{"id":2347,"date":"2010-12-01T22:02:21","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T04:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2010-12-04T00:28:30","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T06:28:30","slug":"rush-creek-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2347","title":{"rendered":"Rush Creek Reserve Cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>

By now, the story of Uplands Cheese is fairly well known to anyone who pays even a little bit of attention to Wisconsin cheese.\u00a0 From its beginnings a decade ago, Uplands has become one of the most heralded of the New World cheese makers. \u00a0Their commitment to rotational grazing, their continuing efforts to crossbreed the nine different breeds in their herd, their un-abashedly putting quality ahead of \u201cproductivity\u201d (or yield, or efficiency, however you want to phrase it)\u2014it is not hard to understand why this is the case.\u00a0 They have channeled all of their efforts into producing a single cheese from their exceptional milk: Pleasant Ridge Reserve.<\/p>\n

Until now.<\/p>\n

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Their new cheese is called Rush Creek Reserve (like Pleasant Ridge, it is named after a natural feature on their farm).\u00a0 It is a seasonal cheese, made in the autumn months after the cows stop grazing on the summer grasses and the composition of the milk changes and it is no longer proper for making Pleasant Ridge. The driving force behind the new cheese is Upland\u2019s young cheese maker and new general manager, Andy Hatch.\u00a0 Last year he spent time in France studying the process to make Vacherin Mont d\u2019Or, the progenitor of Rush Creek.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago\u00a0Leslie stopped by their farm and picked up a wheel of Rush Creek.\u00a0 By the time you\u2019re reading this it will be available at Fromagination in Madison and other fine cheese stores\u2026 that is if it isn\u2019t already sold out for the year.<\/p>\n

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Okay, on to the cheese.\u00a0 Each wheel is 12 ounces, roughly an inch thick, and wrapped with spruce bark.\u00a0 I originally took the bark for just decoration, but quickly came to understand that it was structural.\u00a0 I was going to cut a wedge out of the wheel for the picture but Leslie slapped my hands and told me not to.\u00a0 Andy had instructed her on the proper opening of the wheel: the \u201clid\u201d of the wheel is cut off and peeled back, exposing the custardy center that can then be scooped out.\u00a0 Custard isn\u2019t quite the right word I think to describe the viscosity, though, it was just a little bit stiffer than that.\u00a0 Somewhere between custard and honey, perhaps.<\/p>\n

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It has a fairly faint aroma, earthy and beefy.\u00a0 After we opened the cheese we watched it for awhile and it was plainly evident how alive this cheese was.\u00a0 It bubbled and shifted around ever so slightly, I think begging to be eaten.\u00a0 We ate a couple of spoonfuls alone, and it needed no accompaniment, but it went very well with crackers and wild lingonberry jam (Spirit Valley Jam from Ogema, WI).\u00a0 The flavor was primarily of butter and cured meat, with a very balanced hint of stinky cheese flavor which I\u2019m tempted to describe in more colorful terms but I\u2019ll stick with \u201cbarnyardy\u201d.\u00a0 Despite the rich taste it wasn\u2019t overpowering and it was only faintly salty.\u00a0 It was quite elegant.\u00a0 \u00a0We absolutely loved it.\u00a0 The real artistry here is that Uplands have crafted a 60 day aged cheese (since it\u2019s made with raw milk, the law requires it to be aged 60 days) that has a look, taste, and texture similar to 25-30 days cheese made in France and Switzerland.\u00a0 We can argue about whether the 60 day raw milk cheese rule is good or bad, but Uplands didn\u2019t let it get in the way of making the cheese they wanted.<\/p>\n

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By now, the story of Uplands Cheese is fairly well known to anyone who pays even a little bit of attention to Wisconsin cheese.\u00a0 From its beginnings a decade ago, Uplands has become one of the most heralded of the New World cheese makers. \u00a0Their commitment to rotational grazing, their continuing efforts to crossbreed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,44],"tags":[195,179,176],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheese","category-made-in-wisconsin","tag-andy-hatch","tag-rush-creek-reserve","tag-uplands-cheese","no-featured-image"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions\/2436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}