SALEM, Ore. — A life-long love of all aspects of dairying is being transformed into award-winning cheeses here in the heart of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Rod Volbeda, who grew up on a dairy farm, and his wife Melissa founded Willamette Valley Cheese Co. just a few years ago, but already the farmstead cheese company is drawing accolades from consumers as well as cheese industry professionals after winning medals in the World Championship Cheese Contest, the World Cheese Awards and the American Cheese Society’s (ACS) competition. The company makes Havarti and Gouda, flavored Havartis and Goudas, Fontina and several other varieties.

It’s the milk that makes the cheese the success that it is, says Rod Volbeda, who manages both the family’s dairy farm and the farmstead cheesemaking business. Treating the cows well ensures the finest milk with high butterfat and extra protein, he says, adding that he enjoys having total control over the cheesemaking process.

“Everything we do with these cows affects the cheese,” he says. “It makes me feel good about the cheese knowing where the milk is coming from.”

Indeed, this is the time of year when the company makes its best cheese with its best milk. The cows are out on fresh pasture after the winter, and the grass diet imparts the milk with especially high quality. Part of the Volbedas’ dairy is certified organic, and it is the milk from these Jersey cows that are used to make the company’s 26 cheese varieties.

Willamette Valley Cheese’s products are made on-site at the farm, with milk moving directly from the milking parlor to the small cheesemaking facility where it is first pasteurized before being made into cheese. The company also makes raw milk Gouda, Jack and Cheddar.

Cows and dairying are a family tradition, according to Volbeda, whose Dutch immigrant parents established a dairy farm near Albany, Ore., in 1962. Volbeda always knew he wanted to work in the industry, but he wasn’t certain whether it would be in the dairy farming or food manufacturing side of the business. He graduated with a degree in food science from Oregon State University (OSU) in 1989, thinking he would like to find a job in ice cream production. He had been on OSU’s dairy product judging team and was an accomplished ice cream judge. However, right out of college there weren’t many ice cream jobs available.

During college, though, he had traveled to Holland and stayed with his father’s family and apprenticed with three different Dutch cheesemakers. This piqued his interest in cheese, and after college he took a position in quality assurance for Oregon’s well-known cheese manufacturer, Tillamook County Creamery Association. There he met his wife, Melissa, who worked on the retail side of Tillamook.

It didn’t take too long, though, before Volbeda began itching to get back into dairying, and in 1993, the Volbedas purchased a Holstein dairy farm in Salem, Ore. Soon, the Volbedas were exploring whether a presence in both dairy farming and cheesemaking made sense.

Though Willamette Valley Cheese only officially began making cheese five years ago, the Volbedas began honing their cheesemaking craft shortly after purchasing the dairy. Like many farmstead cheesemakers, the Volbedas first began experimenting with making cheese in their basement, giving Brie away to family and friends. Then they tried Goudas which, although harder to make in the basement, also were well-received by friends and the local farmer’s market.

While they experimented with the cheese, including taking courses in both Washington and California, the Volbedas watched as artisan cheese began rising in popularity on the East Coast and then in the Midwest. In 1997 they bought their first Jersey cows to improve the herd’s butterfat and protein composition. In 1999, they began building a 40-foot by 40-foot cheese plant, and in 2002, they officially launched the business, though in the interim they were selling cheese at local farmer’s markets. Farmer’s markets remain an important part of the company’s business, with Willamette Valley Cheese now being featured at several markets around the state.

The lush Willamette Valley, with its many wineries, may seem the perfect place to make cheese, and in many ways it is, but the Volbedas are groundbreakers — at the time they were the only cheesemakers to make farmstead cow’s milk cheese in the state. Volbeda says he has gleaned knowledge from Juniper Grove Farm, a farmstead goat’s milk cheesemaker in Redmond, Ore. Finding experienced staff was difficult since there aren’t a lot of cheesemakers in the Northwest, so the Volbedas have done most of their own training of their employees. Willamette Valley Cheese has between five and 12 employees, depending on the time of year, handling everything from cheesemaking to farmer’s markets. Melissa Volbeda handles the business end of the enterprise and both of the Volbedas do a great deal of the marketing themselves.

With two cheesemakers in addition to himself now on staff, Rod Volbeda doesn’t make cheese as often as he used to, unless he is developing and trying out a new recipe. Lately, he has been playing some with sheep’s milk from a local farm. The company introduced Perrydale, a Gouda made from a blend of 80 percent cow’s milk and 20 percent sheep’s milk, in 2005.

“Sheep’s milk cheeses are amazing. Being from a cow dairy background, I never thought I’d say that,” says Volbeda, who also makes Shepherd’s Knoll, a sheep’s milk Brie.

Along the way, Volbeda also decided to enter a handful of cheese contests.

“We just entered to get the scores and find out what faults they saw,” Volbeda says.

The first contest the company entered was the World Championship Cheese Contest in 2004, where the company found itself “right in the middle of the pack.” Being a young company, he was very pleased the company’s cheese did so well, particularly in a contest known for judging cheeses on a technical basis.

“We then entered other contests to see if it was a fluke, and we kept doing better,” Volbeda says. The first award came at the 2004 American Cheese Society’s contest, where the company’s Gouda took third. Other awards soon followed, including a first place for its Brindisi Fontina in the 2005 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest and a bronze medal in the 2006 World Championship Cheese Contest for its Perrydale.

This past summer, Willamette Valley Cheese was an often-heard name at the ACS competition award ceremony. The company’s Queso Fresco and Cumin Gouda placed first in their respective classes, its Farmstead Gouda and Wine Pomace Gouda (now called Pinot Crush) were second in their classes, and Perrydale took a third in its class. Recently, the company’s aged Gouda won a silver medal at the World Cheese Awards in London this spring.

“The awards are kind of overwhelming, but it sure does look good in my office,” Volbeda says.

Winning the awards has helped increase demand for the company’s cheese locally as well as outside the state. Bon Appetit, a foodservice management company whose clientele includes Intel’s campuses as well as some colleges and restaurants, utilize Willamette Valley Cheese’s products, Volbeda says. DPI is the company’s distributor and handles about 25 percent of the company’s cheese. Some of the cheese Willamette Valley Cheese sells directly to local stores in conjunction with a neighboring fruit farmer who makes deliveries twice a week.

Still, much of the company’s 100,000 pounds of annual cheese production is sold at farmer’s markets in the Northwest, and the company now is looking to expand its presence.

“We’re looking to expand out of Oregon and Washington a little more, to be more than just in our local area,” Volbeda says.

To that end, the company consistently is investing in improvements. Last year, Willamette Valley Cheese Co. put in a new packaging room; previously cheese was being packaged in the make room which wasn’t working very well due to humidity, Volbeda says. This spring, the company is installing a cryovac shrinker in addition to trying a different style of bag on its vacuum seal pouches. An office and tasting room to accommodate local winery tour visitors and neighbors who come to buy cheese also are being added.

The big capital improvement project that will most affect the company’s ability to grow is a new storage facility. The company currently is in the planning stages for a new storage facility on its property.

“We don’t have a big storage facility. We have a mismatch of things connected together, and we’re maxed out there,” Volbeda says.

The company hopes to build an underground aging facility by next spring. This will increase efficiencies, allow the company to increase its production a bit and age some of its cheeses longer, says Volbeda, noting many of the cheeses are at their best when aged about a year.

“The more we age it, the more we sell,” he says.

CMN