{"id":3208,"date":"2025-07-10T16:25:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/how-the-cheese-lady-rachael-lucas-has-crafted-a-career-in-cheese-wine\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T16:25:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:25:27","slug":"how-the-cheese-lady-rachael-lucas-has-crafted-a-career-in-cheese-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/how-the-cheese-lady-rachael-lucas-has-crafted-a-career-in-cheese-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Cheese Lady Rachael Lucas Has Crafted a Career in Cheese & Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rachel Lucas, photo courtesy of Rachael Lucas<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m doing exactly what I\u2019m supposed to do,\u201d says Rachael Lucas, a cheese and wine specialist who calls herself The Cheese Lady.<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s taken a long time. I\u2019m 45 years old, a total late bloomer, but I just had no idea. I had no direction until cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since January 2022, Lucas, based near Woodinville, WA, wine country, has been carving out a niche, supplying area wineries with high-quality cheese for their cheese plates, clubs, cases, and pairings for their releases. She also hosts guided, educational tasting events and classes and raclette pop-ups, runs a themed cheese club called Freak the Funk, crafts custom cheese platters, charcuterie platters, and grazing tables, and offers consulting services to businesses that want to incorporate a cheese program into their operations. She is the resident cheese monger at Damsel Cellars<\/a> and pours weekly there.<\/p>\n

Crafting A Career in Cheese<\/h2>\n

Lucas is a Certified Cheese Professional (CCP), a Certified Cheese Sensory Evaluator (CCSE), designations earned from the American Cheese Society<\/strong>, a Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW), awarded by the Society of Wine Educators, and is studying for its certified wine educator exam. She has passed the Wine & Spirit Education Trust\u2019s Level 3 exam and plans to become credentialed as a Master of Wine. Learn how to become a Certified Cheese Professional.<\/a><\/p>\n

Raised in Kansas in a meat and potatoes family that ate mostly what her father hunted, Lucas didn\u2019t have much access to good cheese. She ate mostly processed products, and her interest in cheese was ignited when her father put a slice of blue cheese on gamey meat. \u201cI just loved it,\u201d she says. \u201cI knew I liked cheese, whatever I was able to get.\u201d<\/p>\n

She did not envision a culinary career. After graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in English, Lucas taught English and Spanish in Kansas and Costa Rica and hated it. She\u2019d always loved food, so she started working in restaurants, making enough money to get by, having a lot of fun, but feeling aimless.<\/p>\n

In her mid-30s, Lucas moved to Seattle, WA, where she discovered the cheese department in Metropolitan Market West Seattle and its petite fromage basket. \u201cI would dig through there every single day and grab two or three cheeses, take them home, do research, and taste new things,\u201d she recounts. Serendipitously, a week after confiding to her then-boyfriend that she wished she could work there, during her regular jaunt through the basket, the manager suggested just that.<\/p>\n

Lucas says she gets chills whenever she tells the story. \u201cMy very first day on the job it clicked, and I thought. \u2018This is it\u2019. This is what I\u2019m supposed to do with my life,\u201d she says. I\u2019ve been running with it ever since. It\u2019s been about 11 years now.\u201d And now at Damsel, in a move that mirrors her discovery of the petite fromage basket, she has a \u201cBaby Cheesus basket: that has little $3 wedges patrons can eat in the tasting room if they don\u2019t want the featured cheese plates.<\/p>\n

Lucas eventually became a grocery store cheese buyer. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a lot of cheese shops, which is weird because there\u2019s so much good food in Seattle,\u201d she says. \u201cYou find a lot of overly qualified cheese specialists working in grocery stores because we\u2019re not going to not work with cheese.\u201d Armed with her CCP and CCSE appellations, she was ready to move on from grocery stores and tackle a new project when Covid hit.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Marek Mucha<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cheese Meets Wine<\/h2>\n

Lucas decided to learn all about wine. She spent the next two years studying and earning designations and began working at Damsel. When the world opened back up, serendipity struck again. A mentor in the cheese business moved to New Zealand, giving her a few accounts, including a local restaurant\u2019s monthly cheese club. Lucas, who was required to obtain a business license, had no idea what she was going to do with it.<\/p>\n

She wound up starting a cheese program at Damsel. Her focus on sourcing cheeses not available at grocery stores, small batch cheeses made by producers who prioritize sustainability and practice humane animal husbandry, impressed the winemakers and tasting room managers who visited the winery. \u201cThey wanted cheese programs, too. \u201cIt snowballed,\u201d says Lucas.<\/p>\n

Lucas also installs countertop fridges at wineries that don\u2019t have kitchens or cheese programs, stocking them with cheeses leftover from events and classes and accompaniments like olives or charcuterie, ensuring that the cheeses pair with at least one of the wines, so customers can buy fresh wedges when purchasing a bottle. \u201cI\u2019ve got those popping up all over the place,\u201d says Lucas. \u201cEverywhere I go, people are like, \u2018Hey, you\u2019re the cheese lady!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cheese at Damsel Cellars<\/h2>\n
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\"Boxcarr<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Each week, she, tasting room managers, winemakers, and winery staff taste the cheeses with the wine to determine the best pairings for flights. Lucas rotates selections, so she and customers don\u2019t get bored, and recommends cheeses that emphasize the notes in the wines, so they sing. At Damsel the cheeses rotate monthly with three cheeses that go on the cheese plates.\u00a0Shares Lucas, \u201cThis quarter it\u2019s Black Sheep Creamery\u2019s <\/a>Fresh sheep cheese with a tickle of vanilla and honey\u2014perfect for our Pinot Gris\u2014, Cornish Kern, and Boxcarr Handmade Cheese\u2019s Cottonbell<\/a>.\u00a0We also have Colston Bassett Stilton<\/a>, Garroxta, Chaumes, a triple cr\u00e8me of some sort at all times, a local cheese called Nice Ash, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar<\/a>, Tomme de Savoie, and Shooting Star Creamery\u2019s Aries.<\/a>\u201d Read more about Boxcarr Handmade Cheese<\/a>, Colston Bassett Stilton<\/a> and Shooting Star Creamery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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How Lucas Approaches Tasting<\/h2>\n
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Photo by Alexandra Marta<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To Lucas, tasting is an encompassing sensorial experience, similar to ASMR, an autonomous sensory meridian response, a term used to describe a tingling, static-like, or goosebumps sensation in response to specific triggering audio or visual stimuli, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In fact, a line on her website reads, \u201cOrganoleptics, Hell Yeah!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like experiencing being completely present,\u201d she describes, \u201cin the moment, and experiencing what you\u2019re ingesting to its fullest extent.\u201d She teaches people to see and visually experience the cheese first, and then touch, smell, and feel it. When she has people put the cheese in their mouths, she says that\u2019s when it gets ugly.<\/p>\n

Her method – \u201cThis is the best way to glean as many nuances as possible,\u201d she explains \u2013 has tasters put the cheese behind their top front teeth, gum it up, and then start moving the cheese around to cover the entire palate with their tongue without swallowing. \u201cI show them, and they usually laugh because it looks weird,\u201d says Lucas. Next is a sip of wine, which brings in some air to the mouth. The goal is to get the cheese and wine into the retro nasal passage at the exact same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou still haven\u2019t swallowed the cheese,\u201d says Lucas. \u201cNow you\u2019ve got the wine in your mouth, and you put it all over your palate, swish it around. Then you swallow them at the same time and then exhale out of your nose because the most aromatics that you glean are in the retro nasal passage where the sinuses meet the throat. It\u2019s super eye-opening for people. They\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, I didn\u2019t even realize you could taste that much!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucas loves the textural and aromatic evolution that occurs on the palate during a tasting. Once she tried a Sardinian Pecorino, which has a substantial chew to it, with a Sardinian table wine. \u201cThe wine turned it into dust on the palate. You didn\u2019t even have to chew it. It\u2019s exciting. People always leave satisfied and euphoric. And it\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

She welcomes the opportunity to experience adverse pairings. \u201cI usually leave a tasting with this upset stomach,\u201d she says. \u201cSometimes I\u2019ll vomit, but I need the education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucas also enjoys pairing cheese with beer, saying it\u2019s easier than pairing with wine because the two are more similar. The tannins and the high alcohol content, which make the structure in the wine, can make pairing difficult.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Lucas hopes to open a cheese shop or truck that will include wine. \u201cI live in Washington, and let\u2019s face it, I\u2019m boobs deep in Washington wine right now,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I love cheese more than I love wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s \u201cflabbergasted\u201d by her success because she had no business plan. \u201cIt\u2019s just been so organic,\u201d Lucas says. \u201cJust being obsessed and enthusiastic and passionate about cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rachel Lucas, photo courtesy of Rachael Lucas \u201cI feel like I\u2019m doing exactly what I\u2019m supposed to do,\u201d says Rachael Lucas, a cheese and wine specialist who calls herself The Cheese Lady. \u201cIt\u2019s taken a long time. I\u2019m 45 years old, a total late bloomer, but I just had no idea. I had no direction … Okumaya devam et “How The Cheese Lady Rachael Lucas Has Crafted a Career in Cheese & Wine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}