Say "cheese": Tami Parr's blog and book helped put NW dairy products on the gourmet map

Five years ago Tami Parr was working unhappily as an attorney in Portland. She found the job "painful and annoying." She had always thought of herself as a writer, and itched for a creative outlet. It was 2004; the blogosphere was booming. A blog would be the perfect thing.

But about what?

Somewhat randomly, she decided on a blog about artisan cheese in the Northwest.

"I have family in Wisconsin," says Parr, although that really explains nothing.

She had always loved cheese, and so she plunged in, creating the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, which chronicles almost everything to do with handcrafted cheeses in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and British Columbia. For a while, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, it was a blog about nothing. One of the first posts bemoans the lack of cheese shops in the Northwest:

"I hate to say this, but I believe it's true — there are no stand-alone cheese stores in the Pacific Northwest outside of British Columbia!"

Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, July 2004

Parr had chosen an auspicious time to begin. Around the U.S. the locavore movement was gaining steam; all of a sudden everyone knew what a carbon footprint was. Sometimes it seemed that, almost overnight, there was a farmer's market in every empty parking lot in the country, a development that allowed small farmers to deal directly with consumers rather than bleeding their profits off to distributors and bricks-and-mortar retailers.

In Washington over the past five years, the number of small dairies has almost doubled. But it wasn't just the new business model that was enabling cheesemakers in the Northwest to succeed. It was the quality of the cheese. Superstars began to emerge.

In Montesano, Wash., the fledgling Estrella Family Creamery was garnering national and international notice for its dazzling array of raw-milk cheeses. In Southern Oregon, the new owners of the Rogue Creamery were turning heads with their astonishing blue cheeses. And in Pike Place Market, the 2003 opening of Beecher's Handmade Cheese — part cheesemaking operation, part cheese shop, and a magnet for passers-by with its mesmerizing window on the curd vat — put artisan cheese center stage in Seattle's busiest tourist destination.

The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project gradually got its feet under it. When Parr realized that "this isn't really going anywhere until I talk to cheesemakers," Parr refined the focus of the blog, and was soon chronicling the birth of one new creamery after another. In addition there were the mouthwatering tasting notes:

"Welcome to Rivers Edge Chevre, Oregon's newest cheesemaker! Pat Morford of Three Ring Farm in Logsden, Oregon (near Newport) began making cheese in August of this year. ... This is a beautiful, smelly cheese with a remarkably rich, buttery texture ... "

Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, Nov. 2005

After several years of explosive growth, it dawned on Parr that she had the makings of a book. "Vermont and Wisconsin have guidebooks to their cheese," she says, "and ours is every bit as good."

Parr's indispensable mini-encyclopedia of the region's handcrafted cheeses — "Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest" (Countryman Press) — arrived on shelves earlier this year. It's a great starting point for a road trip: the book profiles 71 cheesemakers (31 in Washington) and also includes maps, a glossary, notes on where to buy cheese throughout the region, recipes and pairing suggestions and ideas for cheese courses.

At last month's World Cheese Awards, the Estrella Family Creamery added another gold medal to its growing list of awards and honors, while Rivers Edge Chevre picked up two silvers. At this year's American Cheese Society (ACS) competition, for the first time ever, a Northwest cheese won Best in Show. Rogue River Blue from the Rogue Creamery, a cheese that could almost make you cry, took top honors over more than 1,300 other entries. Awards also went to Beecher's, to the Chehalis-area Black Sheep Creamery in Adna (back in business and going strong after being hit hard by the '07 floods) for its feta, to the Estrella Family Creamery and to several new and established Oregon cheesemakers.

Next year, the ACS will hold its annual conference and competition — the Cheese Oscars — in Seattle. Benaroya Hall will roll out its red carpet for the American Kings and Queens of Cheese.

The beat goes on. Since the book went to press, there are a number of new cheesemakers in the region; you can track them all on Parr's blog. In Port Townsend alone there are three new microdairies, with another waiting in the wings to be licensed.

That raises the question of whether Northwest cheesemaking, which appears, perhaps surprisingly, to be driven by a sense of community rather than one of competition, can continue to support more newcomers.

"I do worry whether there will be a glut," says Parr. "But in the end quality is going to be rewarded."

Cheesemakers starting today benefit from the experience of those who went before them. Not that long ago, there was no template, no way to do it except to build everything from scratch. Even then Washington had an advantage over many other states; WSU (home of Cougar Gold, the world's best cheese in a can) was always a rich source of cheesemaking information. Many of the area's current cheesemakers are graduates of its intensive short courses.

On the artisan side of things, another shining example lit the way for many cheesemakers who wondered if what they wanted to do could even really be done. That was Sally Jackson, working since the late 1970s to produce what remain some of the area's finest cheeses. One of Tami Parr's pet peeves is the oft-propagated notion (see Wikipedia) that California's Laura Chenel all but invented goat cheese in America in 1979.

"Sally started in 1979," says Parr. "She doesn't get credit."

In one sense, what's happening now across the region all began on the weather-beaten Jackson farm in Oroville in Eastern Washington.

"We are producing cheeses that are nationally and internationally competitive," says Parr. "Amazing, amazing cheeses."