Press

Organic Farming at Monteillet Fromagerie Gets National Attention

By Michael Harris
Published: Wednesday, August 24, 2011


Monteillet Fromagerie is no ordinary cheese shop. Just ask Food & Wine Magazine, NPR, Travel + Leisure, BudgetTravel and all sorts of local publications. Why are they getting so much attention? Not only is their Fresh Herbed Chevre and their La Reine Blanch and Le Roi Noir (just to name a few of their specialty farmstead, artisan cheeses) to die for, but their use of sustainable practices in organic farming makes them really stand out above the crowd.

Pierre-Louis and Joan Monteillet are the proud owners and operators of this operation just outside of Walla Walla, Washington. They take care of 50 French Alpine goats and 50 Friesian and Lacaune sheep on 32 acres of lush land. They believe in using sustainable practices in organic farming of the animals they raise and produce they grow here, because it makes for better food and a healthy lifestyle.

There is way too much great stuff to tell you about this remarkable operation, so visit their website and read all about them. From their tasting room and farm stay to Nourish Gardens and workshops and Farm-to-Table events, it’s all here. Plus find them at local farmers markets all over the area.

From the blog post on Local.FarmersMarket.com

A Drive Through Southeast Washington’s Wine Country

These days, it’s not the wine causing all the buzz in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley. It’s the new crop of creative, farm-fresh food.

By Beth Collins
Published: May 2011

You’d think that a guy like actor Kyle MacLachlan would be a superstar in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley. He grew up in the area, a blossoming wine-producing region in the remote Blue Mountain foothills, and in 2005 he started his own small line of Cabernet here. MacLachlan is such a big Walla Walla booster, in fact, that he recently donated the 34-foot Airstream trailer he used on the set of Twin Peaks to a local fromagerie so that twentysomething food-industry interns would have a decent place to live cheaply while they learned a new skill.

And yet if you spend much time in Walla Walla, you’ll find that MacLachlan is a minor attraction compared with Pierre-Louis and Joan Monteillet. Never heard of them? Perhaps that’s because they devote their days to crafting artisanal cheeses. That’s the funny thing about Walla Walla: In this valley (a four-hour drive east of Portland on I-84, followed by a stretch through lovely quiet byways), the real celebrities aren’t who you’d expect, not even the vintners.

Read the entire article here>>

Slow Down and Taste the Cheese

by Northwest Backroads
Posted on September 18, 2010 at 8:30 PM
Updated Friday, Sep 17 at 10:36 AM

Sorry, this video is no longer available online.

Visit a cheesemaking couple in Southeast Washington and taste the good life that they’re savoring. You can join Joan and Pierre Louis Monteillet on their farm and learn to slow down and taste the cheese. They’ll teach you how to make it too, just like they taught Grant to make perfect Mozzarella!

Sorry, this video is no longer available.
See the video on Northwest Backroads/Seattle King 5 website>>

Washington State Wines: In Walla Walla with Kyle MacLachlan

On TV, Kyle MacLachlan battles desperate housewives. In real life, he has joined forces with one of Washington state’s top wine talents to make Cabernet.

By Joel Stein
Published: April 2010

Actors are usually good at being guests, not hosts, but Kyle MacLachlan could be a cruise director. As he leads me and a caravan of friends and family around Walla Walla, Washington, for two days—before having us over to a dinner party he’s hosting at a local bar—his energy doesn’t flag once. He maintains a hyper-vigilance over all our needs: When he’s not pointing out sights, he’s calling ahead to make sure things are set up for us. I don’t think my parents asked this often if I had to go to the bathroom.

I discover MacLachlan’s hosting talent soon after I get off the morning flight to Walla Walla, the heart of Washington-state winemaking; he comes here to work on his Cabernet blend, Pursued by Bear. MacLachlan—who must follow plane arrival times pretty closely—calls my cell, worrying that I need coffee. So I walk a few blocks and find the smiling, perfect-haired actor at the Walla Walla Roastery. He introduces me to the Russian Orthodox owner and insists I try the baklava from the local nunnery. I’m amused that the guy who played the coffee-obsessed FBI agent on Twin Peaks knows a coffee-bar owner so well. This is before I realize that MacLachlan knows everyone in this town well.

But maybe it’s not hard to know everyone when there aren’t many people around. Walla Walla itself isn’t very big, and the surrounding area seems like an endless expanse of wheat fields. Yet scattered amid those wheat fields are vineyards producing great Cabernets and Syrahs—neither as pumped up as many California reds nor as funky as some French ones. And thanks to the wine industry, the restaurants, wine-tasting rooms and hotels have started to open up, so that Walla Walla is lately looking like a mellow version of Healdsburg in Sonoma County.

…The next day, MacLachlan and I meet up with his dad, Kent, a stout, sunglassed, blunt old golfer who is both obviously proud of his son and unlikely to let him get away with anything. We head off to meet Dunham at a farmstead cheese producer, Monteillet Fromagerie. It’s the home of Pierre-Louis Monteillet and his wife, Joan, who gave up 15 years of wheat farming to start making great cheese a few years ago. MacLachlan donated an old 34-foot Airstream trailer he’d used on sets to the farm, and now several interns sleep there. As the interns drink Dunham’s wine, we sit on the steps of their sauna house over the river and eat ice cream: an idyllic scene.

Read the entire article in Food & Wine magazine here>>

Spring Lambing Is Nearly Chaos In Northwest Farm Country

By Anna King
Published: Northwest News Network | April 07, 2010 11 p.m. | Updated: July 17, 2012 1:08 a.m. | Dayton, WA

Farm life can look serene from afar. Shows like the old stand-by ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ portray a slower pace — nothing like the hectic city grind full of traffic, nagging email and never-ending Tweets.

But this time of year, life on many farms is at its most frenetic. Anna King traveled to a sheep and goat cheese farm in Dayton, Washington. She has this snapshot of rural life during lambing season.

To an outsider, life at the Monteillet Fromagerie looks crazy. Just a short visit to the artisan cheese farm sends my head spinning.

In a small cheese tasting room winemakers are trying to pair their libations with cheese for an upcoming promotion. A pro photographer wanders around in colorful muck boots snapping shots. And guests from China have dropped in for a tour.

Then there’re about 300 hungry sheep and goats to deal with. And there’s cheese to be made.

Read the article and listen to the Anna King’s interview with Joan and Pierre-Louis here>>

Top 10 Food Travel Activities for the Summer

By Alison J. Stein
Published by About.com Culinary Travel

While it’s great to buy artisanal cheese at a farm market or specialty shop, there’s something very special about visiting the farm, seeing the animals that are milked — and then, of course, tasting the cheese that results.

Monteillet Fromagerie is ideally set up for this sort of an excursion, with many gregarious goats lined up to greet you and a cozy tasting bar awaiting within. The fromagerie is in Dayton, Washington in the Walla Walla Valley — a particularly beautiful part of the country has been long known for producing sweet onions, now reknown for excellent wine, and a perfect location for Monteillet’s goat and sheep cheeses. The animals are a thrill for kids of all ages, but don’t mistake this for a petting zoo — their cheese is of the highest quality. A must try: Le Roi, a petit chevre dusted in grapeleaf ash.

Monteillet also offers occasional cheesemaking workshops.

Read this article on About.com>>

Good cheer, cheese reign at Monteillet Fromagerie

By Sara Perry, sara@saraperry.com
Special to The Oregonian
Published October 25, 2008

Joan and Pierre-Louis Monteillet by Pete Perry, Special to The Oregonian[/caption]

It was a trip we couldn’t pass up. Those sunny, late September days meant the chance for one last journey on the back of my husband Pete’s BMW 1100-GS motorcycle before the autumn rains.

Pierre-Louis Monteillet, a familiar face at the Portland Farmers Market, and his wife, Joan, produce artisan cheeses at Monteillet Fromagerie, their sustainable farmstead in Dayton, Wash.

We knew exactly where we wanted to go. First, we would travel to Dayton, Wash., home of Monteillet Fromagerie, and then on to Joseph, a remote yet vibrant small town in the northeastern part of Oregon that is near Wallowa Lake, Hells Canyon and the Eagle Cap Wilderness. Over the next several weeks, I’ll share with you some of the interesting people and places we discovered along the way.

As lovely as the cheeses are, it is equally enjoyable listening to Pierre-Louis describe his sustainable farmstead and the life he shares with his wife, Joan, and the interns who work alongside the couple learning the fine skill of cheesemaking. After returning home from the market early in the summer, I looked up his facility’s Web site and knew I wanted to visit the place.

From his Web site (monteilletcheese.com), I learned that along with the spotless cheesemaking building, quaint tasting room and menagerie of free-range chickens, goats, sheep, pigs and the six white Great Pyrenees dogs that guard and live alongside the dairy flocks, there is lodging on the 30-acre farmstead. It’s a three-bedroom house with a fully equipped kitchen, including fresh milk and farmstead eggs (sign me up!). You’re invited to help with the dairy chores or try a little fly-fishing on the Touchet (pronounced two-she) River that runs along the property. When we were there, a honeymoon couple was enjoying the privacy of the house, so we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast in nearby Walla Walla.

This time of year, the ride from Walla Walla to the fromagerie is a breathtaking trip through the golden foothills of the Blue Mountains. Cattle dot the harvested wheat fields and farmhouses tucked into shaded canyons as well as linger in plain sight along the curving highway. It’s a lovely drive.

You might pass by the farmstead if you don’t follow the Web site’s simple directions and keep your eye out for the metal goat-and-antler sculpture sign. It leads to a small bridge with a smaller goat sign that points the way down the gravel road to the fromagerie.

I was introduced to the Monteillet Fromagerie at the Saturday Portland Farmers Market. That’s where I met cheesemaker Pierre-Louis Monteillet and had the chance, week after week, to taste a variety of his fresh, hand-ladled goat- and sheep-milk cheeses. Monteillet is a friendly, generous man who is eager to share his knowledge and his cheeses. For someone new to the world of artisanal chevres (goat) and brebis (sheep) cheeses, his lessons are delectable. (Trust me, you won’t be able to resist the subtle, nutty flavor of his Larzac, a soft-ripened goat cheese that’s divided in half by a line of grape leaf ash.)

You’ll undoubtedly be welcomed, as we were, by the ebb and flow of bleating young Alpine goats peering through the pasture fence and the tail-wagging trot of Marti, the farmstead’s resident border collie. Everyone is happy here, even the hardworking humans.

We arrived Friday, during a lull in the daily routine of milking and cheesemaking. Every morning at 5 and again at 5 in the afternoon, there is the necessary milking. Next comes the pasteurizing and/or the ladling of the curds and the other cheesemaking chores that make for 20-hour days. Luckily, Joan read our minds and suggested a short tour of the facility followed by a cheese sampling. To accompany it, she chose a chilled bottle of local L’Ecole’s Seven Hills Vineyard Estate Luminesce.

We made ourselves comfortable in the tiny, grape-arbor patio. This could easily be in the French countryside. Pierre-Louis suggested beginning with the fresh chevre made within 48 hours of milking, which Joan thinks is ideal on salads or used in pasta. It’s terrific on its own, too. Next, she had us sample the fresh herbed chevre made with a bouquet of herbs grown at the farm. (It would taste great as a spread on a sandwich or as an appetizer with crackers.)

We tried several others, including a soft-ripened chevre, dusted in grape leaf ash and crowned with gold dust. Named Le Roi Noir, it honors their friend, LeRoy Cunningham, who co-owns and operates the popular WhoopemUp Hollow Cafe in nearby Waitsburg (another tasty destination worth the trip; www.whoopemuphollowcafe.com). Could life be any better than this?

The moment was over far too quickly. It was time for Pierre-Louis to pack up his truck and begin the 270-plus-mile drive to Portland to prepare for an early rising on Saturday for another Portland Farmers Market.
Read the entire article from The Oregonian here>>
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A few nice spots where tourists can be tasters

By Jackie Smith
Special to The Seattle Times
Published October 8, 2009

WALLA WALLA — We were told that the cutout metal goat above the mailbox, just beyond the winery, was the key to finding our destination. Sometimes directions are like that in Eastern Washington.

Sure enough, traveling Highway 12 between Waitsburg and Dayton, we passed Dumas Winery and soon spotted the goat. From there a short, winding gravel road led us to Monteillet Fromagerie.

On an informal “taste of Washington” tour that we began last spring, our Saturday afternoon stop on this 32-acre farm along the Touchet River was not only tasty — we sampled an aged Sauveterre and a fresh herbed Chevre — but interesting. We lingered and visited for more than an hour with the assistant cheese maker from Seattle, an apprentice from Napa Valley and Joan Monteillet, who along with her husband, Pierre-Louis, runs the cheese business.

In 2002, after 20 years of wheat farming, the couple made a midlife career switch; now raising some 40 goats and 40 sheep, producing milk that is turned into some 10 varieties of cheese sold at the farm and at several farmers markets in Oregon and Washington. A patio outside the production facility/tasting room is the perfect spot to watch the flocks while sampling cheese and wine ($10/cheese plate or $15/cheese plate with wine).

Read the entire article here>>