Beyond the Board

Cask & Cleaver Brings Global Cheeses to Local Tables…

Kaitlyn Rodney’s energy level spikes every National Cheese Day. Not just your average cheddar enthusiast, this Redding woman rides a wave of excitement formed four years ago when she and her mother opened Cask & Cleaver, a premier charcuterie shop, featuring serving boards decked with cured meats and fruits and, of course, a wide variety of cheeses. For Rodney, June 4 can’t come soon enough.

For that is when the world celebrates with her. “It’s a day where globally small cheese makers and large cheese makers are recognized. Everybody is celebrated for something that we all mutually love,” she says. “We carry that day more variety than we typically do, like never-before-seen cheeses, unless you go to a different country.”

Her mother, and former Cask & Cleaver co-owner, knows well her daughter’s energy level. “She makes me laugh,” muses Jennifer Berry. “Every day she’ll be like, ‘Mom, oh my gosh! I just got this new cheese, and you have to come and try it!’ She’s so knowledgeable about every cheese that she brings into the shop. She could probably take you to the farm and tell you what cow it came from.”

Her daughter laughs at that. Rodney claims she doesn’t know cheeses quite that specifically, but she can fine-detail production of one of her favorite cheddars. She will tell you about Alpine Blossom, which she buys from a small batch dairy in Austria. She classifies it a semi-hard cheese named for the way it’s blanketed in a variety of lavender and marigold and rose hips found only in the Bavarian Alps.

How’s that for a never-before-seen-in-Redding delicacy?

And that’s just one. By the time National Cheese Day arrives, Cask & Cleaver will stock 30 to 35 variations of cheese from all over the world. “I’ll import from France, Italy, the U.K., Belgium, the Netherlands,” Rodney says. “Every single cheese maker has a season, and I coordinate it so when they are releasing their masterpieces to the world, I’m releasing them here in Redding.”

Cask & Cleaver also offers charcuterie classes. At first, you might view a course as just a cheese-tasting experience, but as you sample a brie with sausage, pineapple, crackers, maybe with wine (the Cask), you learn how to lay out your own charcuterie board. A one-hour class can consist of eight courses, each a pairing of a cheese with the other accompaniments, all in search of truly memorable flavor.

To hear Berry and Rodney tell it, the idea for Cask & Cleaver popped out of Mom’s mouth during a casual conversation. “She just dove in head first,” recalls an impressed mother. “Kaitlyn started gathering up cheeses and meats and everything

we wanted to put on boards. And from the night that we had decided that we were going to do this, we were up and operational with a website in two weeks.”
Rodney wonders if the intensity of her enthusiasm for cheese might stem from fond childhood memories at her grandmother’s house. “The biggest thing I can remember then was she always had a block of cheddar cheese near her, specifically aged cheese, specifically cheddar,” she says. “She always had it everywhere in the house, cheese and salami and crackers.”
Berry had an extensive background in the food industry, beginning in her Shasta High School ROP restaurant class. “And that’s where I fell in love with food,” she says. “And I have worked in Seattle, Portland, Pebble Beach, all on my own, my own business being chef. So I knew all the legal stuff.”

Cask & Cleaver attracted its first customer within a week, Berry says, “Then it was like 24 hours a day we were living and breathing cheese and charcuterie.” The subsequent surge of business shook Rodney. “It was so outrageous with the amount of orders we had,” she recalls. “I couldn’t keep up with my day job. I had to resign.”

Today, Cask & Cleaver can handle business surges, like the one expected on National Cheese Day, with help from Rodney’s younger sister, Opal Berry, and one employee, Rowan Chamberlain. If a buyer of a board wants an accompaniment of bread with jam or jelly, they will have a choice of breads, but jams and those jellies will always be Lulu’s Jams & Jellies, marketed by Berry for 10 years, and named after fond childhood memories with her grandmother.

Berry gives a lot of credit to Karen Christensen, the owner of Sizzle’s, who rented Cask & Cleaver its first kitchen and supported the family any way she could. Now Berry wants to offer to other small food businesses that same support. “It’s always good to give back and help somebody else who’s just getting started. That’s how we do things, right?” she says. “I mean, we have advice on how we got started, or if you need to use the kitchen, let’s have a conversation.” •

Cask & Cleaver
1350 Tehama St., Redding
(530) 215-3004
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am–5pm
www.caskcleavercharcuterieco.com
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