Then, he said, "I watched the hippies grow up, basically." Back in the 1980s, Kindstedt focused his studies on large-scale mozzarella production and viewed artisan cheese as "a passing fad. In a 2013 interview with Seven Days, Paul Kindstedt, a UVM cheese scientist and author of Cheese and Culture: A History or Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization, remembered his first impressions of the artisan cheese movement. "There were no farmers markets, and hardly any restaurants were using Brie of any quality," Peter Dixon recalls. Artisan PioneersĪnne Dixon and Marie-Claude Chaleix were selling cheese in a very different culinary climate from today's. "It was really with that I got an educational window into French cheesemaking," he says. Back in the U.S., he continued to learn French-style production from Marie-Claude Chaleix, a consultant who had partnered with Dixon's stepmother, Anne. It was the beginning of a loose exchange program that allowed Peter Dixon to study traditional cheesemaking in France. But, he conceded through an interpreter, the Dixons were "willing to work very hard. Occasionally, he even tasted," Calta wrote.Īt length, Jean-Francois Renard pronounced himself "not totally satisfied" with this upstart American Brie. Vermont-based writer Marialisa Calta chronicled the Dixons' results in a 1986 New York Times story called " An Experiment in Cheese-Making: Brie From Vermont." At a University of Vermont tasting, the third-generation owner of France's award-winning Fromagerie Renard-Gillard "sniffed" the Dixons' cheese and "squinted at the rind through a magnifying glass. His education contributed to two cheeses for Guilford: Mont-Brie and Mont-Bert, pasteurized approximations of the French originals. Peter Dixon headed to Ontario's University of Guelph, where he learned to make Camembert and 10 other types of cheese. After mastering a Neufchâtel-style fromage blanc, they set their sights on a piquant, French-style Brie made from pasteurized American milk. Not so the Brie the Dixons set out to create under their new brand, Guilford Cheese Company. "American consumers want a mild cheese, and the French knew that, so when they started creating a Brie for Americans, they designed it to be very mild and white." "All Americans knew was supermarket Brie," he says. But that Brie, Dixon points out, bore little resemblance to the real French item. Having a wheel of the oozing cheese on the counter at a party was a symbol of sophistication akin to eating sushi or satay. If you remember the 1980s, you remember the Brie. So I thought, I'll be a cheesemaker." French Connections "I realized I didn't want to be a professional musician. "I was playing rock and roll in Portland, Maine, just bumming around," he recalls. (Today, Sam is the dairy manager at Shelburne Farms.) Peter's calling was less obvious. Peter Dixon's brother, Sam, had obvious credentials: He was already studying animal science at the University of Vermont. The senior Dixon looked to cheese production as a way to save the farm and perhaps support the family - while bringing his grown children back into the fold. In the 1970s, Vermont farms with special licenses had been able to sell raw milk, but the program ended in 1982 after a related illness made the agriculture department rethink the practice. One of those farmers was John Dixon, Peter Dixon's father, who was seeking a new income source to replace his raw-milk bottling business. But in the 1980s, farmers began to return to the tradition, hoping to find customers willing to eschew the Kraft and Velveeta products that had taken over the American table. In his research, Roberts was able to identify only 39 small cheesemakers operating in the U.S. Caciocavallos, hanging and sliced (below)Īnd then it wasn't long before cheese became a factory-made commodity.
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