"Anne Saxelby, champion of artisan dairy farmers, died on October 9th, aged 40.
EUROPEAN VISITORS to America, that land of infinite variety, have often been struck by strange instances of sameness. Why, for example, are all pencils yellow, with a pink eraser at the end? Why do so many local newspapers have the same antique masthead? And why, until 2003, were all dollar notes the same size and colour, whatever the denomination?
Few things have surprised them more, almost into the present century, than the sameness of cheese. From sea to shining sea, America has traditionally offered six. Industrial milky mozzarella, as on pizza; blue cheese, usually as sauce in a plastic bottle; Swiss, a block of pale, thin, rubbery slices, tasting of nothing; Monterey Jack, a pale attempt at Cheddar; inoffensive cream cheese; and then, in orange glory, processed cheese, liquid or semi-solid, to melt onto burgers or to drown nachos in.
Anne Saxelby was brought up, in Chicago, with all that schlock. Kraft singles were the default in her house, and "fancy cheese" was white American, sliced to order, from the supermarket deli. But she became so fascinated by the possibilities of cheese in America that in 2006 she opened, in Essex Market on New York's Lower East Side, a tiny stall that sold cheese made only on farms in America's north-east. It was the first anywhere, and within a few years, even as supermarkets gradually upped their game, she was the most famous cheesemonger in town. By 2020 hundreds of restaurants had regular orders and close to 50 farms, half of them less than two decades old, supplied her. She was not only educating New Yorkers, but helping to save her farming friends, their herds, and a whole sustainable way of life in the green hills of New England.
With no domestic-cheese culture to build on, she doubted anyone would come to her shoe-box in Essex Market. But she offered plenty of samples ("Taste as much as you can!") and welcoming, encouraging smiles. Thus customers were introduced to Jasper Hill Calderwood, a hay-ripened raw cow's-milk cheese, and Harbison, a petite bloomy-rind number wrapped in spruce bark; Spring Brook Tarentaise, a sharp, firm Alpine cheese, and Vermont Shepherd Verano, an aged sheep's cheese, nutty and slightly sweet. They might be led at last to Twig Farm Old Goat, well-aged and rare, and to boldly try even cheese they were sure they wouldn't like, such as the stinkiest washed-rind kind. Eagerly, but slowly, she would turn their taste buds round.
She also calmed more general fears. Cheese did not make you fat; 75% of its calories might come from fat, but it was the good sort. (And if it made you fat, how was she so trim, when she ate at least four ounces a day?) The runaway gooeyness of soft cheese wasn't bad or wrong, but a sign of ever-increasing deliciousness. Slather it on a crust, and see! You could eat cheese with mould--just cut it off--and it would still be fine even if you forgot it for a day or so in the bottom of a backpack, as she had in the days when she used to tote 25lb of it every Saturday to the stall with her business partner, Benoit Breal, wobbling on their bikes across the city.
Cheese was alive, in a good way. Rather than going off, it wonderfully ripened. And contrary to the beliefs of most Americans, the raw-milk cheese that filled her stall was not dangerous. As long as the animals were healthy and the cheesemaking sanitary, raw milk offered only benefits: a better taste, with the full grassy savour of the terroir, and easier digestion, since all those gut-assisting microbes were no longer killed off by overheating.
Her own education in cheese had taken a while. The first epiphany came on a trip to Florence in her 20s when, as she nibbled on Pecorino and blissed out over Gorgonzola, she asked herself why she couldn't get these things at the grocery store back home. A few months on a farm in the Loire showed her how tightly European cheese was regulated, subsidised, tied to place and embraced by consumers, the work of centuries.
But American cheesemakers had one big advantage: freedom. They could make their own cheese, give it a quirky name, and bring it to market with the help of advocates like her. They could create their own traditions. Woodcock Farm's Timberdoodle was pure cow's milk in winter, part-sheep's in the summer. What European would ever do that?
In order to learn more about cheese, through which she now viewed the world, she travelled all over the north-east. Her suppliers were her teachers, and on visits to them she would ask a million questions, as she had done on her first counter-stint at Murray's cheese store in Greenwich Village. She would begin by noting what the milking herds ate, besides fresh pasture: in the first cut of hay, rough grass and fibrous stalks; in the second cut, sweeter grass and flowers, all flavouring the cheese. Proudly she singled out the women farmers who were playing such a role in the modern revival, especially in goat cheese, as they had in the distant past. The whole virtuous cycle, from contented ruminants to healthier human beings and thriving rural communities, thrilled her with its neatness and rightness.
Covid-19 was a trial, with a milk glut and restaurants closed, but it did not dismay her. She switched largely to mail order from her Brooklyn warehouse, and as soon as possible was back at her new, bigger stall in Chelsea Market. With three small children, too, she seemed to have the energy of several women, and hoped to go on for years pioneering, gaining both depth and complexity like a good wheel of cheese. But she died of the heart condition she had never allowed to deflect her.
As a student in art school she had thought she might be a painter, but the world of galleries was cold and pretentious. Instead she felt like an artist when occasionally she made cheese herself, turning milk into curds, curds into a slippery fresh wheel, patiently attending to detail. She especially loved the Dutch Old Masters, and her holiday cheeseboard was another still life like theirs: five Vermont cheeses arranged by colour and texture among nuts and raisins, prosciutto and bright sliced apples. All those elements came together round the transcendent joy of cheese: a joy now gloriously various, from just one small corner of America." [1]
· · · 1. "Say cheese, America! Anne Saxelby." The Economist, 30 Oct. 2021, p. 90(US).
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