Rising to the Top
- Sophie Hauville
- Nov 20, 2024
- 5 min read
Edible Monterey
November 2024
Community and coffee boost Carmel Valley Creamery
Sophie Hauville readily admits she is obsessed with cheese. Part of that comes from growing up in a fromage-loving family in the Normandy region of France. The other part comes from moving to the United States two decades ago and finding it a bit of…a cheese desert.
Now, she is enhancing the landscape of cheesemaking in Monterey County, where few creameries currently exist.
But the path to her artisanal career took her down a long and convoluted road. In 2002, Hauville moved to Chicago for a business internship. It was a culture shock in many ways, including the fact that she did not then speak English. Chicago winters, too, were something that took getting used to.
When she returned from trips to her home country, “I used to hide cheese in my suitcase,” Hauville admits. “It was a real bummer to not find any good cheese (in the U.S.).” Her family back in France was sympathetic to her plight and at one point her cousin mailed her a Camembert.
For many years, Hauville worked in corporate sales and marketing, only to have her career abruptly shut down by the pandemic. Sheltering in an off-the-grid cabin in Palo Colorado, she kept herself occupied by working on the Eichorn family’s Country Flat Farm. There she also began having conversations about cheese with Charlie Cascio, head cheesemaker for Carmel Valley Ranch at the time. Cascio took Hauville under his wing and showed her his techniques. She fell for cheese all over again, but now, she wanted to make it her livelihood. “I was hooked,” she says. “I realized I could make the flavors from home here.”
This lifelong romance sparked the newly opened Carmel Valley Creamery, owned by Hauville with partners Ken Howe and Justin Saunders. It is a cheesemaking operation as well as a retail shop with coffee, artisanal products and, of course, cheese for sale. Launched on July 14—Bastille Day—the creamery has become a social hub for Carmel Valley Village, something that harkens back to the building’s past life as Rosie’s Cracker Barrel, a popular general store and tavern. “It’s a gathering spot that instantly became a gathering spot again,” says Hauville.
The coffee/espresso bar has been a huge draw, although Hauville says it was a last-minute addition when the anticipated beer and wine license was delayed. The clean, bright space with a modern rustic vibe also allows people a peek at the cheesemaking process, with the creamery room visible through large windows. Rows of cheeses can also be glimpsed in the temperature- and humidity-controlled aging room.
“We spent a lot of time creating a space that would be warm and welcoming,” says Hauville. Patios in the front and back of the building give the opportunity to sit outside and enjoy a latte or cappuccino in the Carmel Valley sunshine.
Hauville’s aim is to make cheese during business hours when customers can see what she’s doing: “It’s really important to let people see how their food is made,” she says.
She is keeping the Rosie’s Cracker Barrel tradition alive by also offering a selection of delicious items for sale. In addition to its house cheeses, everything from local honey and jams to bread and pastries from Ad Astra in Monterey and a variety of dates, olives, charcuterie and crackers is on display, everything a person might need for a midday picnic or an afternoon get-together with friends. A selection of French wines is planned for the near future. Coffee comes from local sources as well, Acme roasters in Seaside and Alta Organic in Santa Cruz, and ice cream comes from Monterey’s Revival.
Her family back in France was sympathetic to her plight and at one point her cousin mailed her a Camembert.
Officially, Carmel Valley Creamery is a CDFA-accredited microcreamery, since its output is small, at least for the moment. (There are only two other creameries in Monterey County—Garden Variety Cheese in Royal Oaks and Schoch Family Farmstead in Salinas.) In addition to making cheeses for her shop, Hauville supplies Bernardus Lodge, Holman Ranch, Woody’s at the Airport and The Preserve.
The lack of artisanal cheesemakers in this region is puzzling, Hauville says, when you consider places like Sonoma County have dozens. It’s even odder when you consider that in the early 1900s, Monterey County was an important dairy region in the state, before agriculture focused on row crops and wine grapes.
As you might expect, Hauville’s cheeses have a French accent. Schoch is her cow’s milk source and goat milk comes from Claravale Farm in San Benito County. Each week, she makes fresh fromage blanc in several varieties; others with a longer aging period include Cowboy, a Camembert-style bloomy rind cheese; Via Contenta, an alpine style with a semi-soft texture and nutty flavor; and River Day, a rind cheese with citrus notes, washed with beer and aged for 60 days. Hauville has plans to create other varieties as well, including a creamy feta and a reblochon-style cheese.
Hauville has her hands full as head cheesemaker and shopkeeper, but still bubbles over with expansion plans. She is adding to the interior of the Creamery, with more products and décor to be hung, in the spirit of Rosie’s Cracker Barrel. She also wants to make this a place of community much as former owner William “Rosie” Henry did, when his establishment attracted people from all walks of life. “Dennis the Menace” cartoonist Hank Ketcham was a regular, but the clientele ranged from cowboys to movie stars.
Hauville aims to honor the Cracker Barrel tradition by bringing all kinds of people together. She’s doing so now with a once-a-month family-friendly event that features a pen of pygmy goats and local vendors; she also hopes to hold a European-style holiday market with antiques, pottery, clothing and gift items for sale. “We want to bring a little France to Carmel Valley,” she says. And people are responding to that sense of community. Some drop by with gifts, including one woman who donated several original paintings depicting the Cracker Barrel in its heyday, which Hauville plans to hang in the store.
She says the business “is all about making good food for good people and bringing everyone together around a table.”
Carmel Valley Creamery
1 Esquiline Road, Carmel Valley
Open Tue–Sun 7:30am–5:00pm
831.200.9532
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK TREGENZA
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