Cave Aged Advantage
Cascadia Creamery revived a long tradition of artisan cheese making in the Trout Lake Valley and part of that tradition was aging cheese in ancient lava tube caves.
At our new facility we continue this tradition using a special aging room built underground inside a natural lava tube cave.
Our cave benefits from the strong airflow from the large cave network here in Trout Lake.
This natural cave air has an ideal temperature and humidity profile for aging our hand crafted artisan cheeses.
The continual flow of air from the lava tube helps to accomplish many things in the development of the cheeses:
- It keeps the cheese at a constant, ideal temperature and humidity with minimal power consumption.
- It imparts terroir, which means "taste of place". The climate of a region, the soils, and the terrain all factor into the terroir of a fine wine or fine cheese and greatly influences taste.
- The airflow carries the sweet, earthy smells of the lava cave over the rind of the cheese and imparts the unique characteristics of the cave's own family of bacteria, fungi, and molds drifting softly through the air currents.
In addition to the unique, complex flavor that our cave-aging process produces, there are health benefits as well. Our raw milk cheese has probiotics, B vitamins, and more. Something that tastes delicious, that's also so good for you? Sounds like a dream. At Cascadia Creamery, we made this dream our reality.