Thunder Oak Gouda Farms

Thunder Oak Gouda Farms Warren: Definitely one of our best cheeses usually one of Canada’s top cheeses, continually an award winner. This cheese is made in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It’s called the Thunder Oak Gouda farms there and it's the Chef family, Skepp family? Hugh: Schep family. Warren: The Schep family who moved to Canada and migrated from Holland in the 70’s and what makes the cheese so wonderful? Hugh: A lot of what makes this cheese so wonderful is that it's a really small production. It's fantastically artisanal. There’s only as much of it made as the cheese maker’s brother can milk from its cattle so that’s the other thing that makes this great. That it's one of the only Ontario, it’s called Fermier cheeses, farm house cheeses. They have all of their own cattle. They use all of their milk and that adds an enormous amount of flavor. Warren: What is milking the cows on the premises that you’re making the cheese affect the flavor of the cheese or as the texture? Hugh: A couple of reasons. One is that you never have to refrigerate the milk. You never have to ship the milk. You never have to do any of those things that are going to damage the flavors in it. The other reason is because you’re using only your own herd, you’re not using milk from the dairy’s pool. You’re getting all of the characteristic taste of your cattle, of the grass their eating, of the environment their in. So you pick up a huge amount of taste that would otherwise be lost and homogenized by being put through the dairy pool and had pasteurized in batches with everything else. Warren: What would you say to someone who felt that flavoring cheese was not okay? Hugh: Normally, we serve a fair amount of flavored cheese a little bit, usually if you’ve got a flavoring and a cheese, you’re better off to have them apart but Gouda is a rare exception. Gouda is really designed to be a flavored cheese. It's something that the Dutch have been doing for centuries as a way to really sell the spices that they were trading around the world. So it works very, very well with gouda and you just won’t get who’s the cheese maker now, It does perfectly. All of these flavors are very balanced. The cheese never overwhelmed the seasoning or vice versa as they usually do. Warren: Let’s talk about aged Goudas for a moment. That’s definitely one of my favorite kinds of cheeses. I think you’ll agree? Hugh: Each Gouda is one of the most delicious things you’re ever going to run into. When you get a couple of years on the Gouda, it picks up caramel and nut, all sorts of flavors, almost a scotch sometimes. This cheese is almost impossible to find the age because it makes about 10 wheels a day, is that? Warren: That’s right, ten wheels a day. Hugh: So, it's very small production. You can't really when you’re that small of a cheese maker afford to put aside these cheeses for that long. So usually, the oldest you can get this cheese is 6 or 8 months. But even then it's picked up caramel flavors that you normally don’t see in a gouda until they’re two years older than that and when you do get a rare piece of this that’s a year old, it's one of the best things you’ll ever have.