Valley Shepherd Creamery - Long Valley, NJ
Cheese aging in Valley Shepherd's cheese cave. Take the tour and you'll see this too!
I'm not going to lie - even if all you did at Valley Shepherd Creamery was spend some time in their fantastic gift shop, it would be time well spent. But, needless to say, you'd be missing out if you didn't do more.
Valley Shepherd Creamery, located in Long Valley, NJ, uses European traditional methods to produce many of their cheeses. According to the owners,
Our goal was to create a self sustaining sheep dairy that would be geared to educate everyone in the process of sheep management and cheese making. At the same time, we wanted to make delicious cheeses that follows the old style European methods and thus the Valley Shepherd Creamery concept was born.
They've got a variety of cow's milk and sheep's milk cheeses and when we did a tour about a year ago there, we got to taste lots of them. The tour we did included a talk about the farm, a tour of the cheese making area and a tractor ride across their land over to the cheese cave. We got to sample many varieties of cheese - none of which was rejected. It's a great destination whether you're by yourself or have the family in tow.
There are great animals to observe, including my favorites....alpacas.
There are lots of places and ways to enjoy the taste of Valley Shepherd:
- If you're not in NJ or don't want to make the trek, never fear, you can get a Valley Shepherd cheeses at Melt Kraft in Brooklyn, NY, 101 Macdougal Street in NYC or Reading Terminal in Philadelphia.
- Interested in a Tour? Check out their tour menu here.
- Want to take a cheese-making class? You get to age your wheel of cheese there for retrieval 90 days after the class. Pretty neat. Check out their schedule here.
- If you like a little wine with your cheese, check out their wine & cheese events here.
- If you're in Philly - check out events here.
Know before you go:
