Yes, you read that right. Recent news articles from across the state have focused on local cheese, pork, and beer production:
• The cheese: The Greensboro News & Record has an article out explaining how a “State tour may become the big cheese for makers of fromage.” A sample:
Cheese lovers rejoice.
Just like wine lovers, you now can travel a statewide trail to sample new and favorite varieties made in North Carolina.
There even is a map online to help you chart your course to farms making farmstead and artisan cheeses from cow’s, goat’s or sheep’s milk.
About 40 small farmers make and sell cheese across the state, including 11 that make up the N.C. Cheese Trail, which formed in April.
• The pork: The Raleigh News & Observer offers up an informative four-part series on the pork industry. It begins:
The squealing piglets were born in late January at the Quinn Sow Farm, inside a row of white and silver barns at the end of a dirt and gravel lane about an hour southeast of Raleigh. The barns stand in an open field near the town of Faison in Duplin County, No. 2 in the nation for hogs.
Nearly eight months later, on a rainy night in September, a salesman walked into a restaurant and ordered a dish of sliced pork with steamed vegetables. Because he’s a regular, he knew the pork would be “sweet” and “delicious.”
His name was Yoshihiro Sugawara. The restaurant was part of a chain called Ootoya. The city? Tokyo.
Sugawara did not know all it took to deliver the thin slices of tender pork from a farm on this side of the planet all the way to his hashi – his chopsticks. It’s quite a story.
It starts with two brothers, Bob and Ted Ivey of Wayne County, whose breeding and feeding has built a special pig, one with premium cuts that have a bit more fat, a deeper color and a sweetness even machines can measure.
You can read the series here.
• The beer: From the Asheville Citizen-Times (from what other city in this state could this possible be from?) a longish article on craft-beer name selection. It begins:
What’s in a name? Plenty for area breweries and craft beers.
Breweries in North and South Carolina — and everywhere else — are constantly on the lookout for clever names for their products.
And it is getting more difficult, with 3,100 craft breweries across the country, more than three dozen in Western North Carolina and six in Upstate South Carolina.
Somewhat surprisingly, many of the region’s best known beer names are not trademarked because of cost and paperwork, though they must be registered at state and federal levels.
and goes on to explain:
A full trademark search can cost cost hundreds to several thousand dollars, depending on the work involved, Ward and Smith attorney Hayley Wells said.
But when breweries produce many beers each year, that task can be daunting. Highland Brewing turned out more than 75 beers this year, though most were small batch selections sold only at the brewery tasting room. Those names often come from the brewer, saidcompany vice president Leah Wong Ashburn said.
Asheville Brewing uses 40-60 beer names a year, Rangel said. “There are times we are all sitting around a table, throwing beer names up against a board,” he said. “Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s frustrating.”
Asheville Brewing has trademarks on some of its best known beers. But “the huge majority are not trademarked,” he said. “It’s a financial thing.”
Cheers!
