Northshore Magazine

ne Food The kinks will be worked out. But a little spilled milk seems an appropriate part of the process for Mignogna, whose wild hair and salt-and-pepper moustache and soul patch give him the air of an artist whose medium happens to be mozzarella. Trained by his grandfather as a boy to make cheese in Italy, he speaks of the stuff in grandiose terms, often for several uninterrupted minutes at a time. "We need to transmit our energy, our love, our passion for this beautiful piece of cheese, into the milk," he says, "so we only have the softest, juiciest, and most magnificent piece of cheese." After it's pasteurized, the milk is pumped into vats where cultures and coagulants are added to create the cheese curd. Mignogna then stretches the cheese by hand before cutting it off into balls. "The way that we're going to make the cheese is going to be the old, traditional way," he says. "We're going to have the ability to offer fresh mozzarella for dinner that was still in the cow in the morning." After leaving Italy, Mignogna worked for a time in the restaurant business in California. He came to the North Shore Curd Kudos Stretching cheese is an age-old method. Above, the new shop gets under way. Top, Business partner Leonardo Tummolo is at home in the new location. 26 nshoremag.com January/February 2014 KJ JanFeb14 Cheese.indd 26 in 2008, working as a cheese buyer for Whole Foods and eventually producing his own cheese—under the label "Wolf Meadow Farm"—working out of a small space in Topsfield. He outgrew the space in 2012 and set out in search of a new home for the business. The move took longer than expected and forced him to miss an entire season of farmers' markets—a cornerstone of sales and marketing for an artisanal operation like his—but he says it was worth it. Before, he was processing around 200 gallons of milk each week. With the Amesbury facility, he'll be able to go through up to 600 gallons a week—enough to make around 550 pounds of mozzarella, a production level he hopes to hit in the spring. The shop also sells other Italian cheeses like ricotta and primo sale, a type of farmer's cheese. "Hopefully, I don't have any left over," he says, laughing. It seems to be going well so far. Around 500 people came through Wolf Meadow Farm's grand opening in October, and another 150 showed up for a private party the same night. The "farm" is actually 1,500 square feet of space in an industrial building on High Street in Amesbury (Mignogna gets his milk from Artichoke Dairy in West Newbury). But wine barrels and wooden pallets give the shop a country feel, and visitors can watch Mignogna work his magic in the back. "We have big windows, so every time you come to the store you can see me making the cheese inside," Mignogna says. "We believe in sharing our passion and love for the mozzarella." wolfmeadowfarm.com photographs by fawn deviney 11/22/13 1:41 PM

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