Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/173967
cheese focus Building a Reputation PHOTO: BLOOMY RIND Pioneers like Everona Dairy in Virginia and Fromagerie Belle Chevre and Sweet Home Farms in Alabama established viable Southern creameries years ago, but few others followed. "We move at a slower pace down here," says Dick Roe, a vice president of Atlanta Foods International, the Georgia-based distributor. "It's the Southern style. Move too fast and you get overheated. But there's a ton of interest now." New producers like Georgia's Many Fold Farm and Tennessee's Sequatchie Cove Creamery are winning ribbons at the American Cheese Society's annual competition, joining more established prize winners like Meadow Creek Dairy in Virginia and Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia. Finally, 30 years after the creation of the American Cheese Society, artisanal cheesemaking in the South has reached critical mass. "We've more than doubled our selection of local cheese—probably tripled it," says Peg Todloski, specialty foods merchandiser for Weaver Street Market, a three-store natural foods co-op in North Carolina. When Todloski became the cheese buyer five years ago, the store stocked fresh goat cheese from two Southern producers. "I thought we didn't need any more, and I was wrong," Todloski says. "We have brought in whatever [Southern] chevres we can get Kathleen Cotter, proprieter of The Bloomy Rind "We move at a slower pace down here. It's the Southern style. Move too fast and you get overheated." our hands on, and everything sells. People want to try them all." Tim Gaddis, an influential cheesemonger at Star Provisions in Atlanta, says 35 to 40 percent of his selections are now from the South—a dramatic shift over the decade he has worked for the retailer. "Atlanta is in the middle of a farm-to-table movement," Gaddis says. "Everybody is buying local produce, and now they're SOUTHERN SPOTLIGHT: TEXAS CHEESEMAKERS These three businesses grew their personal interests in cheesemaking into premium, award-winning lines found in retail stores and foodservice establishments around the country. Brazos Valley Cheeses. In 1999, Rebeccah Durkin taught herself to make cheese to deal with an abundance of spring milk from the Brown Swiss cows that serviced families on the agrarian community where she lived in Waco, Texas. By 2005 she and her cousin, Marc Kuehl, began Brazos Valley Cheese, selling their 36-gallon batches at the Austin Farmers Market. Today, the company has the capacity to make cheese from 2,000 gallons of milk per week. Brazos' Eden cheese, a fig leaf–wrapped brie with a line of vegetable ash in the center, won first place at the 2011 American Cheese Society competition, and the Brazos Select (a brie coated with sorghum syrup and wrapped in mesquite wood) won second place in 2010. brazosvalleycheese.com Lucky Layla Farms. In 2004, Todd Moore, a third-generation dairyman in Plano, Texas, began making premium dairy products with the milk from his award-winning, pasture-fed Guernsey and Jersey cows. Today, the Lucky Layla Farms brand includes handcrafted cheeses, drinkable yogurts, butter and caramel milk. The company's Queso Fresco/Tex Mex cheese won third place for Latin American Cheese at the 2012 World Dairy Expo Championship Dairy Product Contest. luckylayla.com Mozzarella Company. This Dallas specialty cheese company was the inspiration of owner and founder Paula Lambert, who fell in love with cheesemaking during a stint in Italy after college. Lambert started her business in 1982 after returning home and realizing how much she missed the fresh, authentic mozzarella she learned to make from Mauro Brufani, who owned a cheese factory near Perugia. Today, the award-winning Mozzarella Company handcrafts 200,000 pounds of cheese a year, including fresh and aged cheeses made from both cow's milk and goat's milk. Many are inspired by Lambert's travels in Italy, Mexico and Greece. She is also the author of The Cheese Lover's Cookbook and Cheese, Glorious Cheese. mozzco.com 20 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com