Laura Werlin, Cheese Authority, Educator, and Author
Laura Werlin knows something about switching careers to follow her passion. In 2000, still finding her footing as a food writer after a 16-year career in television news, her debut book, The New American Cheese, earned a full-page review in the New York Times and a national book tour. Laura’s follow-up, The All American Cheese and Wine Book, won a prestigious James Beard Foundation award.
Now Laura is finishing her most ambitious project: a 400-page World Atlas of Cheese—written and edited, in part, at CANOPY’s Fillmore location, where she recently became a member.
Ahead of her seminar at Food & Wine Classic Aspen in June, Laura shares why American cheese is the story of American immigration and culture, and why donkey cheese runs $600 a pound.
Tell us about your new book, The World Atlas of Cheese. How do you select cheeses to spotlight?
It’s a scary little project! I’m writing a curated survey of 300 cheeses from around the world. I haven’t nailed down which exact 300 to include yet—every time I think I have my final list, I learn about a new cheese that I think is worthy of inclusion.
Classics, new interpretations of the classics, historical, unique, and emerging cheeses are my general criteria. A cheese might be historically significant in a country. For example, I’ve written about Greek feta—a cheese most people know about but don’t know that it is protected under EU regulations, meaning that the feta name can only be used in Greece (although this rule isn’t extended to the US, much to the chagrin of Greek feta makers). Or, a cheese might be a brand new invention, or it might qualify just by virtue of being novel—you might not expect cheese to be made in Vietnam, but it is.
I’m including remote places: one cheese I’ve written about is made in the mountains of eastern Turkey near Armenia. I’ve also included cheeses I don’t have the opportunity to taste—I’ve written about one from Algeria, which I couldn’t import or travel to experience, relying on extensive research and the cheesemaker to give me a sense of their production.
What are some of the more interesting cheeses you’ve discovered?
I just wrote about donkey-milk cheese from Serbia. Donkeys produce so little milk that it runs about 1,100 euros a kilo—about $600 a pound. There’s a wildlife refuge in Serbia where these donkeys live and where the cheese is made. It started as a donkey rescue, and then the founder realized: maybe we can milk these gals, called jennies, too.
I met some Ukrainian cheesemakers at the Slow Food cheese festival in Italy, and I was blown away—their cheeses are beautiful, delicious, just perfect. I learned that artisan cheese is up-and-coming in Ukraine, and while all we hear right now is about the war, life there continues in some ways just as it always did—obviously in a context that is unimaginable to any of us who have not been in a war-torn country. From my small sampling of those expertly made cheeses, the scene reminds me of the US cheese scene 30 years ago.
That’s the best thing about cheese: cheese is a window into geography and history like no other food I know.
What inspired you to write books about cheese?
My earliest food memory is of a grilled cheese sandwich—the American cheese slices you remove from plastic sleeves—on white bread with butter. I liked the crispy, greasy exterior, playing with the pull, and I loved the flavor. My mom expressed love through cooking, and my love for cheese was unabating throughout my childhood.
In college, I needed to lose weight and take off the freshman 15 and then some, and I would literally dream about cheese. The one treat I allowed myself was little wedges of Laughing Cow. (More recently, I took a media tour of creameries in France and stopped at the Laughing Cow Museum, which felt like a full-circle moment.) When I first met my now ex-husband, he gave me a book about cheeses around the world. That was before making a career of cheese had even entered my mind. Cheesemakers were my heroes, and cheese has been a throughline in my life.
After leaving TV news in 1999, watching the cookbook awards at my first conference of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), I knew if I were to write a book, it would be about cheese—not because it was a subject I knew a lot about, but because it was one I was passionate about.
How did your news experience help—or hinder—you in writing that first book?
I had to write my first book in a few months. Had I not had that unwitting training from daily news—producing the business reporter and, later, running the assignment desk at KPIX here in SF—I never would have been able to ship that first book on such a short timeline. Because I was used to having a daily five o’clock deadline, I was still working at that pace.
But going from the nerve center of a newsroom to silence in my home was challenging, for sure. Writing for TV and radio is a completely different skill from writing longer-form journalism. I almost had to learn how to write again. I took food writing and journalism classes to develop that muscle. The period between leaving TV news and starting up my career was full of frustration. I kept thinking, “Oh my God, what have I done?”
What struck you most when you began researching American cheese?
I was surprised by the variety and regionality of cheeses in America. Pre-internet, I went to my first American Cheese Society conference, held in a different city each year, where there were 300 cheeses out for tasting. Cheeses weren’t shipped around the country for home consumption, so only a few American retailers got them. That meant the only way to discover regional cheeses beyond their locales was at this conference because makers would ship samples for competition judging.
Honestly, it was a learning process, visiting places like Vermont and Burlington, and attending the Fancy Food Shows—even at the level of nutrition of cow’s milk and goat’s milk, how aged cheeses don’t contain lactose. I wanted to educate myself and then impart that knowledge.
That book included 55 profiles of cheese makers around the country. Now, you can find 55 cheesemakers in one small region of Vermont. It’s really changed.
What are the most significant cheese-producing regions in the US?
American cheese is the story of American immigration and culture, and vice versa. As the Germans, Swiss, and Scandinavians settled in Wisconsin, they made cheeses that were familiar to them, setting the table and tone for many cheeses in the US. Wisconsin is still the number one cheese-producing state in America and a proud dairy state, as its license plates—“America’s Dairyland”—proclaim. People still enjoy driving around to pick up fresh cheese curds, called squeakers, from various dairy farms there.
Vermont was the first state to produce sheep’s milk cheese in America, though Vermont was at the forefront of cheddar-making in the early days of the country. Since then, artisan cheesemakers have adopted that state—cow, sheep, and goat. It’s a huge part of their culture.
On the West Coast, cheese came up by way of the Spaniards through Mexico. A Monterey landowner named David Jack—apparently not a great guy—got the idea to sell the traditional mission cheese being made by his Mexican workers. People up in San Francisco would say, “I want that Monterey Jack’s cheese,” which is how it got its name. In 1980, dairy farmer Ellen Straus founded the Marin Agriculture Land Trust (MALT)—a non-profit which preserves open space for grazing, helping to support creameries in the North Bay.
How does cheese culture in America compare to Europe and other places?
In Europe—France specifically—cheese is meant to be eaten every day. It’s just what you do. There’s a seasonal cheese called Vacherin Mont d’Or that comes out at Christmas. You can get it in France for eight to ten euros. Here it’s $40 because those kinds of cheeses are considered special. We’re still trying to figure out how they fit into our everyday life in a way that’s a no-brainer in France.
I don’t know if we will ever, in America, think of cheese as its own thing versus something in a casserole, or on a pizza. We still primarily eat cheese as an ingredient. That’s just our culture. People love cheese in America—go on TikTok or Instagram and search ‘cheese’ and you’ll find a bazillion posts. But whether they’re willing to pay for artisan cheeses and thereby support those producers—that’s a high bar. People still think the best cheeses come from Europe. It’s a slow slog, but there’s a lot more awareness of American cheese now than there ever was.
Do you have a favorite cheese?
I don’t have a favorite cheese. I have moods. Sometimes I just want to dig into a creamy cheese, and there’s no stopping me. But I’ve always said Comté is my desert island cheese—it just keeps revealing itself and is fun to pair. Aged Gruyère is the same—just so stupid good, so many layers of flavor and complexity. A little goes a long way, and I’m fine with that.
What do you reach for when you make a girl dinner at home?
My pairings are pared down—usually just cheese and wine, and maybe a cracker for a palate cleanser. Cheese and wine are both agricultural products—what the cheese tastes like today, or what the vintage of that wine tastes like today, may be different six months or a year from now, so it’s interesting to get the same cheese and wine several months later and see if or how they’ve changed. I’ll cut off little pieces of four to six different cheeses, one wine or maybe two, and just taste and enjoy.
Maybe I’ll make a little dessert—dark chocolate with a triple crème, or a goat cheese with dark chocolate. That’s a combination I love. And if you want to trick it out a little more, use condiments you already have in your fridge: sweet jams and chutney, and spicy harissa and chili crunch. All of them have a place with cheese. Dairy is a good counter to spice, by the way. That’s why you want to drink a glass of milk, not water, if you’ve had something too spicy. Water just swishes it around. Milk will actually help you out.
My go-to cracker is from Rustic Bakery—the olive oil and sea salt flatbread. It’s got its own flavor, but it doesn’t get in the way. For really creamy cheeses, sometimes I’ll just have them on a spoon. No cracker interference. But sometimes the cracker breaks up the richness, so I need that too.
What are your tips for serving and storing cheese to keep it at its best?
Soft and creamy cheeses want their own utensil, and so does blue cheese—you don’t want all your cheeses to taste like blue cheese, which they will if you’re using the same knife. Same with washed-rind cheeses: anything really strong, aromatic, sticky, give it its own knife. When you get into the semi-hard category—Havarti to Gruyère—you can use the same knife. It’s not going to cross-contaminate.
For wrappings, the best way is to use wax paper or parchment first, then plastic wrap on the outside. You don’t want plastic wrap directly on the cheese’s surface because it will impart a plastic-y flavor. For Brie, the paper it came wrapped in is often the best thing to rewrap it in. Otherwise, a snap-lid plastic container works fine: just put it in there unwrapped, let it breathe every so often by lifting the lid. But Brie is pretty perishable, so you want to get to it fairly quickly.
And always—always—bring your cheese to room temperature before eating it. You will not get the full flavor from a cold cheese. Anything that’s too cold, you’re not going to taste it. Don’t bring out more cheese than you’re going to eat in one serving, either. If you keep bringing a cheese up to temperature, refrigerating it, then bringing it back up to temperature again, it will lose its character.
You joined CANOPY recently. What brought you here, and what have you found?
I chose the Pacific Heights location because it’s close to home, so I just walk here. It’s a focused, intimate environment—I’m talking to you right now from a soundproof phone booth. The ‘not being home’ is, for me, a positive aspect. I’m in the middle of a tranche of deadlines, so I’ve really just been going to work, which is what I want and need.
I love that I’m not in my workout clothes every day like I was. I also love that snacks are brought in, and I appreciate the office services—if the printer breaks, it’s not my problem! I love Ian, the community manager there. Even if I talk to no one all day—although I usually do—you still get a sense of community that I really enjoy, unlike working at home alone. I’m inherently a social person; I’ve always known that, but I didn’t realize it was necessary to exercise that in the course of my workday. I’m learning that being around inspiring people is definitely a fringe benefit of CANOPY.
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Follow Laura Werlin on Instagram @cheezelady and at laurawerlin.com.