Brazos Valley Cheese

Specialties

Brazos Valley Cheese is dedicated to crafting all-​natural, high quality, healthy cheese using traditional methods and no artificial flavors, preservatives or coloring. Our milk comes from grass-​fed cows that graze freely on three local Brazos River Valley Jersey/​Brown Swiss dairies that do not use growth hormones or antibiotics. The high butterfat content of this milk makes rich, yellow, creamy cheeses that are used by the finest chefs and sold at the best retail shops in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and Houston. Every one of our cheeses is made with raw cow’s milk and all the hard cheeses are aged in our underground cheese cave.

History

Established in 1999.

Brazos Valley Cheese is a 16-​year-​old company that originally was just an idea in 1999. Rebeccah Salmeri wanted to teach herself how to make cheese because the Brown Swiss milk cows that serviced families on the agrarian Homestead Heritage community where she lived in Waco, Texas, were producing an abundance of spring milk. She thumbed through a How-​to Cheesemaking book and experimented with making butter, cream cheese and mozzarella. Her brothers built her a make-​shift cheese press from plywood and dowels, and she used a gallon tin can with drain holes drilled in it as a cheese mold for her first hard cheese.

In May 2005, her cousin Marc Kuehl visited Waco, Texas from Denver, Colorado. Upon coming to Texas, he found a new purpose in life at Homestead Heritage and decided to stay. Rebeccah mentioned that she had always dreamed to start a cheese business. In December 2005 Marc and Rebeccah began Brazos Valley Cheese.