WILLI Arrives!

It's new, it's breathtaking, I CAN'T WAIT!

To break it open, that is. The anticipation is killing me! WILLI is a traditional ALPINE style of cheese, made under the collaborative efforts of Bob Wills (Cedar Grove Cheese Company), Willi Lehner (Bleu Mont Dairy), Bill Anderson (Creme de la Coulee Artisan Cheese Company), Chris Roelli (Roelli Cheese).

Willi is an Alpine-style, natural-rinded cheese crafted in small batches. This cave-aged beauty is cured a minimum of 5 months, creating a robust, earthy cheese. Willi would make a perfect addition to any cheeseboard.

Willi made its debut at the 2013 American Cheese Society Competition where it took 2nd place in its category for American Made/International Style cheeses. 

Coffee & Cheese?! But, of course, dahling!

Eric Nyman and Jeff Kohnke joined us on a Saturday morning to partake of a coffee and cheese pairing. A number of satisfied 'tasters' went away with a new appreciation of the changes food can bring to a beverage. We have now paired cheese with wine, beer, tea and coffee. We have been serving the Geneva Lakes Coffee beans on our menu since early this year. We serve coffee in the French Press from Bodum.  Pairing cheese with coffee is not so difficult when the roasters provide you with flavor notes. For example, crisp acidity or citrus notes may often equate to a sauvignon blanc - read "pair with goat cheeses or creamy cheeses with fruity finishes."
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe - paired with Cyprus Grove Chevre Purple Haze. Light and a bit acidic, this would make a great accompanying beverage to a bagel slathered with the wonderful soft, herbal goat cheese.
Next, Costa Rica Fruta de Oro - aroma of cocoa, flavor notes of cinnamon and caramel, mild acidity and full-bodied smoothness. A great breakfast bean, full, flavorful and delicious with the nuttiness of Pleasant Ridge Reserve!
And, finally, Guatemala Huehuetenango - described as having bright notes of blueberry and apricot, with a finish of chocolate. This bean is all about dessert, so how about a little mouthful of Raspberry or Espresso Bellevitano. 

Thanks so much to Eric and Jeff! They've already said they'd come back and give us another go, so look for another pairing in 2nd quarter, with totally different cheeses!

Laura

 Brick Street Market does really have the best holiday cheese collection in Walworth County! I am thrilled to be able to present some of our favorites for your holiday gift presentations.
We have Carr Valley's Menage, Cocoa Cardona, 4 year cheddar block, and Apple Smoked Cheddar. Or perhaps a Sartori selection - bold asiago, crunchy Sarvechio, and any number of Bellevitano flavors! Marieke goudas from foenegreek, to black mustard seed, to smoked. Blaser's Antonella's in several savory flavors. Roth Kase and Sugarbrook with Gruyere, Butterkase, Buttermilk Blue Affine and holiday spreads, too!

Not to mention our European Collection - Bucherolle - a delicate and lovely soft ripened goat cheese with white fuzzy external mold. Beautiful served with a heated apricot compote and your favorite Champagne or buttery Chardonnay. If you're in the mood for international, we can 'fly' you from Italy to France to Spain and back! Need something unique but small - Pave Sauvage is a goat chevre from France that is rolled in Tarragon and 3 peppercorns: Place on a few sprigs of juniper or evergreen for a unique intimate plated presentation. Need something more outlandish - try a Langres - the beautiful squiggly ripened cheese  with the final  of pouring champagne into the well of the cheese.

Got all your cheeses selected and purchased? Perhaps, you just need a between course palate cleanser for the big meal? I have just the thing for you. We recently received a Fromage Blanc made by Vermont Butter and Cheese Company. We made up their recipe for a light and refreshing dip, and I have been using it in store with sliced broccoli chips and florets as an appetizer. Stop in for a tub and a recipe card.

Some thoughts on a staged Carr Valley Christmas dinner pairing:
I recommend serving the Menage as an aperitif with a light bubbly. You can serve the Cocoa Cardona after the salad with a buttery Chardonnay. After soup, I'd serve the 4 year Cheddar, I'd be looking for a great merlot, full of black and red summer fruit to complement the saltiness of the aging cheddar and amplify its sweetness. After your entree course, I recommend finishing with the Apple Smoked Cheddar and a sherry like Duet, classically deep amber colored with hazelnut overtones. The fortified wine is a perfect foil for the heavier cheddar, and it's overlying sweetness enhances the fruitwood smokiness.
Enjoy!

A great bean for a french press!

Checked out the Stone Creek Coffee Roasters yesterday at the Grand Avenue Mall skywalk. They are a Milwaukee coffee roaster we've been following for a couple of years now. I am considering using their beans in the in-store coffee we offer. Thanks to Kate for a nice tour of the 'factory', where they roast the beans. I use the word 'factory' very loosely, as the space they use for the nerve center of their operations is in a building much like our store (dating from the 1880's) and with lots of exposed walls and floors. It's very much a hands on organization, and we were welcomed at the 'new' store' and later at the factory by owner Eric Resch, who seemed somewhat surprised we would travel from Delavan for the Grand Opening. But, timing is everything, and I had been following their mission and decided it was a good fit for us. I will be sampling a couple different beans in the next week, so come on in and ask for a FREE cup of Stone Creek Coffee with any lunch order, fill out a comment card and receive a 15% coupon on your next Brick Street Market purchase.

This week's special wine & cheese feature!

WI Cheese meets French Wine

Okay, I understand all about the 'terroir' thing - a cheese of a certain origin being matched with a great libation from the same region. But, sometimes, a great friend can live in a completely different place from you. We found that this past week when we sampled Holland Farms Smoked Gouda with a wine from France called Corbieres Col de Vent ( french for neck of wind). This particular wine is a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan grapes. The Carignan grape varietal was the feature of this month's Saveur magazine Special Feature, in a review by David Rosengarten. It comes to us from the south of France, just 60 miles north of the Spanish border in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.



I find it most helpful to smell the wine first. This helps me to identify some of the components before I coat the inside of my mouth with either cheese or a myriad of elements of the wine. The wine by itself is blueberry and raspberry fruit-y from the beginning, and is a medium easy drinking red wine with just hints of spiciness and black pepper. I found the wine to almost have a watery finish - but when paired with the smoked gouda, the spiciness and black pepper enhance and lengthen the effect of the natural smoke flavor!

A number of our customers were pleasantly surprised with the pairing, and took home this bottle of wine with a small piece of the beautiful cheese. Congratulations to Holland Farms Marieke & Rolf and to the Castlemaure folks for a delightful pairing!

Corbieres Col des Vent - $12.00 - 10% off all week at Brick Street Market!

Holiday gifts and new cheese - y arrivals!

November flew by, and it looks like December is going to do the same! Holiday traffic is really picking up in the store! People are looking for unique gift offerings! Here's a lovely idea for your holiday host or hostess with the mostess! A lovely Brick Street Market cheese board - a beautiful hand-crafted board adorned by just the right amount of our three most popular Wisconsin cheeses - Marieke Gouda, Carr Valley's Menage, and Roth Kase's Buttermilk Blue Affine, sliced thin or in crumbles, and ready to "nosh" on short notice. We can include a nice set of cheese tools, planer or cheese grip, too!

A little bit on some new products we received Thanksgiving week. I love all the cheeses from my old 'gal' pals in the Cheese Society! A couple we have in the store - Mary Keehn and Cypress Grove's Midnight moon - Michelle likes to say this cheese is somewhere between a great gouda and a great cheddar! Doesn't matter, customers seem to love it both ways!

Judy Schad's Old Kentucky Tomme - a simple, bloomy rind cheese - perfect and oh so yummy! A paste of white with a completely edible rind of gray-white - oh come on - if you love goat cheese, and I know there are some out there, you have to come get this one.

Come in and check out our selection of goat cheeses - here for now but not for long!

Vino Et Veritas!

That's Latin for "In WIne There is Truth!"

Far be it from us to reiterate what doctors around the country have stated about the health benefits of wine. And, my partners and I were all together again as the wine arrived in the store. We all wanted to be present in the moment it seems, when our cheese met another of it's natural partners - wine!

We are big blue cheese lovers - we just can't seem to have enough in the store. Currently we have six - and we made time to sample our new wines with our blues! A real hit was the Valdeon Blue Cheese paired with Don Pedro Ximenes, a lovely Spanish Sherry that helps that lovely Spanish Blue become a dessert course that will really finish a meal quite nicely.

Another wine that met with rave reviews was the Ruby Throated Cabernet Sauvignon from Clos La Chance. This full bodied red wine with slightly spicy notes was just the counterpoint I was looking for for our earthier blues like Bayley Hazen Blue Cheese from Jasper Hill in Greensboro, VT. Your grilled steak or burgers were never so good!

We have a lovely collection of wines sure to complement your fine cheeses.

Blues in residence at Brick Street Market: Bayley Hazen Blue, VT; Buttermilk Blue, WI; Cashel Blue, Ireland; Creamy Gorgonzola, WI; King's Island Roaring 40's Blue, Australia;Point Reyes Blue, CA.

New breads at Brick Street Market

My sister-partner, Shelly, and I participated in the Zingtrain business seminar over a year ago now, and one of the things we kept hearing there was how if you put something out in the universe by stating it out loud, you'd be surprised how quickly it would come to be. Okay, label me amazed.


One of our customers has come forward with wonderful European style baguettes and smaller loaves of bread which he bakes and delivers twice a week. They taste wonderful, smell great being warmed in our store, and will be a wonderful addition to our new Lunch Flight menu. So, I'd like to say "Welcome" to Shawn and Rae Rediske, Waterhouse Foods, of Lake Mills, WI. They are producing a number of traditional artisan baguettes and loaves, as well as a line of specialties with flavors like herb and onion, olive, sundried tomato, sourdough, hearty wheat, multigrain, and a lovely little breakfast or dessert bread called a cherry and pecan.

We are offering breads for sale and sampling starting this week, and will have these breads available in our Lunch menu beginning mid-September.

Come in and try one of our new breads topped by a fantastic WI artisan cheese. What could be better!

Laura