Who I am:

wine and cheese. cheese and wine. i can’t imagine anything better, so i’ve ditched my corporate job in new york city (parents: i promise to get another one!) so i can rumble through a cheese cellar in rural vermont and a vineyard in tuscany, italy, and finally learn how to make my two favorite things. sounds awesome right? i think so too.

Where will I go?

the foodie in me gets happy feelings in my stomach whenever i hear words such as artisanal, farmstead, or biodynamic. so, in my search for finding the perfect places to find my education, i listened to my stomach and went with that. 

1) cheese. there is something about being around the green, grassy hills of vermont during the month of august that i simply can’t resist. maybe it has to do something with all the skinny dipping in the lakes, but i was lucky enough to realize that one of my favorite boutique cheese producers, jasper hill, indeed lives not only around green, grassy hills, but also near a lake! jasper hill is known for pumping out some of the most recognizable and coveted cheeses today. from their famous constant bliss to bayley hazen blue, their artisanal and farmstead cheeses can be found in cheese stores and amazing restaurants across the country. i’m also a big fan of their pampered cows, who get to eat a fresh patch of pasture after every milking and even get to listen to jazz and classical music - producing healthy, happy cows that give some of the cleanest and sweetest milk in the state of vermont. viva la fromage!

2) wine. i went to a wine tasting in the city back in february that blew my mind. the wines were biodynamic (don’t know what that means? neither did i) from an old estate near lucca, italy, called tenuta di valgiano. a cool, funky italian woman starts telling stories about putting cow horns in the ground to nurture the soil and how she looks to the moon and stars to determine when she does what with the vines. she then plays a dvd showing a bunch of farmer hipsters laughing and stomping on grapes in their underwear. this, plus drinking some of the most magical wine ever, and i was hooked. i immediately asked the woman how i could be a sparkly, hipster farmer myself and she said that she accepts interns for the harvest season. done! from italy, i’ll jump around to france and spain to see what the wine mojo is like over there.

1. -katarina maloney
   

  katarinajack@gmail.com