The Vernon Morning Star Dec6, 1998

by JASON MERCIER
Morning Star Writer

A new cheese production facility aiming for a different slice of the market opens this week in the city synonymous with cheese.

Armstrong, long home to one award-winning cheese facility, will soon have two cheese producers when the Village Cheese Co. opens its doors in the coming week. The Smith Drive facility is entirely different than its crosstown competitor Dairyworld/Armstrong Cheese, however. While Armstrong Cheese can run upwards of 200,000 Ibs of mitk in a day, Village Cheese will be lucky to process five per cent of that figure.

Owner Dwight Johnson says he expects locals and tourists alike to become customers, parlicularly those with nostalgic leanings.

"This is about a little of the good old days when you could buy a slice of cheese off the round. This is the way cheese was served in every corner store. We're kind of setting the cheese industry back 70 years." Johnson draws parallels between Village Cheese and the Okanagan's cottage wineries. He wants to emphasize the same personal service and attention to detail as those wineries do. Once the idea was devised, choosing Armstrong as the site of the cheese facility was a natural. It piggy-backed on the popularity of the Armstrong Cheese facility, but offered something different because of the commitment to retail. "I think that this community has had a long tradition of cheese and butter. We're in an age when agri-tourism like the wineries and fruit stands are of interest. The time was opportune for this type of business. The product has just never been presented this way.

The 4,000 sq. ft. facility is divided almost equally into retail and production space, with a viewing window separating the two.

While the production facility is all gleaming stainless steel, the retail space is rich in detail, with exposed wood beams, vintage milk jugs, pine display racking and even a 1928 vintage Ford truck, echoing of Crane's Drive-ln, the former occupant of the site. In one corner is the ice cream serving area, in another, a selection of items from across the province and a section of gifts devoted to bovine references. Johnson plans to get his milk supply from local dairy farmers and has set 14,000 litres per day as a decent input,netting about 1,400 ibs of cheese daily. In charge of producing it will be Ivan Matte, a third-generation cheesemaker with 27 years experience in the industry, 15 of those at Armstrong Cheese.

"It was a family tradition I wanted to get back into a plant where you can control production from start to finish. In the bigger companies you kind of lose the hands-on aspect." He intends to re-introduce old fashioned methods of cheese making.

"Today, a lot of the companies don't produce traditional cheddar. We want to get something with lower moisture and better keeping quality." Another new taste Village Cheese is banking on is cheese curds. The curds, popular in Eastern Canada in part because of more numerous cheese production facilities, have a taste described as peanuts and make a good companion to beer or wine. Curds are the material produced after salting and before pressing the cheese into molds.

"People are not accustomed to cheese curds:' said Matte. "It's an experience to eat them, it really is. They're addictive." One of the reasons cheese curds have not caught on in the West is because of the scarcity of cheese makers and the demand to make curds fresh daily in small batches. The Village Cheese facility has the capacity to do both, as well as produce butter and other products.

Matte has already begun ta experiment with the new equipment, putting out a few rounds of cheddar and flavoured cheeses. Havarti, Swiss and Feta are all potential products he will be looking at down the road. He is proud of the emphasis on old style methods such as 30 ib reels, 90 Ib reels and the cylindrical stilton 10 ib cheeses. Many of these haven't been produced by commercial cheese makers since the 1960s.

"The thing about cheese is that every day is different. Just because you made it one way doesn't mean it will the same tomorrow." The change of the seasons, bacterial culture and butterfat confent in milk are just a few of the variables that come into play when making cheese, he says. But in the end, it is his instincts he must trust.

"You don't need all the instrumentation. It's hands-on. You can tell by the smell and by the feel."