Hannahbells cheeses finalists for Gallo award

The Gallo Family Gold Medal Awards has named the new Westport farmstead artisan cheeses known as Hannahbells as a finalist in their 2008 national contest for the best tasting, highest quality artisan cheese.

To be considered, cheeses must be made using traditional artisanal methods. The grand prize winner will be named later this spring in a ceremony and dinner featuring the winning cheese in New York City.

Hannahbells are made by Karl Santos, third generation dairy farmer, of the aptly-named Shy Brothers Farm. Each cheese is bite-sized and is reminiscent of an old-fashioned sewing thimble in shape and scale.

Mr. Santos has been producing the Hannahbells for sale for about a year, and they are featured in several Providence restaurants that cherish local ingredients. Nationally-known Providence cheese monger Matt Jennings of Farmstead featured Hannahbells at a recent national food show in Miami Beach.

Mr. Santos found the technique for the thimbles in the Burgundy region of France, where their boutons de coulottes, translated as "trouser buttons," are frequently made from goat's milk. The shy brothers worked with the recipe for many months to make the boutons creamy, using only the farm's fresh cow's milk.

Karl and his three brothers, two sets of twins, comprise the Shy Brothers, whom few outside the local farming community have ever met.

Most cheeses are formed in a day. Hannahbells take five days to form, letting the flavors evolve and layer as the curds knit. The cheeses are hand molded and turned and carefully aged another five days. Even though the cheeses are only ten days old when the aging process is stopped, they have the flavor complexity of much more mature cheeses.

After Shy Brothers Farm was formed and the Santos brothers and began making and marketing their cheese, they organized eight other dairy farm families around Westport and Bristol County to identify and confront barriers to entry for their transition to artisan cheesemaking.

All of these families are now in some stage of transitioning to making cheese from their dairy farms, in large part because the Santos brothers led the way and showed that exceptional cheeses could be made and marketed, to keep family dairy farms alive and prospering in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Text is from Gallo press release

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