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Notes on Water Buffalo Cheesemaker from ACS 2015

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Notes on Water Buffalo Session at ACS Conference 2015
7/31/2015 10AM
[photo courtesy of Zhangzhugang through Wikimedia]

Quattro Portoni: Water Bufala in Northern Italy? A Transition That Worked!
by Bruno Gritti, moderated by Michele Buster

190 million Water Buffalo in the world; less than 1% are in Italy (370,000), 2.9% in Africa, 2.4% elsewhere in Europe and North and South America combined; the remainder are in Asia. [Reference: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, 2012]

Italian Bufala is considered a sub-species; its geneology is tracked back to 12,000 animals that survived WWII. Most are found in Campania (278,000), followed by Lazio (66,000), and then Lombardy (only 6,000).

Quattro Portoni is in Bergano Province in Lombardy, which is the alpine region of norther Italy. They have 60 Hectares of pasture and fields that grow wheat and tritcale as well as hay. They generate 99% of their feed on the farm. They maintain 250 milking cows, 100 “non-dairy” animals, 300 heifers, and 170 steers at any one time.
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2015 ACS Festival of Cheese

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The Festival of Cheese, which concludes the ACS Conference every year is always a highlight of the conference for both the attending cheese makers, as well as the host city because the public is invited to taste and enjoy the bounty of North American cheese!

ACS Providence 2015 Day 3

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Downtown Providence was very quiet as I walked north to the convention center this morning. All of the award winners must have been sleeping in…

AS THE CHEESE TURNS

It’s true what they say: #WrinklesAreSexy. (Watch it here.)

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This was a vertical tasting of two cheeses: Vermont Creamery’s Bonne Bouche, and Jasper Hill Farm’s Harbison (which also has a video of its own). General Manager and Cheesemaker Adeline Druart talked about the process for making and aging Bonne Bouche into the cheese she wants it to be every time for the customer who buys it. Vince Razionale did the same for Harbison. They are similar semi-soft aged cheeses using predominently Geo and P.c. as aging agents. However Bonne Bouche is Goat, Lactic Set, and pimarily Geo. Harbison is Cow, Rennet Set, wrapped in a boiled spruce sapwood band, and primarily P.c. in nature. Bonne Bouche is a week or two younger than Harbison at its peak, and tastes like a great Champagne when it is just drained — the first version of it was only 3 days after make, and had just been sprinkled with vegetable ash.
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