Gianaclis Caldwell will be in Maine for the American Dairy Goat Association convention, this year being held in Portland, Maine during the week of October 20th. She will be leading sessions during the conference on the basics of cheese making for the ADGA members who attend. As a result, the Maine Cheese Guild has arranged for author and cheesemaker Caldwell to also teach 2 advanced one-day workshops in Rockland at the State of Maine Cheese Co.:

• Pasta Filata and other Italian style cheeses will be explored on Saturday, October 25th. This style, literally “spun paste” in Italian, is responsible for cheeses such as Mozzerella, Provolone, Caciocavallo, and Scamorza, and it represents a very different process from the typical process of simply draining curds into a solid form for serving or aging.
• Affinage (“Refinement” in French) and the art of aging cheeses of all types will be the subject of her workshop on Sunday, October 26th. Caldwell will speak about techniques from vat to mold to cave (and mold!) for successfully escorting bland lumps of curds into a sophisticated assortment of flavors and textures that are only possible through Affinage.

SITE: State of Maine Cheese Co., Rockport

FEE: $100 for Guild Members, $125 for non-members (includes a Guild membership) for EACH day (Both classes are therefore $200 for members and $250 for non-members). Make sure you specify which day you are signing up for if it’s only one. Registration will be set when deposits are received. Deposits will be refunded for cancellations up to a week before the class begins, after which they are not refundable. If there are more registrations than space available, later registrations will be notified and a waiting list will be started — deposits will be returned for those on the waiting list who cannot be accommodated.

To reserve a space, send a $50 deposit per class (with a note indicate the class you wish to attend; the balance is due when you arrive) to:

Maine Cheese Guild
c/o Mark Whitney, Treasurer
Pineland Farms Creamery
92 Creamery Lane
New Gloucester, ME 04260

About Gianaclis Caldwell:
Gianaclis Caldwell grew up on a small family farm in Oregon, where she milked cows, ran a dairy cow 4-H club, and learned to raise organic produce and meat. In 2005, Gianaclis returned to the property with her husband and their two daughters where they now operate Pholia Farm, an off-grid, raw milk cheese dairy.

Gianaclis’s aged, raw milk cheeses have been recognized and applauded by America’s foremost authorities on cheese. Pholia Farm cheeses have been included in many major books on artisan cheese, the latest being Max McCalman’s Mastering Cheese, in which her Elk Mountain cheese is included in a short list of “rock stars of the 21st century.” Her Hillis Peak cheese was the centerfold cheese in the winter 2010 issue of Culture Magazine. She was one of the spotlighted cheesemakers in a recent publication, Cheesemaking, by Hobby Farms magazine for their Popular Kitchen Series. She has been teaching all levels of cheesemaking for years, as well as speaking and teaching about the business of farmstead cheese, both at Pholia Farm and other venues, including the American Dairy Goat Association annual convention, the American Cheese Society Conference, and theMother Earth Newsfairs.

Caldwell is the author of The Small-Scale Dairy, a guide to the production of high quality, farm fresh milk, The Small-Scale Cheese Business, a guide to producing and selling artisan cheese, and Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking, which won a 2013 Foreword Book of the Year Award in Reference and was an International Association of Culinary Professionals finalist. Her photographs and writing appear regularly in numerous publications, including Culture Magazine.