Cheese Trekking - by Trevor Warmedahl (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Exploring the intersection between traditional and modern, this is a no-holds-barred guide to natural cheesemaking, dairying, and pastoralism--and one man's global quest to make milk Sacred again.

In Cheese Trekking, nomadic cheesemaker, fermentation educator, and popular Substack writer Trevor Warmedahl recounts his experiences visiting pastoral communities and cheesemakers in overlooked border regions around the world, traveling on a shoestring budget with little more than a rucksack and sleeping bag. With every step, he explains how cheeses can be exquisite manifestations of locale and exposes the destructive methods and bland homogeneity of modern industrial production. In clear, propulsive language, Trevor describes a range of milk foods that utilize all byproducts of cheesemaking and are the lifeblood of the communities from which they spring.

There is a growing international movement to return to the roots of natural cheesemaking, at the core of which is a philosophy of working with--rather than against--microbes and nature; the sacredness of motherhood, milk, and life itself; and the ethics involved in dairying. Trevor's central premise is that milk has a terroir, born from the plants and ecology of a landscape, that is concentrated via ruminant digestion and lactation and develops through the barns and milk sheds--steered by human hands and cultural practices into foods.

Throughout Cheese Trekking, Trevor offers firsthand evidence that humans can be stewards of landscapes, shepherds of microbes, and keepers of genetic wealth in the form of heritage livestock breeds, while crafting delicious, safe, nutrient-dense milk foods. 

Review Quotes

"Trevor has penned what may be the most poetic, touching, and world-expanding treatise on fermentation and symbiosis to have ever been put to the page. This book will not just change how you think about cheese, and the humans, microbes, and animals that co-create it together, but also how you think about life. Anyone who cares about where their food comes from needs to read this book."
--David Zilber, chef and food scientist; coauthor of The Noma Guide to Fermentation

"Trevor Warmdahl is the Jack Kerouac of cheese, sharing his renegade passion for the unprocessed and unpasteurized as he treks around the dairy-sphere . . [T]his book brings us fully into his journey, his poetic musings, and his ongoing questions about the future of milk, microbes, and humanity itself. . . Inspiring, intrepid, exhilarating."
--Tenaya Darlington, author of Madame Fromage's Adventures in Cheese

"This book is an awakening, a journey to the heart of something, and a reminder that if you travel just a little bit further and hunger a little more deeply, you will find humanity out there on the fringes, where it has been all along."
--Mateo Kehler, Jasper Hill Farm

About the Author

Trevor Warmedahl has a well-established identity as a nomadic cheesemaker and is knowledgeable about grazing practices and milk fermentation globally. He's been a cheesemaker for the past decade working with companies of various sizes, but with a dedicated focus on farmstead operations and natural/raw milk. His interest is in what he describes as "endangered cheeses and milk fermentation practices of rural pastoral communities, the global diversity of these foods, and their ties to regional cultures and agricultural systems." Trevor won the 2022 Daphne Zepos Teaching Award for cheese professionals hoping to further their paths and bring home to North America valuable knowledge to benefit cheesemakers. His current project, The Sour Milk School, offers five-day natural cheesemaking workshops held on farms in the US and abroad.