Todd and Monica Brown have spent 25 years finding small producers for 109 Cheese & Wine, and most Mondays they go looking for more in their 1970 Lancia Flavia, a car that covered 33,000 miles from new, most of them in Rome. We went along for one of those drives, up to Churchtown Dairy outside Hudson, New York, where the cheese ages under a hill and a calf about half an hour old was waiting when we got there. Watch the film, which is a new format for Petrolicious, and read Todd's account of the day, as seen in Petrolicious Post 009.
Our weekend starts on Monday. Our shops are open all weekend, so while everyone else heads back to work, Monday has become our day for a different kind of restoration. Most often that means Monica and me in our 1970 Lancia Flavia, a paper map and no reason to take the fastest route. She traveled barely 300 miles in the decade before we became her caretakers. We've already eclipsed that in our first few weeks together.
For 25 years we've sought out small producers for 109 Cheese & Wine. WKNDDRVR, our automotive side of 109 in Kent, grew from our other passion: vintage cars and the roads that get us there. These Monday drives bring the two together. This Monday took us north from Kent to Churchtown Dairy near Hudson, New York.
Churchtown makes its own cheeses while also providing production and aging facilities for McGrath Cheese, the small artisan cheesemaking company run by Mel and Colin. We spent time with Mel in the creamery and aging caves, where milk, cultures, time, temperature and the hands of the cheesemaker still determine what ends up on your plate. For our picnic, we grabbed two very different cheeses made and aged right there. Peggy from Churchtown Dairy is a young, soft, bloomy-rind Camembert-style cheese made with organic cow's milk and aged in Churchtown's underground caves. As Peggy ripens, the paste directly beneath its white bloomy rind softens first, becoming increasingly creamy and supple toward the center. Rascal from McGrath Cheese is a three-month-old, semi-firm cow's milk cheese made similarly to Alpine-style cheeses. It's dense, savory and nutty, with a stony, earthy character from its natural rind. If you're buying a bloomy-rind cheese to eat that day, ask your cheesemonger what's ripe and ready. Don't automatically grab the firmest wheel. A little give can be exactly what you're looking for.
A couple of miles up the road is Klocke Estate, a small artisanal producer making brandy, eaux de vie and vermouth from estate-grown fruit and select local growers. Kristine took us through their earth-to-glass approach. Klocke uses regenerative farming in its vineyards and orchards, growing apple and grape varieties chosen for distillation and aging. Their brandies spend years in French oak inside a traditional chai, a cellar partially sunk into the earth, where stable temperatures and humidity allow time to do much of the work. There are faster ways to put something in a bottle. That's not what they're trying to do. While the brandies age, Klocke produces its vermouths. Kristine made us two simple vermouth spritzers where the vermouth wasn't the supporting actor, it was the point. Try it at home: find a good vermouth, pour it over ice and add some bubbles. Once opened, refrigerate it. Vermouth is wine, not a spirit, and it won't stay fresh forever.
By late afternoon, Peggy, Rascal, a baguette and a bottle of Cibonne Tentation Rosé were in the Flavia's trunk. Friends joined us for a sunset picnic, and everything we'd gathered ended up on the blanket. That's what we're looking for on Mondays: the people who still grow it, make it and care enough to do it the harder way.
