Oser Communications Group

The Cheese Guide 7 President of Springside Cheese, while Bradd, the youngest, is the company's Director of Information Technology. Their father, Wayne Hintz, remains the company's Head Cheesemaker. "We started helping from the age we could walk," Keith says. "I worked through my first year of college, 1991, and then I left the business until 1994. I came back in 1994 as the business manager and got my cheesemaker's license." Keith then left the business' day-to-day operations in 1997 to pursue his own career, mostly in the realm of information technology, but eventually returned when his father decided that he was ready to step back from the creamery. "For Keith and I, growing up in and around business, we always had a desire to be directly involved in running a business," Nathan says. "I built my career in IT as a software engineer. Dairy was always in the back of your mind. You always think about what's going on in the industry, how things are progressing. When we were presented with the option, we made the decision that we wanted to try and carry on the family business." "Even when you're not involved in the day-to-day operations, you're always following the news. You're always staying in touch with the business," Keith adds. "It was just a natural fit at the time to come back." The brothers are now taking the creamery away from its history as a producer of commodity cheddars and are now producing an increasing amount of artisanal cheeses. They say that direction was necessary to preserve Springside Cheese's economic viability along with their family tradition of small-batch cheesemaking. "We make cheese the same way my father made cheese. If my grandfather came and watched, what happens in the vat is essentially what happened way back when," says Nathan. "That doesn't lend itself to the market my dad was selling to. We couldn't produce the volume that others could – our cost of production was too high. To take advantage of our history, and our production methods, there is now a market of people who are interested in our methods." Springside Cheese is still making hand-crafted cheddars, jacks and colby cheeses, but the new emphasis on artisanal cheeses has led the company toward more aged cheddars and to unique products that are conscious reflections of the landscape from which they originated. For instance, Krakow, which was launched last year, was named after the cheese factory in which Wayne first learned his craft. It's a semi-soft cheese modeled after the Polish Podlaski cheese, with characteristics of a butterkäse, and it draws directly on the artisanal cheesemaking lessons that Keith learned at the University of Wisconsin's Center for Dairy Research. The new approach is garnering critical acclaim, with a silver medal win this year at the International Cheese Awards for Krakow. Springside's Aged Cheddar won two silver and one bronze award at the ICA and a second-place award at the American Cheese Society's competition and judging. Springside's Cheddar curds took a second-place award, and its Colby took a third-place award at ACS as well. Italian Culture Flavors Valley Ford Cheese Joe Moreda, Jr. didn't make it to the American Cheese Society's annual meeting this year. He was at home at Valley Ford Cheese making cheese every day and working on the renovations for a building that's becoming the business' new retail shop. "I did go to three straight ACSs prior to the last two," he says. "ACS is a great place to network, learn and promote yourself and your business." Valley Ford Cheese was started by Joe's mother, Karen, on the Bianchi family's 640-acre dairy farm. Joe represents the fifth generation of his dairy-farming family who's been milking cattle in western Sonoma County, California, since 1918. "I grew up on a dairy farm, and I worked with the family and enjoyed it, and it was a great way to grow up, learning about the ag life," he says. He realized, though, that he didn't have the same passion for the dairy cattle themselves that he saw in his brother, Jim; his uncle and his grandfather. Then, in his senior year in high school, he started learning about another aspect of the dairy industry through an internship at Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. "I got introduced to this whole new world of the dairy industry and fell in love with it," he says. "I envisioned myself graduating and working in a large cheese, butter, ice cream or other dairy manufacturing plant. Throughout all four and a half years of college, I worked at the Cal Poly Creamery, where I got hands-on experience making all different kinds of products. Between learning in the classroom and working in the plant, I gained some very valuable experience and knowledge.... Near the end of my time at Cal Poly, I knew that my biggest passion was making cheese." He was in his junior year studying dairy science at Cal Poly when his mother decided that the family farm needed a new revenue stream. "Halfway through college, milk prices fell, and my mom started researching the options," Joe says. "She took a class and started making cheese, and it's grown from there." That summer, Joe went to work as an intern for Leprino Foods at the company's Grand Rapids, Michigan, mozzarella plant. "It was a whole different world than what I had learned previously, and at the end of the summer, I got offered a full-time job after I finished

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