How Black Radish Creamery Does It All

John Reese, who founded Granville, Ohio-based Black Radish Creamery with his wife Anne, started his cheesemaking journey after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America.  “It was the culmination of everything I had done up to that point,” he says. “When I graduated at age 29, I had done business, I had started a nursing degree, I had my personal trainer certificate—but food kept calling. Cheese was physically demanding, it had the science I loved, and obviously food, so I stuck with it.” In addition to working as a cheesemaker, Reese continued his cheese education by taking classes with various expert cheesemakers, including at the University of Vermont. The path may have been circuitous, but the goal was clear.

 

From Preserving Fruit to Preserving Milk

The Reeses knew that launching their own creamery would be an arduous process.  In the meantime, they started a preserves business in 2011, crafting uniquely flavored, pectin-free preserves from local fruit and selling their products at the Granville Farmers’ Market. They called their venture “Black Radish Creamery” from the very beginning, a promise to themselves and their customers that they would eventually produce artisan cheese.

However, the next expansion for Black Radish Creamery was into retail—in 2016, an opportunity arose to open a cheese shop in Columbus, Ohio’s North Market. After the shop successfully made it through its first holiday season, Reese made his first batch of cheese in the spring of 2017.  

 

Proof at the Counter

“Thanks to having a cheese shop and a presence at farmers markets, we could put our cheese in front of our existing customers,” he says. “The stuff our customers enjoyed, we kept making, the stuff that didn’t sell, we stopped producing.” Reese credits Stone Wall Dairy, which supplies all of Black Radish Creamery’s milk, as a crucial partner in the production process. Stone Wall Dairy is operated by Louis Catlett, a fifth-generation farmer. The dairy is located about an hour away from the creamery in Ohio’s Appalachian region. “The farm is basically two huge 20-acre hills,” says Reese. “They rotate the cows through their fields, and the cows drink natural spring water.”

 

Seasonal Cheeses

Black Radish Creamery produces several varieties of cheese throughout the year.  “We try to have our cheese make sense for the season, though there are some we make all year,” Reese says.  “Some of our customers switch from one cheese to another throughout the seasons, and we have gotten grocery stores and restaurants to embrace those fluctuations.”

Shenanigans, a raw cow’s milk tomme-style cheese that’s aged for at least 8 months, is the star of wintertime cheesemaking. “The milk is more concentrated in the winter, with a higher fat content, so I wanted to make cheese more based on fat than protein,” says Reese. “The milk is stark white, and once the rind develops we rub it with olive oil and charcoal…When you cut into it, you have a rustic black outside and a stark white interior, which hearkens back to the Black Radish Creamery name.  It’s a nice balance of piquancy and sweetness.  We only make it during winter, because once we’re into the fresh grass season, it’s a different color and the components of the milk are different.”

 

In the summertime, Reese switches production to Buckhorn, a raw cow’s milk tomme-style cheese that is aged for at least 6 months.  “We’re not trying to go crazy with adjuncts, in order to let the summer milk shine though,” he explains.

Other cheeses are made year-round, although the character changes significantly based on the season.  For example, Bandit Red Cheddar is a raw cow milk’s cheese during the warmer months, when the cows are eating fresh grass.  During the winter, the milk is thermalized, or heated to a sub-pasteurization temperature, to ensure the best quality cheese.

 

Bankston is Black Radish Creamery’s Camembert-style cheese.  “We try to follow the production methods of traditional Camembert as much as possible,” says Reese.  “We make it all year long, but the components change.  The milkfat changes, sometimes the make room gets cold…We try to end up with where a nice Camembert would be, with a nice consistent paste throughout, but it fluctuates through the seasons, some batches are firmer or more soft.”

The cheese lineup also includes Charlie’s Legend, a clothbound cheddar that is aged for at least a year; Pious Eddy, a pasteurized cow’s milk cheese with a cider-washed rind; raclette; and fresh cheddar curds.  Currently, Black Radish Creamery’s cheeses are distributed in the Columbus area, as well as Cleveland.  Reese plans to expand distribution in the upcoming year.  “We’ve grown organically, through word of mouth from chefs,” he says.  “I’m selling more cheese than I’m making!”

 

Looking Ahead

In the immediate future, Reese is using grant funding to purchase equipment in order to increase the production of the creamery’s Camembert-style cheese.  Other projects on the to-do list include updating the creamery’s branding and packaging, and eventually, making additional upgrades to the cheese caves and production space.  “We want to build up the base of a cheese business that can survive for a long time,” he says. Citing Alise Sjostrom of Minnesota’s Redhead Creamery as an inspiration, Reese also hopes to partner with local distillers to ferment whey into a vodka-style spirit. Read about Wheyward Spirit. 

With a retail cheese shop and expanding cheese production facility, Black Radish Creamery has come a long way since its initial iteration as a farmers market purveyor of preserves. But according to Reese, one important element of the business will never change. “We will never stop selling at farmers markets. Our connection to the community started us, so we will never stop doing that.” And the preserves? They are still making them, and now pairing them with their cheeses.