Rosemary's Waltz
- Producer
- Silvery Moon Creamery
- Country
- United States
- Region
- Maine
- Size
- 13 in diameter x 2.5 in height (lg wheel)
- Weight
- 8 lbs (lg wheel); 2.5 lb (small wheel)
- Website
- www.silverymooncheese.com
- Milk
- Cow
- Treatment
- Pasteurised
- Classification
- Semi Soft
- Rennet
- Microbial
- Rind
- Herbed
- Style
- Fresh
- Flavor
- Flavor added to rind
Silvery Moon Creamery is located at Smiling Hill Farm near Portland, Maine, which has been in the Knight family since the 1700s. The Knight’s Holstein cows graze outdoors seven months per year, and in the winter they eat haylage from the farm’s pesticide-free pastures.
Silvery Moon Creamery was born in 2003 from a partnership between cheesemaker Jennifer Betancourt, who first learned the art of cheesemaking at the Squire Tarbox Inn on Westport Island, and later at Cornell University, and the Knight family. Today cheese production continues under the direction of Dorothee Grimm, who was born and raised in Germany and worked for years as a researcher in microbiology. After moving to Maine, Dorothee took cheesemaking classes from different local cheesemakers and made yogurt and cheese at home before applying for a position at Silvery Moon. “I still work in microbiology, pampering the good microbes and keeping the bad ones out,” Dorothee says. “But now, I can eat the results of my work at the end of the day.”
Rosemary’s Waltz is a fresh cheese garnished with rosemary and juniper berries.
To produce this cheese, the milk is first gently batch pasteurized – at a lower temperature for a longer period of time than in a continuous pasteurizer – in an effort to preserve the integrity of Smiling Hill Farm’s raw milk and to produce a more unique and flavorful cheese. Milk is then cultured and renneted, and the curd is cut and ladled into molds without further heating. After draining for 20-24 hours, Jennifer and her team unmold the cheeses and leave them on draining mats for another 20-24 hours. While on the draining mats, wheels are dry salted. The process is the same as in the production of Silvery Moon’s Queso de Verano, except that in this case wheels are rolled in chopped dried rosemary and garnished with juniper berries. Large wheels are cut into 16 wedges, then packaged and sold within two months. Small wheels are packaged whole and sold directly to restaurants and retail stores.
Tasting Notes
Lactic and curdy with a hint of rosemary on the nose, Rosemary’s Waltz is tangy and fresh-tasting, with an intense and lingering rosemary and juniper flavor in the paste.
Pairings
Pair it with a cranberry preserve. In cooking, crumble it over a salad or over a baked squash.
