From ripe brie to moldy blue, they're producing hundreds of award-winning handmade cheeses that increasingly are edging out the imports at supermarkets and on restaurant menus.
"In my opinion," said Roberts, widely regarded as the leading expert on America's burgeoning small cheese-making industry, "most top-quality artisan American cheeses can stand on the same stage as their European counterparts."
A Temple grad who formerly was director of development at the Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill, Roberts is back in town this week for a series of cheese tastings. To him, the growth in the nation's handmade cheese movement isn't just about good flavor, it's reflective of a fundamental shift in American agriculture.
"What we're seeing is that more and more people are looking for authentic food products," said Roberts. "It's being driven largely by the organic and slow-food movements. . . . The growth in the past 16 years is phenomenal, in places where not everyone would think of for handmade cheese."
Like in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Tucked among the subdivisions outside West Chester, Chester County, Shellbark Hollow is attracting national attention with its creamy chevre "biscuits."
Near Washington's Crossing, Bucks County, and in the shadow of a country club, Ely Pork Products makes robust, washed-rind, Trappist-style cheese.
And a short drive up the Northeast Extension in Telford, Montgomery County, Hendricks Farms and Dairy makes more than a dozen different styles, including a Bavarian Swiss that won a gold medal in 2006 from the American Cheese Society.
Enter the Hendricks Farms aging room, and you're hit with a funky, welcoming whiff of cheddar, Gouda and Gruyere. The Munster is coated with Chimay Belgian ale, to promote the growth of mold. The Cheddar Blue shows a dull grayish coating. The Telford Tomme smells like that old Bucks County farm your folks used to drag you to for pumpkin picking.
