But that\u2019s not why Avery couldn\u2019t sleep.<\/p>\n
Her parents were on the other end of that call, and they were telling her to get on Facebook Live quick, where they were streaming the 2019 American Cheese Society Conference awards\u2014the Oscars of artisan cheese.<\/p>\n
Unlike most teenagers, Avery doesn\u2019t have social media, so it took a minute for her roommate to log her in and another to set up a video call with her parents (who\u2019d flown to the UK with her, but were in London that night). When they finally got situated, it was just in time to hear that Aries\u2014the cheese Avery created earlier this year to launch her company, Shooting Star Creamery\u2014had won Third Place Best of Show, right behind the likes of Murray\u2019s and Wegmans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard my name called on my parents\u2019 phone,\u201d Avery said, recalling the evening. \u201cMy parents were going crazy on the other end of the line.\u201d Aries had also taken first in its category (American Originals, sheep\u2019s milk), making Avery the youngest cheesemaker in ACS history to take home a blue ribbon and the youngest to place in the Best of Show category.<\/p>\n
And later that week, after seeing a production of \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u201d at Shakespeare\u2019s Globe Theater and participating in many acting workshops, Avery\u2019s group won Best Musical at the Fringe\u2019s American High School Theatre Festival. When she finally returned home to Paso Robles, California on August 9, there was no denying her star was on a steady rise.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/ru3EG2SZ.jpeg\")
<\/a>Avery Jones’ cheese, Aries, won Third Place Best in Show at the 2019 American Cheese Society Awards.<\/p><\/div>\n
While it makes the story no less impressive, it\u2019s worth noting Avery\u2019s cheese pedigree. She\u2019s the youngest daughter of Reggie and Kellie Jones, who moved their family to central California in 2012 to start Central Coast Creamery. In the years since, the Joneses have won nearly 30 awards themselves, for cheeses like Seascape, Goat Cheddar, and Ewereka.<\/p>\n
Aries, aged a minimum of six months, is an Alpine-style sheep\u2019s milk cheese with a clean ivory paste like pale marble waiting to be chiseled, dotted elegantly with understated nebulas of crystallization. Somewhere between a Gouda and a Comt\u00e9, Aries melts in your mouth like cashew butter and lingers with notes of bubblegum, hay, and salty ocean air. Though richer than a Basque sheep\u2019s milk cheese, Aries\u2019 understated balance is refreshing\u2014it feels downright erudite.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re thinking, \u201cI\u2019ve never heard of an aged Alpine-style sheep\u2019s<\/em> milk cheese before,\u201d that is by design: Avery landed on the style by surveying the cheese landscape and looking for holes. \u201cThis was an obvious gap in the market,\u201d she said. Avery plans all of her cheeses this way, utilizing her perspective as a relative outsider to look for unmet consumer need. Her next release is a bloomy rind sheep\u2019s milk cheese called Leo, followed by a washed rind sheep\u2019s milk cheese called Scorpio (Avery\u2019s astrological sign). Following that will be a mixed sheep and cow\u2019s milk cheese called Sagittarius, inspired by the winter sign\u2019s centaur symbol.<\/p>\n While astrological imagery might be exactly what you\u2019d expect from a high school student, the same cannot be said for sales-oriented market considerations. In case you haven\u2019t gathered as much, Avery is not your typical high school student.<\/p>\n She maintains straight A\u2019s, holds her high school\u2019s sophomore record in the 100-meter dash, and is the co-founder of her school\u2019s popular Dungeons& Dragons club. For fun, she experiments with animation, drawing, writing, and story-building, and plays a big role in caring for her family\u2019s cat, rabbit, two dogs, three chickens, and many fish. For a recent birthday, she designed an elaborate Harry Potter<\/em>-themed scavenger hunt throughout the neighborhood for her friends, and she already knows her college major (biological sciences).<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s smart, creative, kind, funny, coachable, talented, and a great friend,\u201d said Catherine Kingsbury, Avery\u2019s drama teacher, who said Avery\u2019s also taken the time to learn many aspects of theater besides acting. \u201cShe has run lights, helped as a stage hand, built props…She is definitely one of our stars both on and off the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n In what fleeting downtime Avery had last year, she picked up a book called Feather Merchant, written by her great-grandfather. In it, she learned that he\u2019d received two purple hearts during WorldWar II, and that his father had died young of injuries sustained in World War I. She researched further, finding letters her great-great-grandfather wrote home from France, and became moved to the point of action.<\/p>\n \u201cShe really wanted to find a way to help veterans,\u201d said Reggie, who brainstormed with her before she landed on the idea to start a creamery to fundraise for veterans’ organizations. She had access to a team of skilled cheesemakers, and had been watching her parents make cheese since she was five years old. Some of her earliest memories involve going into the creamery to flip wheels on holidays. Equipped with this knowledge, access to the family facilities, and a 200-gallon cheese vat that Reggie says she will definitely need to pay him back for, Avery got started on Aries.<\/p>\n Like her parents, she single-sources her sheep\u2019s milk from one family farm, Etchebehere Sheep Dairy. She uses the Central Coast plant, and enlists the help of her parents in managerial tasks while she\u2019s at school. (Reggie says she may need to hire a manager when she goes off to college, though). A portion of all Shooting Star profits goes towards a local Paso Robles non-profit called AmpSurf, offering surfing clinics to disabled veterans, adults, and children. And so far, those profits have been coming almost exclusively from John Nava.<\/p>\n Reggie Jones and his daughter, Avery Jones<\/p><\/div>\n R<\/span>eggie Jones and John Nava first met in 2008, when Reggie brought two wheels of his first cheese (the now-decorated cow-and-goat\u2019s-milk blend Seascape) into Sigona\u2019s Farmers Market, a specialty grocer with locations in Redwood City and Palo Alto, where Nava is the cheese buyer. Reggie and Kellie were still living in Modesto and Avery was not yet five when Nava tasted the experimental wheels and told Reggie, \u201cI\u2019ll take it all.\u201d<\/p>\n A similar scenario played out earlier this year, when Nava drove down to Central Coast Creamery to taste a cheese he\u2019d commissioned Reggie to make for Sigona\u2019s (Moo-Na Lisa, also an ACS winner). \u201c[Reggie]\u2019s like, \u2018I want you to taste this other cheese,\u2019\u201d Nava said, recalling the incident. \u201cHe\u2019s got this round opaque wheel and he gives it to me and he goes, \u2018It\u2019s not quite ready yet, needs two or three months, but I just want you to taste it and tell me what you think.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That opaque wheel was, of course, Aries. It was the best sheep\u2019s milk cheese Nava had ever tasted, and he was about to congratulate Reggie to that effect. [Reggie] goes, \u2018Well guess who made it!\u2019 And I said, \u2018You made this, right?\u2019 And he goes, \u2018No, Avery,\u2019\u201d Nava said. He told Reggie he wanted to be the first to carry it, and Reggie told him he could have just about all of it, save for some ACS test wheels. In the end, Nava got 38 of the 42 wheels Avery made in her initial run, and he sold them all within just two months.<\/p>\n \u201cI have probably at least five to 10people come in a week asking for the cheese since they\u2019ve seen it in the New York Times<\/em> article,\u201d said Nava, who referred to Avery as the 15-year-old phenom when she won at ACS.<\/p>\n Word of the phenom has now spread, and demand for Aries is outpacing supply. Another 55 wheels hit the market in November, 50 with Nava\u2019s name on them. That number will double in the new year, with over 100 wheels reaching maturity per month, at which point Shooting Star will make its national debut.<\/p>\n This attention isn\u2019t likely to go to Avery\u2019s head, though. \u201cAvery is not a self-promoter,\u201d her older sister Breanna said. \u201cShe needs to be encouraged to go on social media just to at least minimally promote the business.\u201d So far, the Shooting Star Instagram<\/a> account has 257 followers and just nine posts. Avery is not the type to revel in all the attention she\u2019s garnered, and also doesn\u2019t want to make too big a deal of her age. \u201cI don\u2019t think that age really makes a difference if you\u2019re passionate and enthusiastic about something,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n While she came to her social media stance on her own, at least some credit for Avery\u2019s maturity belongs with the supportive and inspiring environment in which she grew up. In addition to witnessing her parents follow their dreams and her two older sisters go off to the likes of Stanford and Berkeley to become lawyers and financial advisers, she also had the creamery staff (all women) to look up to. \u201cThe Central Coast Creamery ladies are amazing,\u201d Avery said. \u201cThey are like my sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if my parents have ever taken on the \u2018feminist\u2019 label, but that is certainly how their parenting and leadership has manifested,\u201d Breanna said. \u201cThey have seen and comforted us when we\u2019ve encountered some of the barriers that women face… They are our biggest champions in those situations, and I think the same is true for the women at the plant.\u201d<\/p>\n Reggie agreed, describing his staff as strong, educated, and independent.\u201cWe have the expectation that these ladies are here to change the world. This certainly has been a great influence on Avery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Though she would likely squirm at the claim, Avery is already changing the world, breaking records and altering our perception of who can and can\u2019t start businesses and win awards. The children of farmers and cheesemakers around the globe will look up to her the way she looked up to the Central Coast staff and her ambitious parents\u2014as inspiration and permission to hack a clear path through tangly, untrodden woods. To not wait until a prescribed time to chase a big dream.<\/p>\n<\/a>