Attention Jim: we hope you too will one day receive the American Cheese Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ignazio "Ig" Vella, who helped pioneer California's artisan cheese movement. died at his home in Sonoma. He was 82. In the early 1980s he took over the family business, which included Sonoma's Vella Cheese Co. and Oregon's Rogue Creamery, emphasizing local dairies and small-production artisan cheeses. He went on to produce some of the nation's most acclaimed dry Monterey Jack cheese, and in 2006 was the first recipient of the American Cheese Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/12/BABM1JSIRF.DTL
Thanks, Dave--I'd be just has happy if Sarah (my wife and the real cheesemaker in our household) won it one day.
That said, I met Ig a few times. Kind of a cantankerous old dude. He had no compunctions about calling people on their shit, but if he liked you, you knew you were doing something right. He was without question a true original. Had it not been for him, the artisan cheese movement in this country would be very very different, if it existed at all.
