For the love of cheese Telford's Trent Hendricks is among a growing number of domestic artisans looking not to make a fortune,just fine, handcrafted products A higher profile for fine U.S. cheeses

There's no big secret to making cheese: Let milk curdle; separate the curds from the whey, or watery remains; salt; press; and age.

Cheese. It's been done the same way for centuries.

Making great cheese is another matter. That's a mix of science, experience, art - and more than a little obsession.

Crafting distinctive artisanal cheese was long the domain of European makers, while U.S. dairies focused on mass production of cheddar and other popular American cheeses.

But over the last two decades, a small but growing group of cheese-makers in California, Wisconsin, Vermont - and even Southeastern Pennsylvania - have set out to prove that fine U.S. cheeses, like wines, can stand up without shame next to the old-world competition.

Ask Trent Hendricks, a Montgomery County man who chucked a successful trucking business to make cheese. In just four years, he has won several national awards and has seen his products land on the menus of fine restaurants.

"If we are going to make cheese, I want it to be the best," says Hendricks, 32, while giving a tour of his 30-acre farm near Telford. "I wasn't having fun," he says of trucking. "If I'm going to put in the hours . . . my goal is fulfillment."

If fulfillment is award-winning cheese, Trent and Rachel Hendricks have had a very good year.

In March, Hendricks' Cabriejo, an aged, hard goat-milk cheese, won the gold at the U.S. Cheese Championship in Milwaukee. And three of his cheeses took honors at the American Cheese Society show in July.

Hendricks, who limits retail sales to the cars queued up outside on Godshall Road on Saturdays, hopes his experience shows others that Pennsylvania, like Vermont, can earn a reputation for hand-crafted cheese.

"I want to export Pennsylvania and I want to raise the bar," he says.

While there are no data on handmade cheeses, Jim Collom, a statistician for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Pennsylvania, says its production and quality are on the rise - a clear increase from the Amish and small farmers who always sold homemade cheese of varied quality at local farm markets.

"Calling it artisanal or farmstead [fine cheese-makers with their own herds] cheese doesn't make it good," says Jack Morgan, plainspoken owner of Downtown Cheese in Reading Terminal Market, who is not above using barnyard adjectives to describe some handcrafted specimens he has sampled in 30 years of selling in Center City and Ardmore.