So we thought it was high time to shout it from the mountaintops – or at least from the pages of this magazine – with a little help from some of our favorite cheesemongers. “Everyone is excited about it, it’s just a matter of finding the time and resources to get it off the ground.”Įdible Blue Ridge readers are pretty excited about Virginia cheeses too. “It’s definitely going to happen,” Hobbs-Page says. ![]() Right now, the ETA on the Council is still in flux (in fact, the name isn’t even a sure thing), but there’s certain interest. The goal is that the organization would help the folks who make and sell Virginia cheeses by facilitating the sharing of knowledge and sometimes even equipment. “We need to define what the Virginia Cheese Council’s role will be, and develop a standard of excellence,” says Hobbs-Page, who is working with other cheesemakers and mongers – Dany Schutte of Ellwood Thompson’s grocery store in Richmond and fellow cheesemaker Rona Sullivan of Bonnyclabber Cheese in Wake – to establish the Council. Virginia wine went through the same sort of growing pains about three decades ago, and look how far it’s come. With this cheesy brain trust right in our backyard, and more and more cheesemaking and cheese-selling operations starting up every year (at least three in Central Virginia last year alone), it’s only logical to establish an official organization – like a Virginia Cheese Council – to help the nascent industry grow. (Last summer, the ACS awarded Meadow Creek’s Appalachian second place in its category.) (At the ACS awards, Everona’s Williamsburg took third in its category, and Pride of Bacchus took second.)Īnd at Meadow Creek Dairy in Galax, Helen and Rick Feete have been raising their Jersey herd using sustainable pasture-rotation methods long before it was cool – 34 years to be exact. Also reaching celebrity status is Everona Dairy in Rapidan – which was founded by Pat Elliot, an energetic Virginia family doctor, sheep farmer, and pioneering cheesemaker who died in May after almost 15 years of running Everona, passing the torch to her son and daughter-in-law, Brian and Carolyn Wentz. They’re also racking up the ribbons from the prestigious American Cheese Society (ACS) awards – the Oscars of the cheese world.”My dairy is only six years old, but it’s considered one of the older ones,” says Gail Hobbs-Page, farmer-cheesemaker at Caromont Farm in Albemarle County, the recipient of one such ACS award this past summer for her Esmontonian, an aged goat cheese that has been sold out for months (she promises to produce even more of it this year).Caromont is definitely one of the success stories, now selling its products at the prestigious Cowgirl Creamery in Washington, D.C., and at Murray’s Cheese Shop in New York City – where if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Approaching 30 cheesemakers across the state, Virginia has been slowly but surely building itself a bona-fide artisan-cheese industry, winning accolades at cheese counters across the country, as well as in national magazines, cookbooks, and television shows. ![]() Smack in the middle of the inferno is a whole lot of delicious, grassy creaminess being handcrafted right here in Virginia.
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