Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2017 - 60

Ileana ZeIssner

CalyRoad Creamery in
Sandy Springs, Georgia

More Cheese!
A few more cheese stops around the
Blue Ridge Country coverage area:
Tennessee
Sweetwater Valley Farm
17988 W Lee Highway
Philadelphia, TN 37846
865-458-9192 (toll free: 877-862-4332)
sweetwatervalley.com
Tours: YES
Sample award-winning cheese, experience a working farm and learn how dairy
helps a hungry world.

South Carolina
Split Creek Farm
3806 Centerville Rd
Anderson, SC 29625
864-287-3921
splitcreek.com
Tours: YES, by appointment
Award-winning goat cheeses are available
year-round, plus tour the farm to learn
about their cheesemaking process.

Virginia
Georges Mill Farm Artisan Cheese
11873 Georges Mill Rd
Lovettsville, VA 20180
571-442-7444
georgesmillcheese.com
Tours: YES, by appointment
Set up a tour, take a cheesemaking class
or simply pop in to pick up a variety of
their seasonal goat cheeses.

And two slightly out of the immediate
coverage area:
Kentucky
Good Shepherd Cheese
435 Blueberry Ln
Owingsville, KY 40360
goodshepherdcheese.com
Tours: NO
Good Shepherd uses the freshest sheep's
milk directly from their farm to produce
small 35-gallon batches from MarchOctober.

West Virginia
Spring Gap Mountain Creamery
7 Pansy Ln
Paw Paw, WV 25434
304-947-5414
springgapmtn.com
Tours: NO
Locally produced cow's milk and stateof-the-art facilities produce a variety of
hand-crafted, artisanal cheese found in
several retail and farmers market locations throughout WV and VA.

Georgia
CalyRoad Creamery
227 Hilderbrand Dr. NE
Sandy Springs, GA 30328
678-773-1629
calyroadcreamery.com
Tours: YES
CalyRoad offers tours and cheese tastings
of their fresh cow's and goat's milk, as well
as hands-on cheesemaking classes for kids
and adults.
-Liz Long

60 BlueRidgeCountry.com

Of the three categories of animals
being milked at Three Graces, the
sheep are clearly the most challenging. Roberta calls them an economic
nightmare. They are expensive to
keep, eat mass quantities of food,
and yield, on a good day, only about
a quart of milk per animal. Whereas
the goats and cows are milked in
a parlor, the sheep are milked into
a bucket in the field, as they have
been for centuries. All the labor and
bother are worth it, though.
"The milk almost looks like liquid porcelain when being poured,
and it makes beautiful cheese," marvels Roberta.
The Three Graces product line is
ever-changing. Some of the flavor
combinations occur to Roberta in
the middle of the night. Date with
a Nutty Canadian cheese combines
North Carolina black walnuts with
New England maple syrup. Turkish
Delight is a cheese flavored with
Middle-Eastern rose water.
Bries, fetas, cheeses in the style of
Spanish Manchego, Muensters, aged
Tommes and chevres in countless
variations make up the ever-changing palette at Three Graces. Garlicherb chevre is a perennial best-seller,
and cranberry-orange is a holiday
season favorite.
Made strictly from cow's milk
and buttery in its natural color with
no annatto added, the cheese variety called Chloe is often mixed with
cumin or caraway seeds.
Some cheeses are sold at two
months old, others at two years.
Some are washed repeatedly, while
others develop naturally. Some are
even washed with wines.
"There's only a handful of cultures," Roberta says. "Depending on
how you manage the milk and how
the product is aged, you can get all
the cheeses of the world."
Three Graces is currently experimenting with Hispanic cheeses, at
the request of the Sierra Nevada
Brewery in Asheville.
Three Graces does not work
through a distributor to sell cheese.
Warholic and Alford handle the
marketing of the products. Cheeses

http://www.splitcreek.com http://www.sweetwatervalley.com http://www.goodshepherdcheese.com http://www.georgesmillcheese.com http://www.calyroadcreamery.com http://www.springgapmtn.com http://www.BlueRidgeCountry.com

Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2017