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Rogue Creamery's celebrated blue cheese has returned to its roots — Europe. More than 50 years after creamery founder Tom Vella brought the mold, cultures and recipe for Oregon Blue home to Central Point from Roquefort, France, Rogue Creamery became the first U.S. cheese maker to export raw-milk cheese to the European Union. "We knew there was a market and a demand there," says Rogue Creamery co-owner David Gremmels. Capturing the distinction as maker of the world's best blue cheese — Rogue River Blue — at the 2003 World Cheese Awards, as well as the first American cheese maker to be featured at 2007's prestigious Cheese Festival in Bra, Italy, didn't hurt either. "We're seeing a real consumer commitment to artisinal, handmade, sustainable and organic products," Gremmels says. Artisinal cheese is one of the fastest growing segments of the $59 billion gourmet food industry, The Associated Press reported last month. Double-digit growth through 2012 is expected for cheese and dairy products, many of them specialty cheese. It's a trend Gremmels and partner Cary Bryant anticipated almost from the moment they purchased Rogue Creamery from Vella's son, Ig Vella, in 2002. Coveting the European market, Gremmels and Bryant embarked on a three-year process for obtaining numerous certifications while simultaneously securing a dedicated source for raw milk. "We found what the hoops were, and we would jump through them one by one," Bryant says. Before last year, commercial shipments of raw-milk cheese could not be exported from the U.S. to the European Union because of an outdated raw-milk certificate. Existing U.S. dairy certification program protocols also did not cover raw milk. Rogue Creamery worked for two years and three months with local, state and national legislators to dissolve the barrier. Raw milk is the basis for all of the creamery's blue cheeses and 90 percent of its cheddars. Although the creamery in the late 1930s became the state's first pasteurized cheesemaking plant under Tom Vella's ownership, Gremmels and Bryant only pasteurize products, like curds, that can't be aged to federal standards or that contain extraneous ingredients, such as herbs and spices in their myriad flavored cheddars. "You have to look at the history and the safety of the cheeses," Bryant says. "They've only been pasteurized for 50 years, maybe 80." In the absence of pasteurization, some cheeses can become contaminated with listera. The bacteria, which also can taint deli meats, smoked seafood and hot dogs, can kill infants and people with weakened immune systems. It also can cause miscarriages. Federal regulations set in 1977 for aging raw-milk cheese a minimum of 60 days at a temperature of not less than 35 degrees are based on science indicating the process allowed sufficient time for any pathogens present during manufacturing to perish. While those regulations are coming under review this year, producers of raw-milk cheese are fearing additional regulations and arguing that pasteurizing cheeses sacrifices flavor. "It wouldn't be the same cheese; we would lose the flavor enzymes," Gremmels says of pasteurization. "You can't replace that flavor with cultures. "The raw-milk cheeses add a uniquely different flavor experience." That flavor is what Gremmels refers to as "terroir," the French reference to a sense of place one gleans from tasting a particular food. Oft-used in wine parlance, the concept of terroir is one way artisinal food crafters are promoting their efforts to deliver natural, sustainable, organic and even "compassionate" products. For Rogue Creamery, that effort and the terroir, itself, springs from Rogue View Dairy in Grants Pass, the creamery's exclusive supplier of cows' milk, which composes every cheese apart from 20 percent of one of its most limited labels: Echo Mountain, which takes some of its flavor from goats' milk. "We pay about a 20-percent premium for our milk ... that's one of the reasons they can keep going," says Francis Plowman, the creamery's director of marketing. "The quality of the milk in the state is very high, and the quality from this milk is even higher." Securing a consistent supply of milk enabled the creamery over the past three years to increase cheesemaking from two to three days each week to six or seven, Plowman says. Increasing production poised the creamery to ship across the pond as soon as they received the go-ahead. In December, Whole Foods UK and Neal's Yard Dairy, both in London, received batches of the creamery's blue cheese. And with the European market in their grasp, Rogue Creamery and other raw milk cheese producers are maneuvering to hold the ground they've gained, establishing the Raw Milk Cheesemakers Association, of which Bryant is president. The year-old group works to ensure the safety of raw-milk cheeses and their appeal at home and abroad. Reach Food Editor Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail [email protected].