LINDSAY, Calif. — Not many 20-year-olds can hand out a business card with their title listed as owner.

But then Marisa Hilarides isn't your average 20-year-old — and she's not the owner of a dot-com start-up, either. In partnership with her father, she is co-owner, cheesemaker and marketing specialist of Three Sisters Farmstead Cheese, one of the latest arrivals on the specialty cheesemaking scene in California.

Three Sisters is just beginning to delve into the demanding cheese business. Because the company doesn't even have its own cheesemaking facility yet, Hilarides and her father, Rob, can only make cheese when they can squeeze into the plant of fellow specialty cheesemaker Bill Boersma of Bravo Farms. And because demand for Bravo Farms' cheese is going strong, that means the Hilarideses can only make cheese every so often.

AWARD-WINNING CHEESE: Although only a few vats have been made, Three Sisters Farmstead Cheese's Sareanah already is an award winner.

"Everyone loved it, and we thought, 'Hey, we have something here,'" Marisa Hilarides says.

That reaction sent father and daughter back to Bravo Farms' tiny one-vat plant. Since then, they have made a total of 11 batches of cheese — fine-tuning their product with each new batch.

"It's been a lot of 'learn as you go,'" says Rob Hilarides, who, along with Marisa, notes that the second batch of cheese wasn't as good as their first as they played with their recipe in order to make the cheese the best it could be. They ended up going back to using much of the same make procedure and recipe they used the first time, they say.

The Hilarideses are quick to note they didn't develop their cheese alone. The California Milk Advisory Board has actively encouraged specialty cheesemakers and they have taken a cheesemaking course sponsored by the board, the Hilarideses say. In addition, they credit a representative of Chr. Hansen, the company that provides the cultures the Hilarideses use, for helping them develop the unique, Italian grana-type cheese they have dubbed Sareanah. The cheese was so named by Marisa's grandmother, who developed the name as a blend of Marisa and her two younger sister's names. The name of the company, Three Sisters, also comes from the same three sisters.

Marisa Hilarides doesn't know if her two sisters, ages 8 and 15, will ever join her in the business — "they're young," she says — but she herself looks forward to making a lot more cheese. She and her dad had always talked about going into business like this and she left her first college after just a year in order to pursue the business. She's now attending school at the College of the Sequoias, participating in the California Dairy Products Training Institute's plant training certificate program (see "Colleges team up with industry to prepare students for plant jobs," Oct. 27, page 1), as well as taking marketing classes.

Having only made 11 batches of cheese, there's a lot of room for growth for the company, Marisa Hilarides acknowledges. But the fact that they aren't making more cheese isn't for lack of trying, she's quick to point out.

The problem is that the future of the cheese business is tied to the dairy farming business, and environmental lawsuits in California have prevented dairy farms from expanding. Because of this, Rob Hilarides' plans to bring his cows from the three dairies he leases onto one brand-new dairy farm and cheese operation are stymied. Spread out on a dining room table in his home, Rob Hilarides has all of the plans for the buildings — complete with viewing areas where consumers could watch cows being milked and cheese being made — ready to review at a moment's notice. But instead of milking cows and making cheese at the new facility by the end of this year, as he had previously hoped, Rob Hilarides' best hope now is to be in the new facility by the end of next year.

Meanwhile, though they've made little more than 5,000 pounds of cheese, the cheese has generated so much interest and demand it's getting to the point where Marisa Hilarides can't keep up with it.

"I wish we could be making cheese five days a week," she says. "I'm sure it would sell."

Responsible for the marketing of her company's product, Marisa Hilarides has spent a lot of time in the past several months developing a marketing plan and taking cheese to potential buyers.

One of the first orders of business was developing a label, which proved challenging, she says. The Hilarideses, particularly Marisa's mother Jeannie, worked with two ad agencies before coming up with the logo that now adorns their cheese — a black and orange scene featuring the silhouettes of three young girls playing. A little darker than many labels found in the dairy case, Marisa Hilarides says she is pleased with the result.

Overall, though she doesn't have a lot of marketing experience, handling the marketing end has gone well, she adds.

"It's hard doing stuff that I don't think I know how to do," she says. "But it's gotten easier, going into stores and talking about the cheese."

She also says it's become easier now that she has other customers to tell her potential customers about.

That said, Marisa Hilarides isn't getting as much marketing experience as she was at first. Attending the American Cheese Society's (ACS) annual conference in August changed the need to do much marketing at all, she says.

Rob and Marisa Hilarides attended this year's ACS conference in Petaluma, Calif., with the hope of meeting some fellow farmstead cheesemakers. They also entered their cheese in the annual competition. The cheese won third place in its class.

However, it wasn't just winning a ribbon that made the difference in marketing the cheese — although that helped, Marisa Hilarides says.

At the end of the conference, ACS holds its annual festival of cheeses, where cheese buyers can come and examine the latest offerings of specialty cheesemakers. The Hilarideses had a long drive home that night, and almost didn't stay for the event.

"That would have been a big mistake," Marisa Hilarides says. "We met so many people. That's how we got our markets in the Bay area."

With so little cheese to sell, Three Sisters obviously has limited distribution. Marisa Hilarides has found fans for it, though, not only in her home of Tulare County — where the cheese won second place at the Tulare County Fair — but also in Europe, where the cheese recently won a silver medal in the World Cheese Awards in Somerset, England. She has customers in the San Francisco Bay area and Southern California, and has sold the cheese both to retailers and chefs.

Demand is so good that they have considered raising the price of the cheese, Marisa Hilarides says.

"I've also thought about making a waiting list," she adds.

But despite the fact that the cheese is in high demand, the Hilarideses have held a little back for future sales. The cheese, sold to retailers in 20-pound natural rind wheels, is typically aged for five months. However, Three Sisters is now starting to also make the cheese available in two different-sized boxes with cuts of three different ages of the cheese, she says. The company also is working on a website at www. threesisterscheese.com.

As the business grows, Marisa Hilarides knows she and her father may not always be able to handle everything themselves.

"Who knows?" she says with a smile. "Maybe someday somebody else will make the cheese and I'll market it."

She's quick to add, though, "But I like making cheese, too."

Seeing people enjoy the cheese is her greatest delight in the business, she says.

"I like it when people say, 'Oh, this is a wonderful cheese,'" she says. "Then I know the work has paid off."

CMN