SONOMA, Calif. — In a world guided by business plans, Ignazio "Ig" Vella, CEO, Vella Cheese Co., marches to the beat of a different drummer.

"This type of industry doesn't lend itself to business plans," says Vella, who claims he's never developed a business plan despite his lifelong role in the cheese business his father, Tom, started in the early 1930s. "I don't need to sit and plot out things because things change — and then what good are all your plans?

"Besides," he adds, "I'm not that big — I'm not Microsoft where I sneeze and everyone gets a cold."

Vella Cheese certainly isn't the cheese industry's Microsoft in terms of size. By just about anyone in the dairy industry's standards, the annual production of about 355,000 pounds is small. But don't let the size belie the big taste that comes from Vella's plant.

Vella Cheese is known throughout the industry for its high-quality Cheddar, Monterey Jack and Italian cheeses. The gold medals to prove the cheese's worth are plentiful, too — last year Vella Cheese was the recipient of 12 gold medals at the California State Fair and the winner of the fair's overall "Best of Show" award for the third year in a row. At the Los Angeles County Fair, the company won another 11 gold medals. The cheese also does well in national and international competitions. At the World Championship Cheese Contest this year in Madison, Wis., Vella Cheese took home the third place award in the reduced-fat cheese class, along with respectable finishes in the other classes it entered.

• A blue revival

According to Vella, the family cheese business always has focused on high-quality specialty cheeses from the day his father, already a seasoned cheesemaker through his positions with Sonoma Mission Creamery, started the business in 1931 at the request of local dairymen.

Based on the popularity of the cheese the elder Vella and his cheesemakers produced, the company gradually grew to the point where it owned four plants in California and Oregon prior to World War II.

Part of the expansion, Vella says, was due to his father's belief that if the United States got involved in World War II, the demand for dairy products would increase. Demand for both fluid milk and cheese did pick up when the United States got involved in the war, and all of the plants went into extra shifts and ran at full capacity, according to Vella.

Over the years, the company has consolidated and evolved and today there are just two cheese plants: the mainstay Vella Cheese plant in Sonoma and Rogue River Valley Creamery in Central Point, Ore. The Oregon plant, which the family operated separately from Vella Cheese Co., was purchased by Ig Vella from his father's estate last October.

Since then, Vella has been making investments in the Oregon plant to bring it up to snuff. Back in the 1950s and '60s, the plant had produced blue cheese for Borden but after Borden decided to no longer purchase the cheese, the company had more heavily marketed its own "Oregon Blue" brand. That brand is one that Vella now hopes to bring back to life. After Borden stopped purchasing the cheese, the plant never attained the volume it once had and never really received the attention it had enjoyed in the earlier years to make it flourish, Vella says. Still, the company maintains a following, and now Vella hopes to increase that loyal customer base.

As owner of the plant, Vella — who at 72 is at an age when most people are concentrating on retirement instead of taking on a new business — has spent countless hours making the 400-mile trip between Sonoma and Central Point. He says he hasn't made big changes to the plant's cheesemaking, noting that his father had studied the art of making Roquefort in France and so he's using the same processes to make the blue from unpasteurized milk. In addition, it doesn't hurt that as his father spent time at the plant during its heyday, so did young Vella, learning more about soft cheesemaking. Thus, instead of reformulating the cheese, already a product that was high quality, Vella says he has put a lot of effort into refurbishing the plant and cleaning it up during the past several months.

He has put in so much effort, in fact, that Vella says his wife thinks he's crazy. And while he admits he's busy traveling back forth between the two plants, he says reviving the plant is something he really wants to do.

"I just feel we've got to do this," he says simply.

His efforts seem to have paid off — not only did a 68-day-old piece of blue cheese score in the top third of its class at the World Championship Cheese Contest despite the fact it wasn't fully aged, customer interest in the cheese also is picking up, he says.

Not one to focus on major marketing, Vella's marketing efforts have involved sending a wide range of customers and potential customers a half wheel of the cheese. The cheese can be found in markets up and down the West Coast, he says.

In addition, the company is serving as a cutting and wrapping operation for small grocery chains in the area, Vella adds.

• Opening a third business

The success of Rogue River Valley Creamery also is tied to another business just up the highway from Central Point on Interstate 5. Not content to take on just one business in Oregon, Vella, along with business associate Gary Edwards, recently has restarted Rogue Gold Dairy, a Grants Pass, Ore., company that is aging cheese for Vella Cheese, Rogue River Valley Creamery and other dairy companies.

There is a half-acre worth of refrigeration at the site, and the company has received particular interest from cheese industry customers who have especially small cheesemaking operations, such as goat cheesemakers.

Rogue Gold Dairy also operates as a distribution point in southern Oregon for a growing number of specialty cheesemakers.

"It's a modest distribution service for now, but it is progressing," Vella says.

Like the Sonoma cheese plant and the Central Point plant, the Grants Pass facility also operates a store which generates interest in the Vella cheeses.

• Busy in Sonoma, too

But lest anyone think that the happenings in Oregon may distract Vella from the plant in Sonoma, a quick examination of the latest offerings from Vella Cheese Co. dispels that notion.

Recently, the company has introduced Toma ala Piemonte, a soft-ripened cow's milk cheese which Vella describes as having more flavor than a fresh Monterey Jack. The company recently invested in $8,000 worth of hoops for this and other cheese's distinctive round configuration.

"It fills a niche for people in the deli," he says of the Toma ala Piemonte.

The company also has introduced a Mezzo Secco, a combination of dry and regular Monterey Jack. Actually, this introduction is more of a reintroduction, Vella says, although it's been awhile since the company made it. The last Mezzo Secco produced was in 1938.

Mezzo Secco originally was produced in the days before refrigeration was prevalent as a softer cheese that wouldn't melt in the heat. In recent years customers had started to again ask for the cheese — not so much for the melting reason, but because they wanted something different from a regular Jack but not something quite as dry as the dry Jack for which Vella Cheese is perhaps best known.

Reviving the cheese after 60 years was a matter of looking for the notes on how the company used to make it, Vella says.

"I got to thinking about it, and went back and looked through my father's notes in the bottom of a drawer. They were half in Italian, half in English," he says.

After translating the notes, Vella has transformed what he learned into a cheese that's quickly become popular with customers. It's made in a 10-pound daisy wheel format which also makes it easier for delis to work with, he says.

Vella also works with a variety of flavors such as rosemary and a variety of peppers. Recently he began experimenting with some flavored cheeses at the request of a condiments manufacturer.

A variety of cheeses carry the Vella "Bear Flag" brand. While the Bear Flag brand has served its purpose, as time has gone on, the Vella name has become increasingly synonymous with the company's cheeses. Thus, as the company brings new cheeses on line, they now feature an updated label with both the Vella and Bear Flag names, Vella says.

In keeping, though, with his view that long-range planning doesn't work, Vella doesn't foresee any other changes beyond the label updates, the continual cheese experimentation and the foundational growth of the Oregon businesses anytime soon. These things alone keep him busy enough. Other planning, really, is a distraction from making good cheese.

His philosophy, he says, can be summed up by an article he read about a whiskey company nearly 50 years ago.

"They had a sign," he says, "that read, 'We make good whiskey: At a profit if we can but at a loss if we must. But we always make good whiskey.'

"I just substitute 'cheese,'" he says.

CMN