Mystic Cheese Co : Milled Curds & Connecticut Terroir w/ Brian Civitello
Cutting the Curd
Head cheesemaker Brian Civitello discusses the 13-year evolution of Mystic Cheese Co, from its origins in a shipping container to its curren
Key takeaways
- Brian Civitello launched Mystic Cheese Co using a modular shipping container factory.
- The use of Ayrshire cows at Kingswood Farm provides unique milk with small fat globules that stay largely homogenized.
Main topics
- Milled curd cheesemaking techniques
- Ayrshire milk properties and Connecticut terroir
Notable quotes
I think the cheese industry, the cheese career is really fascinating because there's so much you can learn.
Conclusion
A deep dive into how specific livestock breeds and traditional Europea
Transcript preview
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It can be tough to find marketing agencies that truly care. If you ever need a second set of eyes on something or you're looking to grow online or in-store, give Pearson and the team at Lunar a shout. Reach out for a free audit of your digital marketing at lunarsolargroup.com. Speaker 1 (1:10) You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. Speaker 5 (1:28) Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cutting Curd on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm your host, Cara Warren. And on today's episode, we have Brian Civitello, head cheesemaker of Mystic Cheese in Groton, Connecticut. He is on the program to help us learn more about milled curd cheesemaking and the story of Mystic Cheese, a creamery that was started 13 years ago. Brian, welcome to the show. Speaker 4 (1:49) Thank you for having me. Speaker 5 (1:51) Excellent. So literally, you were also on the show. about 13 years ago. How Speaker 4 (1:58) great Speaker 5 (1:58) is it to be back? And how's Connecticut going? Speaker 4 (2:03) I feel like it's been 13 years. It's good to touch base again with Cutting the Curd. I've been an avid listener for the last 13 years. I don't think I've missed an episode yet. So I'm excited to be back. Connecticut's going really well. Go ahead. Sorry. Speaker 5 (2:20) No, no. It's funny because I... I have not spent enough time in Connecticut, so I'm hoping in this episode that we like kind of uncover a little bit of history, a little bit more about the terroir. But I think we first should break down a little bit like who Speaker 2 (2:38) you are. What Speaker 5 (2:40) do you do for Mystic Cheese? Yeah, let's go with that first. Speaker 4 (2:44) Yeah. So I started Mystic Cheese 13 years ago. So it's been a minute that we've been doing this. Prior to that, I had a career doing cheese consulting. So I was helping people build facilities, develop recipes for their creamery, selling goods along the way. I was sort of doing that for about three and a half years. I was getting really tired of being on the road all the time. And I had this bright idea to turn a shipping container into a modular cheese factory, for better or for worse. And so I kind of built this shipping container and launched Mystic Cheese out of that. Prior to the consulting business, I had, I guess, a cheese career doing production cheese work for Calabro Cheese. So really big pasta falada maker here in Connecticut, making about 60 to 70,000 pounds of cheese a day. And then I was out at Rogue Creamery in Oregon for quite a few years before that. Speaker 5 (3:57) Wow. I mean, that's a really extensive cheese background. And you were cheese making, you were doing quality assurance. It sounds like you were doing everything in the plant. Is that right? I Speaker 4 (4:08) think so. Yeah. I think, you know. So I'm one of those kind of people, I like to learn everything about a specific topic as much as I can. And I think the cheese industry, the cheese career is really fascinating because there's so much you can learn, you know, from the cow side of thing or the farm side of thing, you know, to production, affinage, quality control, sales, marketing, cheese mongering. I have not gone there yet. I don't know if I'm qualified to do that. I think I'm a horrible cheesemonger. I don't think I should ever do that part. Speaker 5 (4:45) I think you can cut it. It sounds like you might have the chops. Speaker 4 (4:48) We'll Speaker 5 (4:48) give you a holiday session one time at a counter somewhere. I'll connect you to someone. We'll make it work out. Well, that's Speaker 2 (4:57) crazy. Speaker 5 (4:58) And so you, I mean, so when I listened back to the previous episode, listeners, there's an older episode with Brian, if you can find it. You also mentioned that you had a grandfather that was a cheesemaker as well. So did you start learning cheese from him before all the technical, more formal stuff? Speaker 4 (5:19) Yeah. So I grew up on a farm, like a 50-acre farm down here in southeastern Connecticut. And my grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and he moved over here with his family. But they were farmers. And like most of the Italian-American community, they really huddled into the cities, which makes sense. I mean, you're with people who speak your own language. It was a little bit, probably a little bit scary at the time to kind of venture out, maybe try to find land of your own. But, you know, he had his eye on the prize and he got a job with the railroad going up and down the coastline. And, you know, one day I just went off and I ventured out, way out into eastern Connecticut. from New Haven and he found a piece of property and put some money down on it and then slowly paid the property off and cleared the land and made this beautiful farm for himself. And then, you know, he, he was always raising livestock. We had like a 25 acre vineyard. We were making wine. He was making wine, I guess, started the vineyard and. let's see, in the late 40s, mid 40s, late 40s. So yeah, I kind of had this unique upbringing and cheese was part of that. So we had some dairy animals and he taught me a little bit about cheese making, a little bit more about touch and feel. I don't think he ever knew much about the technical side of things. And that's okay. Like you don't have to, to make really good cheese. I think it's... I think it's one of those things like if you want to explore the technical and embrace that and let that be part of your process, you can, but you don't have to. You could still make really amazing cheese in a very rustic fashion. And I think that's one of the cool things about cheese making. So, yeah, I learned a bunch from him. And then I left the farm. Like most teenagers, I wasn't really interested in doing much of what the family did at a certain point in your life. I'm sure you've been. or had similar experiences when you were growing up. Speaker 5 (7:22) Oh, Speaker 2 (7:22) yeah. Speaker 5 (7:22) No, no. My family was in the film business. I'm totally in a different avenue now, although the radio is adjacent. Speaker 4 (7:29) Yeah, so I had a random hobby. I was sort of into music production and DJing, and I sort of had it take off. I moved up to Boston, left the family farm. And I was up in Boston for two years and started a record label. And then I just wanted to get out of that business. I didn't want to do it anymore. I was looking to get back into the farm, do something with agriculture. So I was talking to my grandfather, who's encouraging me to move to Italy and just try cheese making there, try to make a go at it, see if I could talk to people, take some technical courses, things like that. Because I think back at this point, the artisan cheese scene hadn't really started exploding yet. I mean, there was Wisconsin. There's always been Wisconsin for us here. But the idea of making a career out of that seemed impossible to me. And being in Wisconsin also sort of seemed impossible to me. Not because I don't think it's a great place. It's just not. I'm an East Coaster kind of a guy. It's just this is where I'm from. So, yeah, I ended up overseas for quite a while. Got a whole bunch of jobs over there. Did some alpine dairying and then worked in some big industrial places like Parmigiano-Reggiano, Taleggio. Did some work in Gorgonzola. And then also spent about a year of my life doing shepherding and making sheep milk cheeses in Abruzzo with