Sona Creamery, the District’s first commercial cheesemaking operation, closed its doors on April 11. (Photo via Facebook)
It’s a sour day for D.C. turophiles: Sona Creamery, the Little Cheesemaking Operation That Could, has finally called it quits, announcing yesterday that it was shutting its doors for good.
“After three years of working the regulatory chain to get raw milk in the District, and become the first cheese creamery, we were paying rent for space that wasn’t supporting itself,” said owners Genevieve and Conan O’Sullivan in a statement. “Unfortunately, this has made it impossible to remain open.”
The cheesemaking couple opened Sona, D.C.’s first commercial cheese creamery, in early 2014 near Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, but spent the first year and a half of their operations unable to actually make cheese. This was primarily due to the fact that the city has no agriculture department, the type of agency that normally regulates cheesemaking operations in states.
The regulatory hurdles included petitioning for variances for the food code so they would be able to age and cure cheese, as well as being able to bring raw milk into the city as long as they didn’t sell it on premise, pasteurizing and aging it according to federal standards.
The O’Sullivans finally were able to start making cheese on site in late summer 2015, but it clearly was too little, too late. Ultimately, the expensive rent combined with a neighborhood becoming saturated by restaurants seems to have made it impossible to overcome the delay in starting up the commercial cheesemaking business that had been at the center of Sona’s plan.
Although popular among Capitol Hill locals for well-curated offerings of local cheese, wine, and beer at reasonable prices, Sona Creamery just didn’t have the chance to realize its full potential of providing handmade European-style fresh cheese to the wider community.
Cheese shop Cowgirl Creamery closed its Penn Quarter location in December 2013, though it never made its own cheese within city limits.
