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s a v e cheese 6 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN Rynn and David Caputo opened their Caputo Brothers creamery in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, in 2011 because they wanted to bring real fermented mozzarella and ricotta cheeses to the American market. They've done that. They continue to do that with award-winning Mozzarella, Fresh Ricotta, Vecchio – an aged ricotta, Provola, Provola Piccante and Siciliano cheeses that are made by fermenting milk and whey with lactobacillus cultures rather than by adding vinegar or citric acid to coagulate the proteins. "All of our cheeses go through a natural fermentation," Rynn said. "Our ricotta is what 'ricotta' means in Italian – it's re-cooked whey." A New Mission Now, though, the Caputos have embarked on another mission – to help save American dairy farmers by creating a business model that upends the price structure under which the dairy industry operates in favor of a structure that provides farmers with a living wage. "Our goal is to try to incorporate as many dairy farms as possible while accomplishing our cheeses," Rynn said. The Caputos' approach has been to collaborate with farmers in a partnership that's a win for everybody – the farmers agree to produce a higher-quality milk than they're selling on the conventional market, the Caputos agree to pay a higher price that provides the farmers with a living wage, and consumers get to enjoy authentic Italian cheeses made according to ancient traditions. That's an idea that's been at the heart of Caputo Brothers creamery ever since Rynn started negotiating with local dairy farmers for a milk supply to feed the creamery. The need for a dependable supply was particularly urgent after Murray's Cheese picked up the Caputo Brothers cheeses just three months after Rynn and her husband had opened their business. Before that first hundred-pound order from Murray's, they'd never sold more than a pound of cheese at a time. After Murray's had placed the order, they had to ask, "'Why did you buy our cheese?... We've been doing this for three months, and you're Murray's,'" Rynn recalls. "'Our hope was that in 10 years, you'd return a phone call.'" "And they said, 'You're the only one making fermented cheese curds.' We had no clue that we were the only ones doing it. We just didn't know," she continued. "It just took off from there. It just went crazy." A New Approach to Dairy Pricing To get the milk she needed for the Caputo Brothers cheeses, Rynn to the farm • the community • the culture