In last week’s post, I polled retailers around the country about their favorite new American cheeses. Laura Downey, who owns the Greenwich Cheese Shop and Fairfield Cheese Shop in Connecticut, replied immediately. “Veronica Pedraza is making some of the best cheese in the U.S. at the moment,” wrote Downey. Wow. I’ve written about Pedraza before but not since her latest career move: to a new goat farm and creamery in Wisconsin, where she has creative freedom and an employer with deep pockets. Time for an update on this rock-star cheesemaker and what seems like the “buzziest” creamery in America.

Pedraza is a Miami native, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant, and a graduate of Beloit College. With an eye on law school, she studied rhetoric and avoided the science classes that might have helped her now. A semester in Morocco ignited an interest in food, so she ditched the law school plan for a restaurant job. Five years in Chicago’s professional kitchens exposed her to a lot of great cheese.

“I was fascinated by the fact that all these different cheeses had the same four ingredients,” says Pedraza. Intrigued by cheesemaking, she landed an apprenticeship at Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia and later at Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, both “Ivy League” training grounds for would-be cheesemakers.

Six years ago, Pedraza met Lynde Uihlein, a Wisconsin heiress and philanthropist, who wanted to convert her recently purchased cow dairy to a goat dairy. The property, 200 yards from Lake Michigan, now supports 1,500 dairy goats and the built-from-scratch Blakesville Creamery, which Pedraza designed and completed in April 2020—not the best moment for a new cheese business.

I spoke to Pedraza recently about her cheesemaking and her experience launching Blakesville. Here is some of our (edited) conversation and a few notes on my favorite Blakesville cheeses.

What’s your elevator speech about Blakesville Creamery?

Ten years ago this was a cow dairy. Lynde bought it to keep it from being developed. She has always been an environmentalist and her big crusade is clean water. She has donated a lot to clean up Lake Michigan and Wisconsin rivers. Her interest was in making the farm more environmentally friendly and there’s a lot less environmental impact with goats.

For a new creamery, you’re making a lot of different cheeses.

The original business plan was just to make soft-ripened goat cheeses, but Covid made me reevaluate. We started making the St. Germain and Sunny Ridge, which are aged longer, because I wasn’t sure what the market was going to be like.

I hear from a lot of people that they “don’t like goat cheese.” Do you have a cheese for them?

Probably Lake Effect, Linedeline or St. Germain. There’s a lot of bad goat cheese out there and it has to do with a multitude of factors. The best cheese is made from the freshest milk. Switzerland and France have laws about that. For Gruyère makers, the idea of refrigerating milk is bizarre. Here, you have a lot of small herds and cheesemakers with small herds are prone to storing milk longer than they should, to fill up their vat and maximize their time in the creamery. The longer milk sits in refrigeration, it breaks down the cellular structure and that’s where you get some of those wild flavors.

Who were your mentors? Where have you learned the most?

Ivan Larcher came to Jasper Hill and I learned more about cheese in three days with that guy than I ever learned in my life. Also, to a certain extent, Anne Saxelby. I was Anne’s first employee at Saxelby Cheesemongers, running the counter and making deliveries. Jeremy (Little, co-owner of Sweet Grass Dairy) said, “If you’re serious about making cheese, you need to see what happens to cheese when it leaves here.”

Do you see any threats ahead?

Consolidation of our industry. It’s a huge problem that no one is addressing. It feels like there are fewer people making cheese in America than when I started. Look at what happened with Cowgirl and Emmi. What motivated people 20 years ago to get into this business is going to be lost to multinational corporations that don’t have ties to the community.

I have to ask about the “Odor is Normal” sticker on your shipping boxes. What prompted that?

Fed Ex would just throw away boxes of cheese. We direct-ship to some customers and track the shipment, and a couple of times we had to call FedEx and say, “Why did you guys throw away the box?” And they said, “Because it’s clearly spoiled. It smells terrible.” And you can’t file an insurance claim. We were losing hundreds of dollars.

And the “Say No to Frozen Curd” sticker on your packaging? What’s that about?

Eighty percent of the goat cheese that people eat in this country is made from frozen imported curd. There’s not enough goat’s milk to fill the demand for goat cheese. But the problem with frozen curd is that it depresses the price of goat’s milk. Producers know they can buy frozen curd cheaper than they can buy goat’s milk so there’s no incentive to milk goats. I think it’s disingenuous to say you’re making American cheese when the main ingredient doesn’t even come from here.

Where does the frozen curd come from?

France, Mexico, Israel. There’s a host of countries that export their excess goat milk. They basically make chèvre, put it in a bag and freeze it. That’s why you see so many flavored goat cheeses. You can hide some of that lack of quality.

Have you ever looked back and thought, “I shoulda been a lawyer”?

All the time. No, I have a lot of friends from Beloit who became lawyers and I think I have a much better quality of life. I’m not the kind of person who could be in an office. But there are highs and lows in this business and times when I think, “Why did I do this?”

Tasting Notes

My three favorites of the Blakesville Creamery cheeses I recently tasted:

Shabby Shoe: a gorgeous two-pound wheel with a tender, wrinkled Geotrichum rind and a delightfully light, creamy texture. The flavor is clean, mild and mellow, with a hint of lemon and no trace of goatiness or bitterness. The salt is right where I like it. My husband routinely cuts away the rind on cheeses of this type, but he ate every bite. Hard to resist this one.

Linedeline: a large (4-1/2 pound) wheel with an ashed rind and ash ripple in the center, à la Humboldt Fog. It is tangier and denser than Shabby Shoe, with some softening just under the rind (the so-called cream line) and a mushroom aroma. Balanced and clean tasting.

Lake Effect: a five-ounce disk with a bloomy rind (for the nerds: Pencillium candidum and Geotrichum), a luscious cream line and a mushroom aroma.

Look for Blakesville Creamery cheeses at these retailers.