Crush Edition

From time to time we do a special seasonal twist on on our usual cheeses as part of our "crush" edition. The crush edition is a celebration both of our local milk and Northern California's annual grape harvest. To make the crush edition cheese, we take some older wheels of one of our cheeses from the regular lineup and immerse them in grape pomace sourced from a local vineyard. Pomace is the seeds and skins that remain after grapes are pressed to extract the juice that will become wine. This process, known by locals as ”crush” here in wine country, happens every year from August to October during the frenzied grape harvest season. The wheels of cheese are buried in the fermented mash for a month, during which time they take on delightfully boozy flavors of fruit and raisins that complement the cheese's rich tanginess. Naturally, a dry and fruity California wine would be an excellent partner to this cheese. In 2013 we transformed our Shepherdista cheese into “Shepherdista Crush" and previously we've done the same with wheels of Fat Bottom Girl. In 2014 we were not able to do a crush edition because our aging rooms were completely full - we had no room! In the future we plan to do a crush edition with our Goldette Tomette cheese, hopefully in 2015 if space allows. Thanks to Salumeria Cafe in San Francisco for sharing the awesome photo above!