Cheese Making

Title: Intro to Cheese-Making—Short course

Class time and date: Monday May 3rd 11-2:30 PM

Instructor: Wendy Mitchell, Avalanche Cheese Company, Basalt

Location: Basalt

Cost: $40

This is a course designed to give people an overview of the cheese making process. While informative this course will touch on the basics but is just an introduction to the process. Students will get hands on experience in our Creamery and leave with their choice of two finished cheeses or two cheeses to age at home. This is a three and a half hour course. Students should bring rubber boots, a clean t-shirt and lunch. Cost is $40 and class size is limited to 6 people.

11:00am – Students arrive.

11:15am – Cultures and Rennet.

12:15pm – Cutting and Tipping.

1:15pm – Turning Cheese.

1:30pm – Salting.

1:30pm – 2:30pm – Classroom style discussion.

Wendy Mitchell is Avalanche Cheese Company’s owner and primary cheese-maker.

After a little over 20 years in the restaurant business, Wendy became captivated with the idea of cheese making as a way to stay connected to food yet transition out of the restaurant business.  In 2006 she sold her small restaurant company in Houston, Texas and spent a year living in Edinburgh, Scotland.  During that time she traveled around the United Kingdom taking cheese making classes and interning on farms and dairies in order to learn how to make cheese.  The willingness of the cheese makers in the United Kingdom to openly share information with new cheese makers and teach their skills was a true inspiration.  That openness gave her not only the knowledge she needed, but the commitment that this was the right trade/industry for her.

Newly connected to cheese making, Wendy moved to Aspen, Colorado only to learn that there was not a dependable source of milk for the volume of cheese that she wanted and needed to produce.  She and her husband decided to invest in a small farm in Paonia, where they could raise goats and set up a dairy.  The town of Paonia was another affirmation that this path was the right one.  The willingness of the community to help a “city girl” with a vision was truly heartening.  Paonia is a community of farmers and the organic movement in Paonia is one of the strongest in the region.

Wendy spent most of 2008 learning about raising dairy goats and farming, while setting up a milking parlor in Paonia and a creamery in Basalt.  In March of 2008, she received the first of her milk from Paonia and began processing cheese.