There’s Cheese Served at 36,000 Feet That Comes From Self-milking Cows — and You Can Find It on This Airline
It’s been voted the best cheese in the world, and is served on a World’s Best Award-winning airline.
Courtesy of Singapore Airlines
It’s a Friday afternoon, and I’m standing next to four Singapore Airlines chefs marveling at an AI-powered cow-milking machine in Central Point, Oregon. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.
I had been invited to join the chefs on an immersion trip to Singapore Airlines’ newest culinary partner, Rogue Creamery, to get an inside look at the production of its award-winning cheese. The Rogue River Blue, named the best cheese in the world at the 2019/2020 World Cheese Awards, has been served on Singapore Airlines flights departing from the U.S. as part of the company’s farm-to-plane initiative since April 2022. And I’m the first journalist to see the cheese-making process in action.
“It’s very, very simple — it’s beautiful food grown locally, as close to the airplane as possible,” Singapore Airlines’ global food and beverage director Antony McNeil tells me about the program over breakfast. “It’s a reduction in our carbon footprint, reducing food miles and leading the customer experience to be holistic.”
McNeil stumbled across Rogue Creamery on Instagram some three or four years ago and immediately suspected the company might be the right fit for the farm-to-plane program. The independent organic cheese maker is entering its 90th year of operation, the last 20 of which have been under the supervision of president and owner David Gremmels, who was responsible for developing Rogue River Blue. Rogue Creamery is not only built on sustainable practices — it was Oregon’s first certified B Corp — but also innovation.
“In America, we’re not grounded by tradition, so we can be really experimental in creating recipes,” Gremmels says. “And so I created Rogue River Blue as a true expression of this valley.”
H. Sterling Cross/Courtesy of Singapore Airlines
Everything that goes into the cheese is particular to the region. The milk, of course,…
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