Culture Magazine

Rockweed C E N T E R F O L D No one was more stunned than Allison Lakin when her cheese, Rockweed, won Best of Class at the 2022 World Championship Cheese Contest (WCCC) in March. Lakin operates a one-woman creamery, Lakin's Gorges Cheese, on the saltwater farm she owns with her husband in Waldoboro, Maine. She introduced Rockweed in 2019, "but not seriously," she says. "When I first started making it, I enjoyed eating it, but I had a lot of trouble talking about it." Lakin tried 14 different styles of seaweed before ending up with the layer of locally sourced dried bladderwrack that runs through the center of Rockweed, which gives the creamy cow's milk cheese a subtle briny flavor. The idea came from the relocation of her creamery from Rockport, Maine, to the circa 1774 farm, where the land extends to the tidal Medomak River. "I wanted to create a cheese that had a taste of place— not just of this farm, but of Maine," she says. She had done well with the cheese at New England competitions, but entering them was expensive, and since she was only making 40 wheels of Rockweed at a time, to send six to Wisconsin for WCCC gave her pause. But then she thought, "I've refined this cheese enough and learned how to talk about it. I decided that the cheese was better than I was giving it credit for." Since the win, Lakin has increased her production to 200-400 wheels a week and still runs out before she fills all of her orders. "Along with that, sales of all my cheeses are up, she says." By the end of this summer, she'll be able to hire her first full-time employee, and Lakin's Gorges will be a 100-percent farmstead creamery. "What I have been embracing is that this shows you don't have to have a whole huge operation and a whole lot of money to produce a good cheese. You have to have an understanding of your cheese, and patience." c w r i t t e n by S U S A N S H E R R I L L A XE L RO D p h oto g r a p h e d by M A L LO RY S C Y PH E R S "Edible seaweeds have been so much in mainstream discussions lately that people are more amenable to them."

• Cover