Knight's Vail Cheese: Marion St. Cheese Market, Oak Park

Knight's Vail Cheese: Marion St. Cheese Market, Oak Park

Stopped by Marion St. Cheese Market and challenged Eric Larson to find me the strongest cheese in his cabinet. He came back with Knight’s Vail, which is an eye-opening fromage from Wisconsin that begins life as a cow’s milk butterkase, gets some special yeast treatment, and ends up a semi-soft tongue-tickler that could take the places of both camembert and Roquefort on your cheese platter – it’s that rich, salty, and funky, with mushroom and crustacean notes and enough life to make just a tablespoon or two of the stuff quite satisfying for, say, breakfast (which is how I just enjoyed it).

Made by Roth Kase of Monroe (where I have an emotional attachment, having done some jail time there in the sixties) Knight’s Vail is a Midwestern treasure.

I like cheese, and cannot bring myself to eat anything other than good stuff: if I’m going to make the caloric commitment, I want something fine. Marion St. Cheese Market comes through for me, and I like the idea of buying from a small cheesemonger. In The Cheese Plate, a bible for cheese fiends like me, McCalman and Gibbons mention two main “sources” for cheese in Illinois (!): one is Con Vito; the other is the Whole Foods in next door River Forest. WF does have a wide selection of cheese, but what I don’t like is that much of it is pre-cut. Marion St. cuts each piece to order, so it’s not sitting out for days, drying and growing stuff on the surface (which can be cut off, of course, but when you’re paying 12-20 bucks a pound for cheese, why should you have to discard any?). The guys on Marion St. also take their cheese out on a daily basis and rewrap it, ensuring that it gets a little air and that gunk doesn’t grow inside the wrapping.

Some believe that cheese and wine are good for you during flu season because these are “living foods,” and they foster the good bacteria in your gut, enhancing overall health, life energy, chi, etc. I am moving ahead based on this assumption, doing my small part to fight the impending bird flu pandemic by eating cheese.

Marion St. Cheese Market
101 N. Marion Street
Oak Park
708-848-2088

In The Cheese Plate, a bible for cheese fiends like me, McCalman and Gibbons mention two main “sources” for cheese in Illinois (!): one is Con Vito; the other is the Whole Foods in next door River Forest.

Max put together the book at a time when there was no Cheese Stands Alone or Pastorale or F&O...and he's not particularly well known for his meticulous research, more for his meticulous palate and unbridled opinions.

Sounds like a great cheese to try. Rothkase really knows their way around cheesemaking. What was the color of the rind, the texture of the rind, and the relative 'stickiness' of it?

Queijo wrote:Sounds like a great cheese to try. Rothkase really knows their way around cheesemaking. What was the color of the rind, the texture of the rind, and the relative 'stickiness' of it?

The color of the rind is yellow with orange bursts; the texture is softer than I would have thought (I usually eat a little of the rind, and it was actually quite mild compared to the cheese itself, with little crunchy crystals in it); it was fairly sticky (meaning, if you cut a piece the size of a dime, say, and then pressed your finger into it, you would raise the cheese off the counter through the suction force of stickness).

Hammond

Hammond,
Thanks for the post, I haven't ventured nearabouts Oak Park in a while and now there's even more reason to.

I only recently made my way to Pastoral after sampling their ware months ago at the Kendall event. I do like their selection and attention to the cheeses and the service is excellent. I'll definitely go there more often, possibly even more if I can find parking.

Pastoral Artisan Cheese Bread
2945 N Broadway St
Chicago, IL 60657
(773) 472-4781

sazerac,

I found out about Pastoral earlier this year when Hal McGee (<-- shameless namedropping alert) and I stopped by to check it out. We sampled some fine stuff from Uplands/Pleasant Ridge Reserve. McGee was very interested in the kind of cows that produced the milk and the kind of grass the cows ate; Ma and Pa Gingrich were there, and Ma gave him a detailed description of the lineage of the cows and the two main grass types upon which they ruminate...all of which led to me to understand that there is a lot I need to learn about cheese.

Hammond

Interesting you mention the Pleasant Ridge Reserve. In my notes from the event at Kendall, it was amongst the best (although by the time I did taste it, my palate was significantly fatigued) and I picked some up. It is good, but nowhere as good as my notes say it should be. I'm not sure if this is because my notes are flawed, or the variation in the wheels of cheese. I mention this because Pastoral seems to take great pride in keeping great quality cheese.
At the earlier Pastoral tasting they had (the same) cheeses (I forget which) that were products of Summer versus Winter milking - one was ivory colored and the other yellow, but we only got to taste one (I was unsuccessful in coercing them into opening the other).

As an aspiring chemist and foodie, your pal Hal is personal hero.
For the next time I'm at Pastoral, I'd appreciate parking tips in that neighborhood.

sazerac wrote:For the next time I'm at Pastoral, I'd appreciate parking tips in that neighborhood.

I have little wisdom to offer; we lucked out on street parking. Some stores offer free parking if you do some shopping there.

Hammond

Wow, I'm really surprised to hear such positive reaction to Knight's Vail. The last time I had this it reminded me of nothing so much as Velveeta. A little more nuttiness, sure, but I didn't even find it quite as interesting as Rothkase's Gruyere-style Swiss. It sounds like I ought to give it another shot, but I'll be curious how much variation you find in this particular cheese, especially in aging.

It is good, but nowhere as good as my notes say it should be. I'm not sure if this is because my notes are flawed, or the variation in the wheels of cheese. I mention this because Pastoral seems to take great pride in keeping great quality cheese.

As you noted later in your post, there is distinct seasonality in cheese -- this is both the best and worst thing about artisanal cheese - it can be inconsistent from month to month, season to season. Any student of Parmigiano-Reggiano can tell you which month they prefer (I'm a summer fan -- all about those nice mountain pastures). The same is true of Wisconsin. Summer milk benefits from grass grazing. Winter is silage or feed. The flavor of winter milk is usually more savory (a bit more umami) whereas summer can have herbal notes. I'm not quite recalling how much age Mike puts on it before he ships it out.

Additional aging can have impact the cheese, too. My former colleague used to age ours for several months after we received it - we liked how much more the flavor developed in our cave.

Some artisan cheesemakers (like Vermont Shepherd) have neighboring farms produce their cheese to a specific recipe, and finish aging the cheese in VS' own caves. The results can also be inconsistent, and it is not uncommon to receive a superlative lot followed by a good, but not great one.

To me there is greatness in inconsistency - within reason. As pointed out above, cheese is a living, evolving food, and changes according to temperature, time, humidity, season, milk, cheesemaker, and handling. I like knowing that there are always new discoveries to be made with a new season for a cheese. I like having a wheel of early fall Aspenhurst and trying that against one from the spring. I forgive the cheesemaker any inconsistency, because if they were totally consistent, well, they would be more like the industrialized cheeses we are still allowed to import from France.

Juniper Grove (Oregon) makes a cheese called the Tumalo Tomme. When Pierre first produced it, it was a semi-soft goat's milk cheese with a washed rind made in the style of the French Trappists. It was a beautiful cheese, sang with nutty, herbal notes, was soft, chewy, stinky, and raw. A few months after we had developed a following for it, we received a batch that was completely different. The rind was hard - a typical brushed rind. The paste was semi-firm. The cheese, though still raw, was nothing like its original incarnation. The cheesemaker gave us no notice that he had changed the aging process, and we were caught off-guard. Our sales went down because customers were disappointed in the new product. That's not the kind of inconsistency I value.

Six years later, however, Tumalo Tomme is still brushed rind. Few remember the original version, which now I can only recall with a twisted sort of nostalgia. The "new" version is a good cheese, don't get me wrong. But the old version was nothing short of a celebration of great cheesemaking.[/quote]

Aaron Deacon wrote:Wow, I'm really surprised to hear such positive reaction to Knight's Vail. The last time I had this it reminded me of nothing so much as Velveeta. A little more nuttiness, sure, but I didn't even find it quite as interesting as Rothkase's Gruyere-style Swiss. It sounds like I ought to give it another shot, but I'll be curious how much variation you find in this particular cheese, especially in aging.

I just had the cheese again for dinner -- I started and ended my day with it -- and it is like Velveeta only in the sense that it's soft, but I'll tell you, if you open the package, within nanoseconds the smell is across the room. Oh yeah, baby, that's what I'm talking about...this is some stinky cheese.

However, now that you mention it, I believe I may have tried some of this cheese around June and it didn't make much of an impression upon me...so, YMMV.

Aaron, on a side note, I am concerned that as of late, your perceptions do not precisely coincide with mine.

Hammond

I was at Binny's on Grand Avenue tonight, and I noticed an uncut wheel of Knight's Vail in the cheese case. After a number of other samples (mostly French and Spanish along the Pyrenees) I asked the cheesemonger there, and my former cheese mentor, Paul Cline for a Knight's Vail sample.

To be sure, there was a lot more funk than I remembered...a wonderful melange of flavors indeed. Paul confirmed that this cheese in particular was subject to great variability by age of the wheel.

Still, the texture was Velveeta. I think I might really like this melted on some toast for breakfast...hmmm, I'll have to give that a shot. Or think of other ways to mask the texture...maybe I'll melt it with a can of Ro-tel.

I brought home some Tomme de Fedou which was a very nice tomme, raw sheep's milk from southern France. It was excellent...not overpowering, but with a definite raw milk, tangy finish. A hint of sweetness, a hint of nuttiness near the rind. I liked it a lot.

Aaron Deacon wrote:To be sure, there was a lot more funk than I remembered...a wonderful melange of flavors indeed. Paul confirmed that this cheese in particular was subject to great variability by age of the wheel. Still, the texture was Velveeta. I think I might really like this melted on some toast for breakfast...hmmm, I'll have to give that a shot.

Actually, I made some toasted Knight's Vail on tortilla chips the other night. The heat definitely enhanced the funkiness...but it sure doesn't melt like Velvetta. Actually, as I recall, it pretty much retained its shape. It just got smellier and tastier.

Hammond