French Cheese Company Buys Into Rogue Creamery

By Lorrie Baumann

Savencia Fromage and Dairy has become an investor in Rogue Creamery. The French company is the second-largest milk processor in France and the fourth-largest in the world, with more than 19,000 employees in 30 countries. Among its specialty cheeses are Saint Agur, a blue cheese in the style of a Roquefort but made with cow milk; and Caprice des Dieux, Saint Albray, Le Rustique, and Cœur de Lion, which are soft-ripened cheeses. In the U.S., the company is best known for Alouette cream cheese, and it is the owner of the Kolb-Lena Cheese Company of Illinois, which makes cheeses including Dorothy’s Comeback Cow, which won a gold sofi Award this year. Rogue Creamery is located in Central Point, Oregon, and is best known for its Rogue River Blue – another gold sofi award winner this year – as well as Smokey Blue and Oregon Blue, although the creamery also makes cheddar cheeses and a number of other blue cheeses.

Rogue Creamery was founded in 1933, purchased by the late Gaetano Vella in 1935, and acquired by David Gremmels and Cary Bryant in 2002. Bryant left Rogue Creamery in 2015, later divesting his share of the business. Gremmels began looking for another investor to partner with even as he continued to grow Rogue Creamery through the acquisition of a cow dairy and to transition the company to organic production as part of a vision for a business that contributes to society and to the planet as well as producing some of the best handmade cheese in the U.S. Rogue Creamery was recently named a Best for the World company for the second year in a row by B Lab, the chartering organization for B Corporations. “We were ranked Best for the World in two categories, best overall and best towards the environment. Our new partner is very proud of our commitment,” said Gremmels, who will remain the company’s President. “They are equally committed to sustainability and to having a positive impact on the environment and the communities in which they work. Rogue Creamery is a template for them to further understand what it is to be a public benefit company.”

Under the new partnership, nothing much will change about Rogue Creamery, except that the company will now have new resources to increase production to make its cheese available to a wider market, and the dairy will be able to add new equipment to expand its herd to the carrying capacity of the land it occupies, according to Gremmels. “It has allowed us to build a strategy for the future and expand our reach, which means to increase our inventory. We’ve had to allocate that over the past few years,” he said. Increasing the inventory will require additions to Rogue Creamery’s aging caves as well as other capital projects that had been put on hold over the past few years.

The creamery will continue to be active in its community – Rogue Creamery hosts the Oregon Cheese Guild’s annual Oregon Cheese Festival as well as participating in other cultural community activities and local charities. “[Savencia] stepped up and said they support our being a social benefit company, remaining autonomous and supporting our vision,” Gremmels said. “I was looking for a business partner who would understand and support what it is to be a social benefit company…. It’s a weight off my shoulders knowing that I have a partner that is solidly committed to our vision and is there to support us in furthering our commitment to quality. What’s more, a partner who will support our initiatives to positively benefit our environment and community.”
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Savencia’s support extends to the Rogue Creamery dairy, located a few miles away at Grants Pass, Oregon, and to the hundred or so Normande, Brown Swiss, Montbéliarde, Holstein, Jersey and Milking Shorthorn cows who make the milk for their organic cheeses. Savencia owns dairies in France where the company practices biodynamic agriculture and is already providing that expertise to benefit the Rogue Creamery herd of about 100 milking cows. That expertise has already been employed to increase the herd’s comfort through the addition of more watering tanks. “We thought we had enough watering stations, but their expert has given us some insights about the cows’ paths in the pasture and recommended more,” Gremmels said. “It has already improved yields and, I think, our cows’ comfort too.” The partnership will also provide the funding that will allow the dairy to perhaps add a third robotic milker to the two already at work there. Each robot is capable of serving up to 60 cows, so the addition of a third will allow the herd to grow. “Our goal is to increase from about 100 to 180 cows, which will be ideal for the dairy and how it was designed,” Gremmels said.

With the robotic milkers, affectionately named Charlie and Matilda, cows report to the milker whenever they feel like they’d like to be milked instead of waiting on the farmer’s schedule. When the cow enters the milking machine’s stall, sensors guide milking cups onto the cow’s udder. The cups attach, and the milk flows through tubing into a collection tank. The milk’s temperature is recorded, and a sample is analyzed to ensure that it’s healthy. If the analysis indicates that there’s a problem, the milker sends a message to Herd Manager Jesse Trimnal, who is able to respond right away to care for the animal. “If it sees any deviation, it will divert the milk, and we can use that for the calves, but it doesn’t go into the milk tank,” Trimnal said. When there’s no problem, the milk is stored in the collection tank and picked up every other day for transportation to the creamery. “Everything that comes out of the cow goes right into the vat,” Trimnal said. “It’s all up to the cow – we’re not forcing them to do anything.”

The Rogue Creamery cows produce less milk in an average day than do the cows in the Holstein herds of large commercial dairies, but they’re expected to live longer and produce milk longer than average too. “We’re looking at quality rather than quantity,” Trimnal said. “The quality of life, the quality of the milk is just so much better.”

The dairy holds tours on Saturdays that are open to the public and guided by Trimnal, and it’s open for additional hours to members of the public who want to take a walking tour guided by a map and signs to explain how it all works. As many as 40 people at a time have showed up for the Saturday tours, just as the Rogue Creamery Cheese Shop, with its invitation at the door for visitors to ask whatever questions they’d like about the cheese inside, has become a popular local tourist destination. “A lot of people don’t know the inner workings of their milk and cheese,” Gremmels said. “At both the Rogue Creamery cheese shop and our dairy, we’re aiming to change that. We want to offer a fun, interactive experience – where you can not only buy cheese and have lunch with your family, but also learn a little more about how these cheeses got to your plate and what makes them unique.”