A North Carolina Artist Had a Dream of Making Cheeses the Old World Way, Like His Italian Father—So He Built a Cave in the Mountains to Do It

A North Carolina Artist Had a Dream of Making Cheeses the Old World Way, Like His Italian Father—So He Built a Cave in the Mountains to Do It
Inspired by his Italian heritage and Old World cheesemaking traditions, Victor Chiarizia built his own creamery from the ground up. Jack Sorokin
Updated:

“I’ve been a self-sustaining artist most of my adult life,” said 64-year-old Victor Chiarizia, whose hand-crafted residence is situated on six-plus acres in an Appalachian Mountains’ “holler,” just 12 miles from downtown Asheville, N.C.

A step inside his expansive workshop, which he also built, attests to his artistry. Dozens of tall, graceful glass vases in myriad muted hues line shelves and window ledges, and massive equipment for his ongoing glass blowing endeavor takes up about a quarter of the 3,600-square-foot workshop. Yet increasingly, Chiarizia’s focus has been on cheesemaking.

His late father, a 1940s immigrant from the Italian province of Molise, planted the cheesemaking seed when Chiarizia was just a boy. “It sparked an interest then,” he said, “but it wasn’t until I went to Italy with my family about 13 years ago and tried so many different kinds of cheeses that I realized I could make cow’s milk cheese like my father did. I wanted to make it the old way, the traditional way, the pure way—with mostly raw milk.”

Chiarizia was able to tap into his father’s cheesemaking knowledge for a year, from 2010 to 2011. He visited his father in 2011 just before he died, taking homemade cheese for him to taste. “He was a man of few words. He tasted the cheese, nodded his head, and said, ‘good.’ I knew he was pleased.”

A master glassblower, Chiarizia turned part of his workshop—which he built himself—into the space for his "nano cheese business." (Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery)
A master glassblower, Chiarizia turned part of his workshop—which he built himself—into the space for his "nano cheese business." Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery

Fresh Start

Just prior to 2010, Chiarizia took a few foundational cheesemaking classes through North Carolina State University. He signed up for a year-long cheese vat loaner program and began “playing around with simple cheeses and some blues.” He also took classes in Vermont and calls cheesemaker and educator Peter Dixon a mentor.
Chiarizia allocated a section of his workshop, around 400 square feet, for commercial cheesemaking use and had it inspected. There, he launched his “nano cheese business,” Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery. Since he’s also a machine fabricator, he was able to locate at auctions discarded industrial tanks, steam kettles, and more, and adapt them through welding, sanding, and other metalwork to suit his start-up cheesemaking needs.
It was important to Chiarizia to make cheese using fresh, local milk. “When I started, I was getting about 25 gallons of raw milk a week from a local dairy,” he said, “but now I get at least 160 gallons a week. I have a milk transport tank that I wheel on a dolly to my truck. Those 160 gallons of milk make about 150 pounds of cheese.”

A Lengthy Process

Chiarizia makes cheese weekly, in order to have enough to sell at various farmers’ markets and to individuals and local chefs.

He prepares the milk by heating it to around 90 degrees F; acidifies by adding bacterial cultures, which results in fermentation; and curdles it by adding rennet, enzymes that act on proteins in milk, causing a reaction. He cuts the curd with knives and heats it to further separate the curd and whey (remember Miss Muffet from the nursery rhyme?).

He then processes the curd through stirring, cooking, and washing, and continuing to acidify and dry it. The exact process varies depending on if the cheese will be a soft, semi-firm, firm, or hard cheese,” said Chiarizia.

The whey is drained, to leave only a mat of curd. “Animals love the whey,” Chiarizia added, “and it’s great as a fertilizer for the garden and for making foods like kimchi.” He salts and flavors the curd, shapes it into molds, and moves the resulting young cheeses to a cool, dark space to age.

“It can take sometimes nine hours in a day to get the cheese ready to be aged,” said Chiarizia. “It has to be checked repeatedly.”

Better With Age

To age his various blue cheeses, Chiarizia has a walk-in cooler he dubbed the Blue Room, where they develop for a minimum of three months. Some of the cheese is wrapped in colorful, thin foil, which provides more moisture for softer blue cheeses; leaving cheese wheels unwrapped makes them harder. To allow for oxygen to penetrate the blue cheeses and grow healthy, edible mold, he fabricated a device that punches holes in the blue cheese wheels.
Chiarizia's blue cheeses age in a walk-in cooler he calls the "Blue Room." (Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery)
Chiarizia's blue cheeses age in a walk-in cooler he calls the "Blue Room." Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery

His Old World-style cheeses are aged and housed in an 18-by-18-foot cave, carved into the mountain, that Chiarizia excavated and built himself. “I wanted to emulate how cheeses are aged in places like Italy and France,” Chiarizia said. “To get the terroir, the characteristic earthy taste and flavors … to achieve deeper flavors because of the rain’s moisture that seeps into the cave naturally through the bedrock.”

Aside from the hand-hewn, vaulted ceiling cabin that took him 12 years to build and features his largest glass creation—an elaborate chandelier—he considers this his apex. It took upwards of 40 hours of backhoe digging into the hillside next to his cabin to construct the cave. He then had to jackhammer the bedrock and secure the area with concrete walls, leaving the back of the cave naturally exposed. The ceiling is held firmly in place with concrete-filled metal roof decking.

Inside are numerous wooden shelves for holding the cheese wheels, as well as industrial fans for circulation. The cave’s temperature is a consistent 50 to 51 degrees F, with humidity at 98.3 percent.

In order to make the cave’s exterior aesthetically pleasing, he hired workers to stack Appalachian blue stone on the front side and around the door. Inset over the door is a face sculpture of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine and vegetation. Copper flashing decorates the exterior door. Two other doors inside the cave help to maintain the cave’s temperature and keep out critters.

Chiarizia's blue cheeses age in a walk-in cooler he calls the "Blue Room." (Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery)
Chiarizia's blue cheeses age in a walk-in cooler he calls the "Blue Room." Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery

On the well-organized shelves within the cave are dozens of cheese wheels—each pinned with a tag that notes the type of cheese, date made, pH monitoring information, and more. The cheeses in the cave age for up to one year.

Within the temperature- and humidity-controlled cave are dozens of cheese wheels, each labeled with their type, date made, pH monitoring information, and more. (Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery)
Within the temperature- and humidity-controlled cave are dozens of cheese wheels, each labeled with their type, date made, pH monitoring information, and more. Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery

Creative Concoctions

Just as each of his hand-blown glass vases are one-of-a-kind, each wheel of cheese is as well. Chiarizia calls his cheesemaking efforts “food art … where art meets science.” Each wheel bears his creative stamp.

Among his signature cheeses are ones that Thai chile-embedded, espresso-crusted, or stouted-oatmeal-porter-flavored. He assigns each cheese a unique name, too. The espresso-crusted Johnny Valdez is named for a caffeine-loving uncle, and the mild, blue-veined Ridge Blue is a play on the Blue Ridge Mountains. All in all, he typically makes at least a dozen different types of cheeses and regularly sells out of his inventory.

The espresso-crusted Johnny Valdez is named for a caffeine-loving uncle. (Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery)
The espresso-crusted Johnny Valdez is named for a caffeine-loving uncle. Blue Ridge Mountain Creamery

“It’s so satisfying to go into the Blue Room or the cave and look around and see the fruits of my labor,” Chiarizia said. “What I like doing is making stuff, and everything on this property was made by me. And then for others to be able to enjoy the cheeses I make—that’s rewarding.”

Deena Bouknight
Deena Bouknight
Author
A 30-plus-year writer-journalist, Deena C. Bouknight works from her Western North Carolina mountain cottage and has contributed articles on food culture, travel, people, and more to local, regional, national, and international publications. She has written three novels, including the only historical fiction about the East Coast’s worst earthquake. Her website is DeenaBouknightWriting.com
Related Topics