Meet the big cheese making award-winning dairy in caves in Faribault
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Hundreds of cheese makers from across the world are gathering in the dairyland — Madison, Wisconsin — for the World Championship Cheese Contest. Taking place Mar. 3-5, it’s a prestigious competition that honors the best every type of cheese imaginable.
Among the competitors is Prairie Farms Dairy, which manufactures cheese in Faribault. But it’s not your ordinary manufacturing plant. The cheese is aged in caves.
The Caves of Faribault were carved out of natural sandstone in the 1850s. They were first used to ferment beer. Francisco Zepeda, the head cheesemaker at the caves, says you can still taste the yeast in some of the cheese.
“Softness, the creamy, the tangy — all those those flavors,” Zepeda described.
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Zepeda has been making cheese all his life. He grew up on a farm in Mexico, where he milked cows and turned it into queso fresco. He’s been working at the caves with Prairie Farms for more than 15 years.
The cheesemaking process Zepeda oversees has human hands in every part. And the cheese is the only in the country aged in caves. The cheese stays in the caves to age for 90 days. Zepeda’s favorite is the St. Pete’s Select Blue Cheese.
It’s one of the four cheeses that will be entered into the World Championship Cheese Contest, along with Prairie Farm’s AmaBlu Blue Cheese, AmaGorg Gorgonzola and Smoked Blue Cheese wheel.
Zepeda has attended the competition in the past, “you get to see a lot of these great cheeses from all the world.”
The last time cheese from the Caves of Faribault won in the competition, was third place for the Felix Blue Cheese in 2022.
The caves are not open for public tours.
