32nd Anniversary: Capriole Goat Cheese

Capriole Goat Cheese
10329 New Cut Rd.
Greenville, Indiana 47124
812.923.9408
Capriolegoatcheese.com

Capriole Goat Cheese

On a gray, winter day in 1976, Larry and Judy Schad and their 3 small children, drove up a muddy, woodland drive to an abandoned farm in the southern Indiana hills. They found a burned-out cabin and a ramshackle barn surrounded by overgrown pasture and hillsides of 300-year-old oaks. The farm, they learned later, had belonged to Larry’s 3x great grandparents in 1850. Over the next 3 years, they erected 2 historic cabins over the old foundations and got their first goat. It was soon joined by more goats that Larry milked morning and evening, and in between, practiced law. By the mid-1980s with over 50 animals and swimming in goat milk, Judy was making goat cheese in the kitchen for family and friends. In 1988, they took the plunge into commercial cheese making.

Artisan domestic cheese was still very much a question mark in 1990. French was cool, local was not. Capriole had to reach well beyond Louisville, first to Chicago, and then both coasts to find a market. 22 years later, their herd of 500+ goats reached a tipping point and was sold to the Indiana farmers who still supply Capriole with their milk. In 2012 the farm was put into Sycamore Land Trust to preserve it as conservation land. While selling the goats was a hard page to turn, it allowed Judy to concentrate on the quality and consistency of their award winning cheeses. The Capriole story is made of hundreds of moments--an abandoned farm on a winter evening, the gift of a cantankerous, old goat, and the first, tart taste of a milky, fresh cheese. 32 years later, they’re still ladling 400 gallon vats of cheese curd by hand. Their family now includes a team of 8 passionate cheesemakers and employees, as well as 7 grandchildren, some of whom work there, and all who share memories of the family farm, and its world-class cheeses.

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