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Iowa-made blue cheese has cult following among gourmets Saturday, December 20, 2003
NEWTON, Iowa (AP) -- Sacre bleu! Cheese, that is.
Maytag blue cheese, a piquant blue-veined cheese aged in subterranean vaults or "caves" beneath this central Iowa city, has developed a cult following among gourmets.
Chef Emeril Lagasse, for example, lists at least 27 recipes calling specifically for Maytag Blue Cheese on his Web site. Among them are a Classic Cobb salad with half a pound of blue cheese, Maytag Blue Mac and Cheese and beef roulades with Maytag Blue Cheese and walnuts.
The Maytag name is no coincidence. The cheese was developed in 1941 by the grandsons of washing machine inventor Frederick Maytag.
Maytag's son, Elmer Henry Maytag, began working at his father's company in 1902 and eventually became president in 1926. But he also loved farming and was particularly keen on dairy cattle -- Holsteins, to be exact.
During the Depression, he owned as many as 30 farms and hundreds of acres and his dairy herds supplied Maytag factory workers and Newton residents with milk.
"E.H. didn't mind throwing some money at the place like a hobby," said Jim Stevens, president of Maytag Dairy Farms.
When he died in 1940, his sons Frederick L. "Fritz" Maytag II and Robert Maytag inherited 24 farms and the dairy herd. While their father saw the farms as a hobby, the sons determined the business should be self-sufficient.
They sought a product beyond the milk sales that could generate a profit for the farms. Scientists at Iowa State had been researching an American version of the world-famous Roquefort cheese, a product of sheep's milk.
The Maytags struck a deal to use the university's patented process, then "came home and designed the cheese plant and the caves," Stevens said.
The first batch was produced Oct. 11, 1941. Growth was stalled during World War II, but afterward there was a constant demand for increased production, said Stevens, who joined the company in 1945.
While the company has never aggressively marketed their blue cheese, its reputation has spread mostly by word of mouth.
"Maytag controlled its own dealers. They would bring all those dealers in. When they got tired of looking at washing machines they'd bring them out here and show them cows," Stevens said.
The dealers visiting the cheese factory were often given free samples.
"They would take the word back to all of these different parts of the country," said Myrna VerPloeg, a president-in-training who will take over when Stevens retires. "That was a good start. That just got the word out."
Cheese experts say the longevity of Maytag Blue -- the first cheese of its kind made in the United States -- and its name recognition has helped sell it.
"Chefs do often serve it and request it both for salads and for cooking and certainly for the cheese boards," said Robert Kaufelt, owner of Murray's Cheese Shop in New York's Greenwich Village.
Maytag easily outsells any of the other eight or nine varieties of American-made blue cheese, he said. The fact that demand leads him to keep it in stock among the 250 cheeses he sells is an accomplishment for the brand.
"There are literally thousands of cheeses we could sell," he said. "To be a regular everyday cheese, a staple, if you will is an accomplishment in itself since there are a lot of other things every day coming available to us."
Today, the cheese is still made on the Maytag farmstead, dominated by a massive white dairy barn. The milking stalls, still in place, are empty now. The company buys its milk from a cooperative of local farmers.
About 3,500 gallons of milk are delivered to the production building each day. The cheese -- about 10 pounds from each 100 pounds of milk -- is made in steel vats and then formed into 4-pound wheels.
The wheels then are taken to Maytag's "caves," adjacent to the production building, where the temperature is kept at 40 degrees and humidity is carefully controlled at 85-90 percent.
Needle holes punched into the cheese wheels allow Penicillium roqueforti mold to create the characteristic blue striations and pungent flavor. The cheese is aged for six months.
Once the cheese is ready, it is hand-wrapped in foil by women in hairnets and white aprons -- many of whom have worked for the Maytag family for decades -- and the Maytag insignia is added.
A four-pound wheel of blue cheese costs $42.85 directly from the plant. The company produces about 600 wheels a day -- about one million pounds of cheese a year, Stevens said.
And demand still is on the rise.
"There has been a real resurgence in people wanting to have the finer foods ..." VerPloeg said. "The cheese is still all handmade -- it is an artistry."
With annual gross sales of $5 million, the company remains small and is still owned by a dozen Maytag family members.
Kaufelt said the family connections also lend to the cheese's mystique.
"Most things that are involved with food that has a quality or perhaps a health image are often associated with a particular place, in this case, with a family," he said. "The name recognition makes it easier to sell, makes marketing of it easier."
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On the Net:
Emeril Lagasse: http://www.emerils.com/
Murray's Cheese Shop: http://www.murrayscheese.com
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