Award Winning Cheesemaker Finds Her ‘Dreamery’ at Blakesville
Making cheese. Photo courtesy of Kate Arding
Blakesville Creamery may be the newest cheesemaking operation in Wisconsin, but it’s also the culmination of a dream, an exploration, and a fine bit of networking by the general manager and head cheesemaker, Veronica Pedraza. The creamery was built to Pedraza’s exact specifications and shipped its first cheeses in April, as the pandemic gripped the restaurant industry. Pedraza previously spent more than a decade making outstanding cheeses, worked at a couple of the most recognized artisan creameries in America, and created her own award-winning originals before making a home for herself in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
“In 2017, I sat down next to Andy Hatch (a partner and cheesemaker at Wisconsin’s most acclaimed farmstead cheese company, Uplands Cheese at the Vermont Cheese Council's pancake breakfast at the (American Cheese Society Conference,” Pedraza says. “I told him I was looking for a serious opportunity to create a farmstead brand and a thriving creamery.”
Hatch introduced Pedraza to the owner and general manager of Blakesville Farm, an 800-acre property located directly adjacent to Lake Michigan about 30 miles north of Milwaukee. Pedraza was hired as the lead cheesemaker and creamery manager. Historically, the property held a traditional dairy, producing cow’s milk from a herd that once totaled 300 head. After the farm changed hands in 2012 the owner worked with Fix Development, an innovative business and property development firm from Milwaukee, to plan a sustainable goat’s milk operation that would eventually involve a cheese component. The creamery took about nine months to build and license, with an initial investment of $4 million. “I call it the Dreamery,” says Pedraza.
The owner of the property is a very private person, and asked not to be named in the article, Pedraza says. Juli Kaufmann, president of Fix Development, serves as the business manager for Blakesville Farm.
The Road to Wisconsin
Cheese Wedge. Photo courtesy of Blakesville Creamery
Pedraza began her cheesemaking career with an internship at Sweet Grass Dairy, Thomasville, Ga., a well-established maker of award-winning cow’s milk cheeses. She later ran the creamery at Jasper Hill Farm, Greensboro, Vt., and she spent five years making her own line of sheep’s milk cheeses at Meadowood Farms in Cazenovia, NY. The cheeses made at Meadowood did not go unnoticed. In 2014 two of them, Ledyard and Strawbridge, took awards at the American Cheese Society judging. Not long after that, food and drink author Janet Fletcher, who has chronicled the emergence of American artisan cheese for more than two decades, was bowled over by the leaf-wrapped Ledyard, which is similar to the robiolas of northern Italy. “The salting is perfect and the acidity keeps me reaching for another little taste, despite the richness,” Fletcher wrote in 2016.
Pedraza’s odyssey began in part while she was at Sweet Grass where owner Jeremy Little offered some career guidance. “He encouraged me to explore the other side of cheese--retail, wholesale, and distribution--if I was really serious about a career as a cheesemaker,” Pedraza says. Little’s advice led her to become the first hire at Saxelby’s Cheese Shop in New York, and later she worked at Pastoral Artisan Cheese Bread and Wine, which, until its closing in late 2019, was the premier cheese shop in Chicago.
Seasonal packaging, photo courtesy of Blakesville Creamery
As of this writing, Blakesville is producing fresh goat cheese (chevre), a number of soft ripened, lactic set cheeses (including Afterglow, washed in a sour cherry ale), and an aged cheese named Sunny Ridge that’s washed with a peach-flavored beer. The farm’s name pays homage to Barnum Blake, a 19th century figure in Port Washington’s early development. “He was an original settler to Port Washington and he built a pier at the end of the road where the farm is,” Pedraza says. “Blake was a bit of a shady character but his pier helped establish Port Washington as an important shipping town on the lake.” The property was previously known as Lake Breeze Farm and one of the soft-ripened cheeses is named in its honor.
Local and Fresh
From my perspective, as a retailer at Potash Markets, having fresh chevre available from a nearby creamery is ideal. We now have two excellent local cheesemakers to source chevre from, having purchased from Prairie Fruits Farm, in Champaign, IL, more than ever this year. Proximity ensures that the cheese reaches us in the best condition with a bouncy texture and a fresh flavor that we want to offer to our consumers. We recently added the Blakesville Chevre, Lake Breeze and Afterglow to the selection at our store on State Street.
Pedraza says the cheeses coming from her new creamery are meeting her high expectations. The fresh milk of a farmstead creamery is part of that, but the cheesemaking craft is critical too, and she takes no shortcuts in her cheesemaking. “I culture my milk in curdling tubs for about 18-24 hours and then ladle (the curd) out into a large cheesecloth-lined basket,” she says. “I think this is a more delicate way to make chevre and is why our texture is so light and fluffy. I also think it has a very clean flavor.” The soft-ripened cheeses are made using a lactic set process, which relies more on lactic acid and uses less rennet for coagulation. It’s a slower process, but when used with high-quality milk it produces a cheese with better textures and flavors, Pedraza says.
At Blakesville, new cheeses are in development, all made from the milk of the farm’s own 900 goats. Milk that is not used by the creamery is sold to a cooperative. Goat milk creameries often utilize high-quality sheep or cow’s milk from neighboring farms to make mixed milk cheeses. Pedraza says that is part of her future plans for Blakesville. “We will potentially bring in other milk. I'd like to buy sheep's milk from Mariana Marques de Almeida,” Pedraza says. “She has a crack sheep dairy in Juda, Wis., featuring Assaf sheep.” Marques de Almeida is a biologist who specializes in the breeding of sheep. For about two years she has worked with Mrs. J and Co. Farm in Juda to develop a flock of 1,500 ewes. The milk of the Assaf breed is particularly well-suited for cheesemaking. Pedraza is among many in Wisconsin who see an opportunity for more top-quality sheep’s milk and blended milk cheeses to be developed with the introduction of this breed to the state.
Pedraza says she is excited about being part of Wisconsin’s robust cheese community, and about the opportunity to run one of a relatively small number of farm-based goat cheese operations in the state. Blakesville’s cheeses are now sold by numerous retailers in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Madison, and at select retailers in Boston, New York, and other locations, proving that it pays to dream big.