Cheese Trekking: How Microbes, Landscapes, Livestock, and Human Cultures Shape Terroir
By Trevor Warmedahl
Chelsea Green Publishing
In a world addicted to ultraprocessed foods, virtual reality and AI, Cheese Trekking is the book we didn’t know we needed. Trevor Warmedahl grounds us and reminds us of the smell of sheep, the importance of grandmothers, the gift of milk and the sacred in the mundane.
Cheese Trekking brings us back to wise traditions. Warmedahl visits cheesemakers in far-flung corners of the world, including remote Italy, Albania, Georgia, Mongolia and Spain. In exchange for room and board, he works alongside the locals, learning their regional approach to the ancient art. He describes in vivid detail the dozens of cheeses he encounters—some robust with surprising textures and aromas, others mellow and tender and sweet. Pecorino Siciliano (a mozzarella-like cheese), Brunost (a famous “brown” cheese from Norway) and Tushuri guda (Georgia) are just a few examples.
He kicks off with an overview of basic cheesemaking ingredients—milk, culture, rennet, salt—but, as we soon discover, all cheesemaking really requires is milk and a container. Warmedahl laments the industrialization and homogenization of cheese. In our haste to monetize and modernize, especially in the U.S., we rely on packaged cultures, stainless steel facilities and contactless production practices. We have disconnected cheese from the complexities of regional flavors and from the people and traditions that brought it about. Terroir—shaped by the animals, grasses, time of year, where the cheese is stored and the hands that milk, bless and handle it—is what gives cheese its character and unique flavor profile.
Traditional practices yield robust cheese in all of its raw, beneficial microbial diversity. “A certain paradigm still tends to view microbes in milk as contaminants, and it is even upheld by many producers of raw drinking milk, who attempt to produce milk with the lowest possible bacteria counts. This view is misguided and dangerous. Milk and microbes are inseparable. Microbes are not just an integral part of milk but are also the basis for healthy, functioning bodies, soils, landscapes and planets. Life without microbes is the delusion of a sociopathic, distorted worldview. Contamination is another word for ‘life.’”
Warmedahl didn’t always see it this way. He once worked in a U.S. cheese factory that obeyed the usual purchased input and sanitation requirements, but upon observing traditional practices around the world, his paradigm began to shift. Iodine on teats? Discarding the initial milk because of perceived high bacterial count? Sterile milk buckets? None of the above are traditional cultural practices.
In Piedmont, Italy, Warmedahl observed the morning milking of sheep. When the old-school cheesemaker began, Warmedahl asked why he didn’t discard the initial burst of milk. The cheesemaker said, “That’s the starter!” and, pointing at the udder, proclaimed, “The culture of the cheese lives on the udder.” When Warmedahl incredulously asked, “You can trust that the microbes native to the milk will ferment it successfully into cheese?” the cheesemaker’s response was, “Of course. . . . How do you think people made cheese for hundreds of years before packaged starters were introduced?”
These snapshots are the soul of the book, which goes well beyond cheesemaking basics. Warmedahl’s explorations represent a step back in time to organic, pasture-raised, regenerative practices that predate such labels. The reader is swept up, alongside the trekker, on the journey of “unlearning” and remembering the old ways—that every bit of the animal is to be honored, that life in all its complexity can be embraced and even that “all parts of milk are sacred and should be revered.” Readers will find Warmedahl’s take on cheesemaking, terroir and life entertaining and educational. Thumbs up.
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