With thousands of dairy cows and millions of grassy acres, Missouri has long had the right ingredients for gourmet cheese-making greatness. But the appetite for Missouri-made cheese, or lack thereof, has thwarted progress.
Until recently.
In the past few years, the Missouri State Milk Board has seen applications for small-scale cheese-making operations rise while stores and farmers markets throughout the state watch Missouri-made cheeses whiz off the shelves. Missouri cheese-makers now are successfully competing on a national stage, as more budding Missouri cheese producers look to them as mentors — watching, learning and picking up the fine points of the craft.
"There's tremendous interest," said Nancy Smith, co-owner of Sappington Farmers Market, which stocks cheese from three Missouri operations. "Our cheese manager is constantly running out."
While the appetite for artisanal — or handmade — foods of all kinds has ballooned, states with strong dairy industries have seen the number of artisan cheese-makers rise. Now Missouri producers are catching up. Or trying.
"The big areas are northern California, Vermont and Wisconsin — everybody knows they make a lot of cheese," said Nora Weiser, executive director of the Denver-based American Cheese Society and a Webster Groves native. "But there's a lot of excitement in other areas. We have the farms in Missouri and the lower Midwest, so it's just a matter of getting to a point where people realize it's attractive to consumers and financially viable."
To that end, a group of Missouri producers has formed the Big Rivers Artisan Cheese Guild, the first organization to represent Missouri and lower Midwest cheese-makers and to create a name for Missouri cheese.
"We're trying to promote the artisan cheese and artisan dairy producers for Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri," said Steve Baetje of Baetje Farms, a goat cheese producer in St. Genevieve County and founding member of the guild. "We want to build peoples' awareness that we're out there and that they can get cheese that you can't get in grocery stores."
Artisanal isn't strictly defined. But in the world of cheese, artisanal usually means the producers own their herds of cows, sheep or goats. In Missouri there are 10 of these cheese operations, known as farmstead producers, according to the state milk board. But more are on the way or in the process of being certified.
"In the last five years, we've had a lot of new interest in this," said Don Falls, the milk board's manufacturing program supervisor. "We get a lot of calls about on-farm processing."
The surge in interest, Falls and others say, is largely because of demand for locally made products and from consumers who want a connection with the source of their food.
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