make money arelike you know craft.

(47:38):
I'm probably being unfair, butthere's lots of resources.
There's now actually acertification which I don't have
.
Maybe someday I'll get, butit's one of those like I've been
doing this for 30 years.
I don't need some kid tellingme how.
Yeah, but there's a certifiedcheese professional like
certificate I guess you'd callit that is administered by the

(47:59):
American Cheese Society.
Okay, and so a lot of youngcheese mongers are preparing for
that and getting into thatyoung cheesemongers are
preparing for that and gettinginto that.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
So it's great business.
Jasper Hill, I think.
I think I remember themmentioning something about some
classes or education they do upthere.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
They do a ton of stuff, they're unbelievable.
Seven volts and insane magic.
I was just up there a coupleweeks ago.
They had a summit.
It was Northeast Retail Summit.
They chose a few shoe shops.
Yeah, come up there and justkind of hash it out.
Yeah, talk about the state ofthe business.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Talk about what concerns, us.
Oh wow, very cool.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Them telling us in a very candid way what their
pressures are.
But they're I mean, they arethe benchmark.
They're amazing.
They're amazing on just everylevel, man.
I was up there just for aweekend and it was like.
It was like I just felt likeeverybody.
I met, not just the employeesof Jasper Hill, from through and
through, from.
You know, mateo, the, thepeople they're buying their milk
from the people you know,working in their satellite farms

(49:00):
or whatever.
Everybody just seemed like agenius to me.
They're just on it, you know.
They just know their craft sowell so through and through.
You know it was wild Like wewere.

(49:22):
You know we were visiting theirmain farm.
You know where the milk is madethat they use for their raw
milk cheeses and you know theygot a couple guys working there,
and there's this one, kid Bubbawho local guy, and this is a
deeply impoverished part ofVermont.

(49:43):
You know I think I can say thatthe Northeast Kingdom, you know
oh yeah, it's just you know,middle of nowhere and it's, you
know, a lot of downtrodden farmsand real, real pressures, um
and and you know, and this guy Ithink it was very much of that
from that that difficultupbringing, that difficult world
he was just like, as Mateo putit, I've never met somebody who

(50:04):
loves cows as much as this guyand he somebody who loves cows
as much as this guy, and he justknew very cool and he could
like they never.
They didn't give the cows names,a few had names from previous
lives.
But he could just look at a cowand just tell you, you know
exactly the volume of milk itwas giving, exactly what it ate,
exactly its weight, exactlyeverything about it, what its
genetic makeup was.
And, without thinking about it,without checking a list, you

(50:25):
know it was just of him.
You know, yeah, and everywherewe went it was just like that
and it was almost like they.
They spoke in this kind ofpoetry.
It was weird yeah, it was justeverything they said you know
it's like and especially when wewere touring places where, um,
like the creamery and the cavesand stuff at jasper hill, yeah,
you know, and they, it's veryhygienic, so they and it's also
very proprietary, so they frownon you whipping out your phone.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
My brain is like shit .

Speaker 2 (50:51):
How am I gonna remember this?
I'm trying to think of mnemonicdevices to remember all the
brilliance that I'm hearing.
Yeah, trip.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
But yeah, jasper hill is a is a remarkable
organization yeah, no kidding,it was great talking to them and
kind of hearing more about youknow what they're doing and,
like you said, I'd love to getup there someday.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Um, maybe that'll be a field trip fantastic, but they
do like a cheese camp.
Ben's going up to cheese camp.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, we wenta few years ago, sophie works
in the store, she went up tocheese camp okay, um, well and
that's something they do, whichis great.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
I mean, that's amazing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I know,like cricket creek, I would take
.
You know, we'd go up there anddo some cheese.
Yeah, you know, make I think wewere tinkering with their
Maggie's Round or something,right, so you know.
Yeah, but you get anappreciation where it's mind
opening.
Yeah, that you're, now you're.
It's more than just grating it,yeah, you know.
Or shaving it.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
It's like oh wow.
I mean, you know people willlament the prices of artisan
cheeses.
You know what 25, 35, 45, 50,$55 a pound.
You know how can you chargethat for this?
I'm like you know what themargins on this stuff are it's
so slim.
Yeah, and the work that goesinto it.
I mean, jasper Hill, you knowthey because of economic

(52:05):
pressures and if I have thestory straight in COVID they had
to sell their herd.
I mean they couldn't theeconomics of doing all that they
do and being their own milksuppliers.
Now they've since bought a farmand supply a great deal of milk
actually from cows that theyown.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
But it's no longer on Jasper Hill Farm.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
And there's talk that , you know, if they are able to
expand, if there is a market forexpansion of what they're doing
, um, then maybe reintroducingcows, but um, but um.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
And you see what goes into this and the circumstances
and the risks and the yeah, andthen you know, like the
equipment, you know they'reartisan cheesemaker, I mean,
they're they're getting big foran artisan cheesemaker, but
they're still very much anartisan cheesemaker.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
But I'm like, looking at this stuff, I'm like, hey,
what's this set you back?
And it's like that's a half amillion bucks.
Yeah, you know that unit rightthere.
Or you know, hey, we got thistractor.
Our lease is running up.
You know, yeah, tractor to usefor hay and stuff, right, and
they're like half a millionbucks.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Yeah, these things cost you know, unbelievable,
yeah, crazy, yeah, no, andthat's, I mean that's, and
that's the tough thing.
I think people need to havethat level of appreciation goes
a long way.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
We talked to the cheesemakers like so what time
did you get in this morning?
It's like 1 15 you know, andit's like 11 in the morning.
Now, yeah, I'm just wrapping upmy shit, yeah where you been.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, it's.
You're wasting a day getting upat, you know 7 am, wow.
Well, so what you?
What are favorite cheeses?
Is it one of those things whereit's like they're all my
children so I have to love themall equally?
I would say absolutely not.
Well, as in real life.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
No, yeah, I don't have a favorite cheese.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
And it's maddening for customers because it's a
common question what's yourfavorite cheese?
Yeah, and what I should do islie this one.
Yeah, yeah, you know, but it'sso difficult, and it's difficult
in a way, in the same way as,like, you know which one's your
favorite kid?
Yeah, yeah, but I think mostparents will tell you they do
have a favorite kid, but it'syou know.

(54:06):
You're talking about movingtargets.
You know there might be acheese that, generally speaking,
is among my top 20 cheeses.
Okay, that doesn't mean thatthat cheese on that day is going
to be my favorite cheese.
I mean, these things arechanging.
The cheese that you know webrought in at 13 months old or
15 months old is a verydifferent cheese when we pull it
out of the cellar at 20 months.

(54:26):
That's when we cut that wheel,that's one cheese.
When we put it out for the day,at the end of the day, it's
subtly another cheese and as itgoes, you know, it changes One
batch of a very soft, let's say,jasper Hill, harbison or
something like that, becauseit's an artisan cheese, closely
tied to the land and thelactation cycles of the animal,
and stuff like that.

(54:46):
It's going to be different,right, you know, the composition
of the milk is going to bedifferent, so it's going to
yield a different cheese.
This isn't an industrialproduct, right?
So there's and that's to me thecharm of artisan products
there's variation.
Yeah, hopefully within acertain range of quality.
Yeah, but I can't just sayharbison's my favorite cheese.
Yeah, because, there may be dayswhere that specific Harbison

(55:06):
isn't my favorite cheese.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Ordering it.
This is Okay, I know.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
And so I mean I tend to nah, you know.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
I don't have an answer for you.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
There used to be kind of types of cheeses that I
didn't like.
You know there was a.
There's a style of cheese thatis typical in Western Spain,
Eastern Portugal, the so-calledSerra cheeses.
Every time, western spain,eastern portugal the so-called
sera cheeses.
Every time I try to pronounceanything remotely portuguese and
then I hear a portuguese personpronounce it, I'm like, wow, I
didn't get anything right, butum, sheep milk, cheeses, raw

(55:36):
milk.
The milk is coagulated, notthrough rennet, which would be
typical or another way tocoagulate it's yeah, it's done
through an extract of a thistleseed and a very ancient way of
doing it which does all kinds ofthings to the cheese but
creates this among other factors, creates this very, very rich,
quite strong, depending on howyou look at it, both
aromatically and in flavor.

(55:57):
Very animal, you know.
Oh wow, Not in like a gross way, but like you know, Like a
barnyardie.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
No, yeah, a barnyardie, yeah, like
barnyardie.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
But like you know the , you know the bedding in a
sheepfold, you know oh yeah, youknow it's kind of like wet
grass.
Yeah, just enough of the smellof the lanolin, yeah but it has
a real sweetness to it and thensometimes it has this odd like
kind of almost like berry noteto it like strawberry note kind
of to it.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Oh, that's cool.
I thought it was just thegrossest category of cheese,
like I don't know how anybodyeats this?

Speaker 2 (56:29):
I'll sell it yeah, but you know, over time I just
learned to love that just asmuch as the others.
Yeah, of course I always hatedfennel and now I like fennel and
couldn't eat cilantro, and nowI like cilantro so so like the
redheaded stepchild exactly, butso so uh yeah, I, I don't think
I have a favorite, yeah, unlessyou, unless you ask me what's
your favorite at this second.
Yeah, and it's probably youknow, I taste a bunch of cheeses

(56:50):
every day, oh yeah.
So, it's probably the answer isgoing to be the one of those
cheeses that was doing the bestthat day and you ask me,
tomorrow I might not have thesame answer.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Yeah, well, maybe people need to see you every day
then.
Yeah, come on in.
Yeah, enjoy it, we're heredaily.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
there you go well, so how can they website, and for
both the cafe.
Now, you know we're working alot of stuff right now.
We're we're um, so our website,which was, you know, feeble and
I think that's actually adiagnostic term in the tech
industry um, to just horrible,to outdated.
Somebody was like hey, I boughta sandwich in your cafe and it
says on your website it wasseven dollars, but it was 20.
I was like, because I haven'tchanged the price in 10 years or
something, oops so we'reworking that now.

(57:33):
So you know the best thing to dois just come on in yeah, and
you look at our instagram andstuff because that's where
anything new, anything cool,anything that makes, takes a
pretty picture and you guys doboxes, built boxes and all of
that.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Yeah, so set up an order.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
But we're really very much cut to order.
I'm amazed how many people justkind of need to go out and buy
a quarter pound of this, quarterpound of that, quarter pound of
that.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
As a kid I never went to a cheese shop to go buy
cheese no.
But it's very, very hands-on.
We're very in tune with what'sgoing on with our cheeses at any
given time.
So hopefully we're able todeliver to a customer a cheese
that's in perfect condition, umand uh, handled properly,

(58:17):
wrapped properly, yeah, um.
But yeah, best thing to do isis come in and you know, I would
say a pretty big portion of thepeople who come in are maybe a
little intimidated by a cut toorder cheese shop, because
they're there are weirdly few ofthem.
A lot of stores kind of looklike a cut-to-order cheese shop
or they'll cut a bunch of piecesand put it out and whatever.
That's a cheese shop.
But they don't realize theycould come in and ask these

(58:41):
questions and taste mosteverything and really get the
advice of the people so that wecan put something together.
And there's no substitute forcustomer satisfaction than you
know better than actuallytasting it.
Right, exactly, you know whenyou get it home, you're going to
like it if, before you boughtit, you tasted it.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
So that's awesome, that's the best thing to do.
Come in, taste a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Nice, yeah, okay, any sort of cheese classes in the,
the future, or I think so.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
You know we were doing them and covet hit, we
weren't doing a ton because youknow, staffing, staffing, which
basically means if we're doing acheese class, I'm doing it.
Which?
Means I'm not making dinner,you know yeah, um, yeah, and,
and I've just worked a double,for you know, 20 straight days
or something so right, um.
So we didn't do many of themand the ones we did, we were
doing mostly for charities.
You know, silent auction.

(59:26):
Get a cheese glass for you andyour friends.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
We're going to be easing back, and then covid put
an end to that.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
You know the for a while, especially because the we
closed the cafe for two and ahalf years, so there was really
no place to host these thingsand uh, yeah, I mean, yeah,
destroyed economies and globaldisaster.
Yeah, um was pretty good forour business, you know, yeah, in
ways that you know real twoedges of a sword ways for that

(59:51):
we all experienced living in theburgues, some of the local
farms.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
I mean that was a shot in the arm.
Yeah, I mean you know it's likeit was a lot of people moved up
here, which of course has someadverse effects.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
You know, we got no place for any of our staff to
live because you knoweverything's uh, it's tough, but
but on the other hand, itbrought up a clientele that was
very interested in what we'redoing so it's kind of juggled in
my brain.
It's like yeah how do you managethis?
You know we gotta, you know weneed.
We need affordable housing, weneed affordable places.
Yeah, um, but I need a couplefancy people in town to come,

(01:00:22):
you know, buy my fancy cheeseand stuff.
It's a tough mix.
But yeah, covid was betweengetting the wine license just
before COVID.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Oh yeah, and then COVID hitting and people you
know rapidly, you know,increasing their alcohol intake.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Yeah Right, you know, before it was you know, oh, I'd
like a.
You know looking for a bottle,for I'm having a steak tonight.
Whatever, I'm looking for abottle Now.
It was like 11 in the morningwhat white wine goes good with
an 11-year-old.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Yeah yeah, you got any Corbett Canyon?
No, I don't think so bud.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
So yeah, it was and the plateau is very different.
I mean, there's just morepeople up here now, yeah, so
it's not like during the middleof COVID, when kids were out of
school and people were just flatout living up here were out of
school and people were just flatout living up here but oh, yeah
, but still, but it's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
uh, it's a thorny issue, but yeah, but it's been a
good stretch, yeah, yeah, well,you know, for business.
Thank you for your passion, man.
I you know you're you're veryhumble, but I think it's just,
it's great to you know to gointo what you are so passionate
and the team that you have it.
It is an artist at work, right,you know it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
I always say art dealer.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
There you go.
I'm not the artist, justselling the art.
Well, I don't know Finding andselling the art.
Your name is excellence, andthat's why it's where you put it
.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
So thank you, pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Yeah, all right, everyone, that is a wrap.
You can check us out if youlike that.
Subscribe Also the InstagramChef Massey.
Let's keep it simple, chefMassey dot com.
Have a good one.
Bye for now.