By a wide margin, guests in a recent class of mine voted the cheese pictured above as their favorite. It bested a luscious goat cheese from one of Italy’s acclaimed affineurs, a tasty farmhouse Cheddar from the UK, the pimiento-dusted Alisios from Spain and several others. Wow—such an impressive showing for a largely self-taught cheesemaker from rural Iowa. This extra-aged wheel had everything we look for in a Gouda given extended cellar time: seductive caramel scent, creamy texture and plenty of those crunchy bits. I had never heard of this under-the-radar producer or the cheese until a few days prior to the class.
Frisian Farms is a 15-year-old enterprise launched by two brothers. Jason and Mike Bandstra grew up on an Iowa dairy farm that the family sold while the brothers were still in high school. “I thought it was the best day of my life,” says Mike. “I didn’t have chores before school. I could sleep in on Saturday.”
He and Jason attended college and prepared for non-farm careers but both soon had a change of heart. “I really started missing the cows,” recalls Mike. “I couldn’t sit in a cubicle all day.”
The brothers decided to join forces and start another dairy farm, this time with a value-added product. The initial idea was flavored milk in glass bottles, but the short shelf life deterred them. Unsold milk has to be dumped; unsold cheese can be aged and it just gains value and flavor.
Gouda guru: Mike Bandstra of Frisian Farms
The Bandstra brothers have Dutch heritage—their great-grandfather was from the village of Sneek (prounounced “snake”) in Friesland—so Gouda was the obvious choice. A Dutch consultant taught them the basics and they debuted their first wheels in 2008. In 2015, they amicably split the business. Jason now owns the cows and sells milk to Mike. Mike owns the creamery and does the cheesemaking with his nephew. They make exclusively Gouda—most of it under a year old—and sell much of it at Iowa farmers markets, online and in their own shop.
A couple of years ago, distributor Brad Dubé of Food Matters Again heard that Mike was maturing a few wheels for up to 3 years. “I was calling it super-aged Gouda,” says Mike, “but Brad said that’s not going to sell. You’ve got to give it a name, like craft beers.”
Good advice, Brad. What cheese lover could pass up something named Sneek 1000-Day Gouda? I couldn’t.
All that patient babysitting yields a wheel that’s the cheese equivalent of candy, with a dense, firm, butterscotch-colored interior. The aroma hints at pineapple but the caramel is foremost. Let a piece sit on your tongue and note how it melts into velvety smoothness punctuated with crystals. The salt is elevated but not over the top; it reminds you that you’re eating cheese, not toffee. In my class, I served the Gouda with a 10-year Tawny Port from Quinta do Vallado, and if that wasn’t a perfect pairing, I’ve never met one.
The strong reception for Sneek Gouda has persuaded the creamery to set aside more wheels for extended aging, but production is still small—about 200 twenty-pound wheels this year. Most will go to Food Matters Again and be parceled out to independent retailers like Cheese Shop of Des Moines and Sonoma Cheese Factory, where I found it. A few will stay behind for the farm shop and mail-order sales. At $20 a pound, it’s a steal, even with shipping.
It looks like 1000-Day Gouda may be a Midwest thing. Marieke Gouda Reserve, from Wisconsin, is aged a minimum of 1000 days, and unlike the Sneek, it is a farmstead product from raw milk. How lucky we are to reap the benefits of this Dutch know-how.