More than 2,500 food and wine fans attended the opening on Saturday. With smiles on their faces and plates and glasses in their hands, they chatted as they inched toward tables laden with piles of locally made cheese and vendors pouring tastes of beer, wine and cider at the in Central Point. The popular annual event, which ran March 11-12, filled the indoor, 57,000-square-foot Seven Feathers Event Center. Attracting culinary artisans, craft beverage makers and their enthusiasts from across the Pacific Northwest, the Oregon Cheese Festival is one of the largest cheese-themed events in the country, said Katie Bray, executive director of the . The Oregon Cheese Festival was started in 2005 by David Gremmels of in Central Point.

Rogue Creamery’s bestseller this year? An extra strong, extra-aged blue cheese, made of cow and goat milk. “We like to say that it’s a celebration of cheese and everything that goes with it,” said Bray. Cheesemakers are at the core of the event, she said, but it also supports small, family-owned makers of many edible items. With 110 seller booths, the 2023 Oregon Cheese Festival let people try thousands of products — sauces, nuts and chocolate — not always seen at grocery stores. Another perk: Face-to-face talks with the owners of the small businesses, said Bray.

The foragers at passed out tastes of whipped truffle butter and sold packages of hand-picked, Oregon wild morels and mushrooms such as maitake, reishi and agarikon. offered bites of made of alligator, bison, elk, salmon and venison as well as beef; one version was flavored by maple bourbon. in Eugene poured tastes of green-colored Thicc: Shamrock Shake. in Bandon handed out samples of its fine cheddar, curds, fromage blanc and Monterey Jack with nothing artificial added. And offered its gooey , made of farmstead goat cheese whey with cinnamon and vanilla.

A fundraiser for the nonprofit Oregon Cheese Guild, the event puts part of Oregon’s culinary story on display. Despite all the survival jobs pioneers did to successfully traverse the Oregon Trail, they also found the time to make cheese, say historians. Canisters of fresh milk were attached to moving wagons to churn the liquid into cottage cheese. Some of the farmers who set foot in the Oregon territories before it was a state in 1859 settled on the coast and raised dairy cows that ate grasses growing in the mild climate. The farmers made cheese, which withstood long trips to Portland grocers better than milk.

By the 1880s, there were 10 large cheesemakers in the Bandon area, according to the Bandon Historical Society. Author Tami Parr, who wrote found that the first cheese factory opened in Tillamook in 1893. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Swiss and German immigrants arrived in Oregon to start a new life farming the fertile lands. In 1916, the Cadonaus founded , named after the alpine flowers that grow in their native Switzerland. The property in Southwest Portland, which had become an event center, sold in 2019.

In the early 1900s, creamery associations that promoted cheesemakers and set standards of quality rose across Oregon. During two worlds wars, Oregon produced millions of pounds of cheese to feed members of the U.S. military. Shortages of European cheeses in the 1940s and 1950s encouraged U.

S. companies to produce blue cheese, said Parr. Roquefort-styled blue cheese production began in 1953 with the first wheels of . In the 1960s and 1970s, owners of small dairy farms embraced the back-to-the-land culture that focused on artisan, natural cheese over mass-produced versions. Goat milk cheese became available at Oregon farmers markets alongside cheddar, blue and Swiss-style.

Before Eugene’s most famous counter-culturalist, , became famous for his revolutionary 1962 novel, he worked for his father, dairy farmer Fred Kesey. In the late 1940s, Fred Kesey founded the Eugene Farmers Creamery Cooperative, selling under the brand name Darigold. , best known for creating Nancy’s yogurt and cottage cheese, has been owned and operated by Ken Kesey’s brother, Chuck, and Chuck’s family. Southern Oregon’s first artisan creamery cooperative, the Rogue River Valley Co-op, was founded in Central Point in 1933 to support local dairy farmers during the Great Depression. Over time, it became , producing artisan, handmade cheese created from organic milk from cows that benefit from the .

In 2002, David Gremmels bought the company and developed the next generation of artisan cheeses, including the distinctively Oregon , which was named at the 2019 World Cheese Awards, besting 3,800 competitors, including legendary European brands. Rogue River Blue was served to French President Emmanuel Macron at a in 2022. But Rogue Creamery wasn’t the first to win on the world stage. was awarded the best medium cheddar at the 2010 World Cheese Awards. And the Oregon pioneers weren’t the first to make cheese.

Parr found that trappers and traders ate fresh cheese. , who sailed the Columbia Rediviva into the Columbia River in 1792, and other sea explorers had goats, sheep and cows aboard. — Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072 |