A few Saturdays ago, I traveled up the freeway (known as an “expressway” in Georgia) to Traveler’s Rest, SC (TR) to visit the owners of Blue Ridge Creamery. (Isn’t Traveler’s Rest a great name for a town? Another near here is “Fair Play”…) TR gained its name as a stopover for weary travelers and droving cattlemen, back in the day… whenever that was… Now Traveler’s Rest boasts the end of the Swamp Rabbit Trail (SWT), a multi-use bike and hike path that runs along the old railroad line between downtown Greenville and TR. The SWT has helped revitalize downtown TR which has come alive with restaurants, coffeehouses and kayak rental shops for nearby waterway fun.
Just a short drive from Downtown TS you’ll find the local Cheesemaker. Blue Ridge Creamery is in a small, modest building among a tiny complex of several small, industrial-style businesses. The Creamery’s building previously housed a canoe builder. The Creamery Owners, Christian Hanson and Charles LaPrade, as time and funds become available, are converting the building into more creamery and retail cheese space. Coming in the front door, you enter a small retail shop with a cheese case filled with their available, seasonal cheeses and a counter for sampling and purchases. Below the room’s windows is a ledge with bar stools where you can sit and chat or enjoy your cheese purchases.
This was where I was greeted by Charles, who came from a farm-to-table distribution company that helped farmers get their produce and food from the farm and directly into restaurants and specialty grocers such as the Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery . His partner and the Cheesemaker, Christian Hansen, was in the back starting a batch of cheddar (Christian later told me is was more of an experiment in making cheddar). While waiting for Christian to find a break from the make, Charles treated me to a sampling of their cheeses.
The first cheese we tasted was a twelve-day old Camembert, named Southern Oaks Jersey. Milky with a hint of mushroom. The rind just getting its “fluff” on. Hello, gorgeous!!
Next we tasted Buxton, a hard, pressed cheese, brined for three days and aged four months. Similar to a Manchego made with Jersey milk (rather than the milk of the Manchega ewe), this cheese had hazelnut notes with a distinctive but pleasant bite at the end.
After the Buxton we sampled Sandy Flat, a semi-soft homage to Morbier. The texture was spongy and tasted like an old-fashioned saltine cracker. Charles likened the taste to a slice of that guilty pleasure, white bread. A taste we all remember fondly from our childhood, when we loved grilled cheeses made with Kraft slices… not realizing that a world of real cheese was ahead of us.
Last we tasted their Fromage Blanc with garlic and chives – so creamy, light and milky that I bought a tub home to enjoy with The Man… so good The Man ate it all before I got more than one schmear on an English Muffin… This is their best seller at the local Farmers’ Markets and The Man can attest to why… “This stuff is good.” The Man’s cheese vocabulary is limited but he knows what he likes…
With the exception of their Camembert and Fromage Blanc, all of the cheeses use raw, Jersey milk from Milky Way and Southern Oaks Creameries; both local South Carolina dairies. The pasteurized milk for the Camembert and Fromage Blanc comes from Southern Oaks.
About the time we finished our tasting, Christian had a break in his Cheddar-making and the “back of the house” tour began.
Leaving the retail shop, we entered a large, partially empty room with some odds and ends of furniture and two large boxing posters. This piece of real estate has some stories to tell… the night I was visiting, the area was rented out for a “rave” complete with fog machines. But that didn’t explain the boxing posters… several months back, a family friend of Christian’s in Denmark contacted him offering his son as an intern. The son has just graduated college and wanted a gap year before becoming a full-fledged adult with a job, taxes and responsibilities. A win-win for both. The young man worked hard and bonded with Christian… somewhere along the way, Christian mentioned he had always wanted to box and his young intern challenged him to a match. They rented a ring, charged admission and the two went a few rounds with Christian winning… using experience to outlast youth. Eventually this room will become more creamery and multi-use retail.
Leaving this space we entered a kitchen, small, clean and efficient. Nothing fancy but it gets the job done. On one side of the kitchen is the make room and the aging cave on the other side.
Like all make rooms I have been in or seen (remember Rhonda Gothberg of Gothberg Farms doesn’t allow civilians inside the door…), you can eat off the floor. Even on a tight margin, Cheesemakers take cleanliness to the max. Some might say to be a Cheesemaker one must have a certain degree of OCD when it comes to food safety. Let’s hope so… Expect it… Demand it…
The make room is where the magic happens and one of my reasons for calling this “Guerrilla Cheesemaking”. Christian, who comes from a long line of Danish cheesemakers, and Charles aren’t getting rich (yet) making cheese and their profits go back into the milk and the basics needed to produce more quality cheeses. Most of the equipment, which is clean and in excellent condition, is all used; the result of Christian and Charles bargain hunting for what they need to improve their make room and the cheese.
The four hundred gallon holding tank is located right next to a small window in the make room. The milk tanker drives up next to this window and pumps the milk in through the window directly into the holding tank (using a hose, of course). The fresh milk is held there until Christian makes cheese, which he does three days a week. One third of the milk is used immediately upon arrival and the remaining cheese is made into cheese within seventy-two hours. (The milk tankers can only hold three hundred-thirty gallons and that is the amount of milk delivered every week.)
The cheesemaking vat holds a max of one hundred-forty gallons and is the smallest vat I have seen in my adventures. That is only an observation and means nothing. The room also has a cheese press, a large contraption, bought used, that has been a time-saving addition to the cheesemaking process.
On the other side of the kitchen is the second reason I call this “Guerrilla Cheesemaking”. The ceilings in this building are high with rafters. Using insulation and air ducting, Charles and Christian have molded a cave perfect for aging the cheese. I was impressed at the ingenuity that went into turning an industrial area into a perfect cheese cave with proper temperature and humidity control. And there are wheels of cheese stacked on wood slabs everywhere with a refrigerated reach-in for the Camemberts.
One wheel that caught my eye was shaped like and the size of Parmigiano Reggiano. It had huge crevices filled with mold. Christian said he was experimenting with a Gruyere-style cheese. The cracks were the result of the formation of CO2 which became more than the rind could handle, causing the cracks. The CO2 gas comes from the breakdown of the lactic acid by Propioibacterium. (For a more detailed tutorial on eyes in cheese, check out Pat Polowsky ACS CCP’s article at Cheese Science Toolkit.) Christian is allowing the cheese to age and hopes that the inside will be worth the wait.
I love standing in a cheese aging facility, taking in the beauty of the wheels, the aromas of the cultures creating cheese and emission of smells that assault the nose and make me crave the taste of each and everyone of them.
Christian and Charles took time and did not rush my visit. I purchased a tub of the fromage Blanc and a wedge of their blue cheese, Chatooga, which I will review in the next few days. As I was left, I was stunned to discover I had been there two hours. Seemed like only a few minutes… when you’re with good people and enjoying yourself, time really does fly.
Blue Ridge Creamery cheese is featured at several of the upscale restaurants in Greenville and Charleston. You can also find their cheeses at Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, which I visited after leaving BRC, and Adam’s Mobile Market HQ in Traveler’s Rest.
In addition to being an American Cheese Society Certified Cheese Professional, I am a Certified ServSafe Food Production Manager with certifications that also include ServSafe Certified Instructor and Proctor. I am available for cheese events, 
cheese program development, cheese training, food safety training and 3rd party food safety auditing. See my About Me and Resume pages for more details or call me at 360 921 9908 to discuss availability.
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