Cheeseheads, unite! Tasty celebration returns to Pike Place Market

Describe the most memorable cheese you've ever encountered.

Creamy? Cowy? Nutty? Perhaps it smothered a pizza, married twists of pasta together or simply lingered on your tongue, whispering (or yelling) its life story to your taste buds.

The best cheese, some French shepherds say, leaves you with this sense that you want to come back, said Mother Noëlla Marcellino, a Benedictine nun from Bethlehem, Conn., and a luminary of the cheese world who is scheduled to speak at this weekend's third annual Seattle Cheese Festival. "It's so beautiful that you want to go back to it, and I think that's happening with people who taste fine cheese in this country," Mother Noëlla said.

Festival founder and DeLaurenti Specialty Food & Wine owner Pat McCarthy certainly hopes the thousands who will pack Pike Place Market's cobblestone streets leave with a similar feeling after sampling more than 250 cheeses from around the state and globe.

"It's kind of like coffee. Once you've had really good coffee, you never go back to Folgers," he said. "Macaroni and cheese is never the same once you've had it with a good gruyère."

Producers from as near as Ballard and as far as Italy will slice and dice their offerings Saturday and Sunday. Experts in all manner of cheesiness, from microbiologists (Mother Noëlla, whose popularity McCarthy compares to Spock attending a Star Trek convention) to cheese mongers to cheese makers (including fifth-generation cheese maker Giovanni Guffanti, of Italy, a "rock star" of the industry), will talk shop Friday through Sunday.

Local producers in the lineup include Jumpin' Good Goat Dairy; River Valley Cheese; newbies like Mt. Townsend Creamery; Estrella Family Creamery; and the old-timer, Washington State University Creamery, home of the ever-popular Cougar Gold since the 1930s.

Signs abound that the Northwest's place in the cheese world, while nascent, is ripening.

Northwest cheese makers placed in more than a dozen categories at the latest American Cheese Society conference, including a first in aged goat's milk cheeses for Estrella and a first in aged raw goat's milk feta for Fraga Farm, of Sweet Home, Ore. Groceries feature local cheeses in their expanding cheese cases. Some colleges have even formed cheese clubs, including Portland's Lewis & Clark.

Beyond the Internet and farmers markets, the festival offers smaller cheese makers the chance to reach a large audience quickly. Many farms are too small to spare a body from twice-daily milkings and ongoing cheesemaking to do much marketing.

"We sold a lot of cheese and gave out more samples than we knew we could," said Will O'Donnell, co-owner of Mt. Townsend Creamery, of Port Townsend, which attended its first festival last year. "We just made so many great connections with chefs, restaurant owners, food buyers, cheesemongers."

This year's festival will kick off with a truckle race, importing a tradition from England. Competitors will roll 18-pound, barrel-shape cheeses with cheesemaking spatulas from the Pike Place Market pig to Beecher's Handmade Cheese. More than three dozen restaurants throughout the area will offer special "Cheese Fest Best" plates, including Le Pichet, Crave and Volterra, and several chefs are offering cooking classes in their kitchens in honor of the event.

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com