By Gordon Edgar—
The big news in the cheese world right now is the end of almost a century of cheesemaking in Sonoma. Vella Cheese Company announced that it has stopped making cheese.
Vella is one of the big names in California cheesemaking. Starting in 1931, it was in its fourth generation when the family decided to call it quits. Though they made lots of great cheese over the decades, they were best known for Dry Monterey Jack, one of the most historic cheeses made on the West Coast.
One of the best things about food is that it can also teach us about history at the same time we are eating it. Like all cheeses with a history that is more than a couple of decades old, Dry Jack has a few conflicting origin stories. Most likely, it was created as a way for a distributor in the 1930s to avoid losing money on cheese that was too perishable to sell while still in great shape.
Over the years, the process was refined and perfected. The Vellas were known for rubbing their cheese in oil, cocoa powder, and black pepper, which made a distinctive hard rind. With lower moisture content than regular Monterey Jack, Dry Jack can age for up to four years. Fascinatingly, Dry Jack became a California alternative to parmigiano reggiano during World War II and has been beloved ever since.
Dry Jack is recognized as an American Original style of cheese by the American Cheese Society and is included in the Ark of Taste by the Slow Food Foundation. While one can’t fault a family for deciding not to run a business any longer, Vella Cheese Company’s closing ends a tradition of California cheesemaking that can’t be replaced. They were the last producer of this cheese on earth.
My personal favorite Vella Cheese was always Mezzo Secco, a cocoa-rubbed, higher-moisture table-cheese version of Dry Jack that went with everything. Second-generation cheesemaker Ig Vella said he found the recipe handwritten by his father in the drawer of an old desk. Ig started making it again after the cheese company hadn’t produced it for decades because he liked it so much.
Ig Vella passed in 2011. In 2021, head cheesemaker Charley Malkassian—the only cheesemaker to work with all four generations of Vellas—died unexpectedly. Fourth-generation Vella Gabe Luddy has been making cheese for decades now, but these deaths and the business losses from COVID proved to be too large an obstacle to overcome.
When I started working in cheese, meeting Ig Vella was a rite of passage. I got an introduction through the then-president of the American Cheese Society, and it was a huge honor to get a tour of the facility and then go to a meal together. I got to hear Ig speak at numerous Sonoma Valley Cheese Conferences put on by cheesemaker Sheana Davis, and those talks gave me an education in California cheesemaking history that formed a basis for my career in cheese.
“Ig Vella was a mentor to not only myself, but to many cheesemakers over the years. He had an open-door policy to talk and help them achieve their goals. Over the decades I saw him help so many local cheesemakers find a niche for the cheeses they produce,” writes Davis. Indeed, founder Tom Vella also founded the Oregon creamery that became Rogue Creamery, which in 2019 became the first to produce an American cheese (Rogue River Blue) that won Best Cheese at the World Cheese Awards.
Vella Cheese Company closing is truly a loss for Sonoma, California, and the greater world of cheese. But in this world of businesses that come and go, we should also be happy that we had them as long as we did.
Gordon Edgar loves cheese and worker co-ops and has been combining these infatuations as the cheese buyer for Rainbow Grocery Cooperative since 1994. He is Vice Chair of the American Cheese Society Judging and Competition Committee and is a member of the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers. Edgar has written two books on cheese—”Cheesemonger” (2010) and “Cheddar” (2015)—and lives in San Francisco with his adorable white mini schnauzer named Fillmore Grumble. He writes about grief, and sometimes cheese, at https://bit.ly/42IwYf0
Over the Rainbow Cheese Counter
Published on September 10, 2026
Recent Comments