Dug into the side of a sagebrush-covered slope on 84 acres near Tumalo is Flavio DeCastilhos’ cellar, a climate-controlled room kept at 56 degrees and 85 percent humidity that’s filled with deep brining tanks and racks of 10- and 20-pound wheels of cheese.

On the other side of the property is the goat pen, filled with hundreds of female goats, or does, most of which are milked twice a day for Tumalo Farms’ award-winning goat’s milk cheeses.

In all, DeCastilhos — the managing owner of Tumalo Farms along with his wife, Margie, and business partners Bruce and Martha Rhine — has nearly 500 goats on the property, though many are kids who haven’t matured enough to lactate.

“You can’t push Mother Nature,” DeCastilhos said.

Trouble is, more and more people are discovering the 4-year-old company’s artisan cheeses. There’s not enough milk to keep up with demand. So Tumalo Farms recently added 2,400 square feet to its production facility in order to start making cow’s milk cheeses, from milk it will buy from Poland Farms in Madras.

The company will host an open house on Saturday to show off its expanded plant.

Tumalo Farms is the second commercial cheese-maker to set up shop in Central Oregon. The first in the region was Juniper Grove of Redmond, which also produces goat’s milk cheeses.

There are a number of other specialty food companies in the region, such as the American Licorice Co., BeBop Biscotti and Goody’s, all in Bend, along with ice cream maker Eberhard’s Dairy in Redmond and water bottler Earth2O in Culver. Throw in the region’s craft brewers and distillers, and they all make up a small but growing specialty food sector in Central Oregon, said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon.

“I think our specialty foods business in Central Oregon is really centered on brewing and distilling, but specialty foods are great for diversifying the economy,” Lee said. “They are very recession-resistant.”

National reputation

As if to prove the point, Tumalo Farms is growing and is earning a national reputation in the process. In March, the company won the gold award at the U.S. Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin in the hard goat’s milk cheese category with its flagship Classico brand, a creamy, Gouda-like semihard cheese. The cheese also was named the first runner-up for the entire contest.

According to DeCastilhos, he was the first Oregon cheese-maker to take such an honor.

“Flavio has this amazing ability to take an idea and make it happen,” said Tami Parr, president of the Oregon Cheese Guild. “They are one of the newer creameries and in four years, he has a national reputation for his cheese, and it’s really good cheese. They are one of the stars of Oregon cheese for sure.”

Parr said Oregon’s cheese-making industry has grown roughly 100 percent in the last decade. She counts 20, mostly small-scale artisan cheese-makers now operating in the state. Most of the new creameries use goat’s milk, she said, partly because goats are easier to care for than cattle.

But Parr said the growth in cheese-making also is due to the rise in demand for locally made products, as well as farmers markets that allow small-scale food-makers easy access to customers.

DeCastilhos was a successful technology entrepreneur from the Bay Area when he decided he wanted to become a cheese-maker. He and Margie researched different areas of the country before settling in Central Oregon in 2003, drawn to the region by its quality of life. They purchased the acreage in Tumalo in 2004 and produced their first cheese in 2005.

In 2006, the company won its first awards. At the American Cheese Society convention in Portland, the company earned top honors for its peppercorn-filled semihard cheese and Pondhopper, another semihard cheese made with a local microbrew that DeCastilhos keeps secret.

In 2008, it won the first-place award for the best goat’s milk cheese aged 60 days or more at the American Cheese Society’s annual cheese competition in Chicago.

Expanding

As the awards pile up — quite literally in a pile on a windowsill at the company’s plant — DeCastilhos is thinking about new cheeses. The company now makes six different goat’s milk cheeses, including Remembrance, a semisoft cheese that includes rosemary and has a “wonderfully long” finish, according to the company’s Web site.

But now DeCastilhos wants to make cow’s milk cheese, especially “bloomy rinds,” or soft cheeses such as brie that grow wisps of edible mold on their rinds. To do that properly, DeCastilhos needed a new cellar for aging the cheeses with a different set of climate requirements: a temperature of 52 degrees and humidity of 95 percent.

Tumalo Farms’ goat’s milk cheeses generally age for 90 days to a year. The cow’s milk cheeses DeCastilhos expects to make will age 10 to 14 days.

Along with the new cellar, DeCastilhos also expanded his production facility, essentially quadrupling its capacity. He now can produce two batches of cheese a day.

DeCastilhos won’t say how much cheese he produces in order to keep his competitors guessing, but he hopes he’ll be selling more in the coming months. Tumalo Farms cheese is now sold in the Northwest only, though it can be purchased online.

However, the online market is small, DeCastilhos said, roughly 3 percent of sales. The company also sells its cheeses at most of the farmers markets in Central Oregon, accounting for another 3 to 4 percent of sales.

The majority of the company’s sales are direct to distributors, regional restaurants and retailers, such as Whole Foods. The plant’s expansion will help Tumalo Farms expand into Whole Foods’ California market and the Southwest, DeCastilhos said.

Those markets require a steady stream of product DeCastilhos previously could not produce.

But DeCastilhos said he’s not just after market share. He wants to create a “Central Oregon terroir,” or reputation for cheese and other products produced in Central Oregon that reflect the region’s geographic characteristics, much as vineyards have appellations that describe where the grapes are grown.

“We want to create a whole new variety of cheese, and our goal is to serve a whole plate of cheese reflecting the Central Oregon terroir,” DeCastilhos said.

As part of that, DeCastilhos plans to open a tasting room at the company’s facility within the next year.

“There’s been a renaissance in the U.S. in artisan cheeses, and we want to provide an experience for that, and give attention to quality cheeses,” DeCastilhos said.

If you go

What: Tumalo Farms open house

When: Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: 64515 Mock Road, Bend

Contact: 541-350-3718 or www.tumalofarms.com