There's no big secret to making cheese: Let milk curdle; separate the curds from the whey, or watery remains; salt; press; and age.

Cheese. It's been done the same way for centuries.

Making great cheese is another matter. That's a mix of science, experience, art - and more than a little obsession.

Crafting distinctive artisanal cheese was long the domain of European makers, while U.S. dairies focused on mass production of cheddar and other popular American cheeses.

But over the past two decades, a small but growing group of cheese-makers in California, Wisconsin, Vermont - and even Southeastern Pennsylvania - have set out to prove that fine U.S. cheeses, like wines, can stand up without shame next to the old-world competition.

Ask Trent Hendricks, a Montgomery County, Pa., man who chucked a successful trucking business to make cheese. In just four years, he has won several national awards and has seen his products land on the menus of fine restaurants.

"If we are going to make cheese, I want it to be the best," said Hendricks, 32, while giving a tour of his 30-acre farm near Telford, Pa. "I wasn't having fun," he says of trucking. "If I'm going to put in the hours ... my goal is fulfillment."

If fulfillment is award-winning cheese, Trent and Rachel Hendricks have had a very good year.

In March, Hendricks' Cabriejo, an aged, hard goat-milk cheese, won the gold at the U.S. Cheese Championship in Milwaukee. And three of his cheeses took honors at the American Cheese Society show in July.

Hendricks, who limits retail sales to the cars queued up outside on Godshall Road on Saturdays, hopes his experience shows others that Pennsylvania, like Vermont, can earn a reputation for hand-crafted cheese.

"I want to export Pennsylvania and I want to raise the bar," he says.

While there are no data on handmade cheeses, Jim Collom, a statistician for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Pennsylvania, says its production and quality are on the rise - a clear increase from the Amish and small farmers who always sold homemade cheese of varied quality at local farm markets.

"Calling it artisanal or farmstead (fine cheese-makers with their own herds) cheese doesn't make it good," says Jack Morgan, plainspoken owner of Downtown Cheese in Reading Terminal Market, who is not above using barnyard adjectives to describe some handcrafted specimens he has sampled in 30 years of selling.

Cheese, like wine, is made in a natural process; basically it is fermented milk. One must understand the science of why things happen and what can be controlled, Hendricks says. "Beyond that, it's artistry."

There are any number of decisions to be made in processing and aging that determine what kind of cheese will result. Do you wash the curds or not? Heat the curds or not? Mill the curds before pressing? Salt the curds before ripening and, if so, how much? Let the cheese ripen after dipping in wax or acquire a hard-rind? Acquire a white mold or blue?"It still amazes me how you can take one thing and come out with such an incredibly large variety of products," Hendricks says.Even after you have the cheese you want, it can be ruined if it's not stored and presented properly before sale.Competitive pricing is another challenge for small cheese-makers. At Philadelphia's Downtown Cheese, a Vermont artisanal is $5 more per pound than a comparable cheese from the Pyrenees region between Spain and France."The only people who are really successful at this are ... not those who start out to make a lot of money, but those who do it out of passion," says Douglass Newbold, who breeds pure Nubian goats and has made her Greystone Chevratel goat cheese for 30 years.Newbold, 62, a former chef, no longer sells to the public. Her original herd of 25 is down to nine, enough to supply clients such as White Dog Cafe in the Philadelphia area's University City.Pete Demchur, 57, producer of the region's best-known homemade cheese at Shellbrook Hollow Farm near West Chester, Pa., is not quite ready to quit his day job and make the leap to catalog and Internet sales - even though his cheese is sold by about 20 restaurants and retailers and he cannot keep up with the demand.Indeed, artisanal cheese-making is not quite as romantic as it sounds."It's often boring day-to-day," Newbold says. "There's a lot of manure ... health problems with the animals. It takes a lot of attention."Hendricks agrees."In addition to making cheese, I have to be a nutritionist, a veterinarian, a herdsman, a general farmer," Hendricks says. "If you're on a quest to make the perfect cheese, you quickly realize that you're never better than your milk. You can make bad cheese out of good milk but you can never make good cheese out of bad milk. And good milk means you have to have good forage, good pasture, housing and feed."Hendricks says the "art and craftsmanship" of making goat and cow milk into fine cheeses appealed to him even though he and his family are not "cheese fanatics.""We're not the sort to sit around a cheese plate one night and knock off a bottle of wine," he says. In the beginning, he read every book he could find about cheese-making and began experimenting. His motto: "I have no fear of making a bad batch of cheese."Hendricks' award-winning Cabriejo, for example, began as "a mistake" that he hated after two months of aging. Six months later, Hendricks says, he cut into a remaining wheel from that batch and knew it was a winner.

Today, Hendricks sells 30 types of goat and cow cheese, raw milk and other dairy products, as well as his organically grown eggs and chickens, beef, lamb, goat and pork. Because raw milk is not sold in neighboring states, Hendricks says, many customers arrive Saturdays from New Jersey, New York and Maryland with large coolers.Like Demchur and Newbold, Hendricks has been discovered by several area chefs who want his cheese, beef and other products for their restaurants, including Majolica in Phoenixville and EverMay on the Delaware, above New Hope.Unlike his artisanal colleagues, Hendricks is focusing on selling his own rather than supplying other retailers.Sometime this month, he, his pregnant wife, and three young children will move lock, stock and farm to a new site about two miles away.It's a $1 million investment that includes 75 acres - 60 for pasture - a state-of-the-art "green" milking barn, and cheese-making building with a retail store.Hendricks believes the new site will let him double his herd size, yet retain control over his animals and the quality of his cheeses - and survive the vagaries of food fads.Even for a self-described workaholic, Hendricks talks of the new spread as the Holy Grail in his quest for fulfillment: living in an old farmhouse with his family, his animals and cheeses flourishing under his watchful eye, and his own retail store filled with loyal customers.Hendricks Farms' Web site is www.hendricksfarmsanddairy.com

While it's not unusual to see brie on dessert menus or with fruit at the end of a buffet table, serving plated selections of two to four cheeses as a final dinner course is unexplored territory for most Americans.And savoring the contrasting textures and flavors of chevre, Gruyere, Roquefort, Munster, or a bold Caerphilly (from Wales) can be more than a little intimidating.To get some pointers on assembling a cheese plate, we went to fromagiere Emilio Mignucci, partner in the family-run DiBruno Bros., and a grandson of Danny, one of the founding DiBruno brothers.Here's what he suggests:Choose one really great classic style of cheese, perhaps a "stiltonesque" Bayley Hazen Blue, and serve it with a variety of condiments such as wine jelly, assorted nuts, and some dried fruit such as Turkish apricots. Or,Offer a selection of three or four cheeses of varying textures (soft, semi-soft, hard and/or blue) and differing milks (cow, goat or sheep). Some mild, some robust.One artisanal combination Mignucci favors:Pleasant Ridge Reserve, a firm, unpasteurized cow's milk cheese made in Wisconsin and styled after the classic Swiss gruyere.Shellbark Farms, a fresh, creamy goat's milk cheese made in Chester County, with a refreshing, light acidic flavor.Ewe's Blue, a spicy, sharp sheep's milk cheese made in New York's Hudson Valley.

Serve the cheeses with a selection of fresh fruits - sliced apples, pears, grapes, figs or berries, or accompany cheeses with French bread, hearty whole grain or nut loaves, water crackers, or other gourmet biscuits.For flavor interest, complement cheeses with Kalamata olives, roasted garlic cloves, roasted nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, grilled or marinated vegetables. Or, simply add a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.Cheese plates are best arranged about an hour before guests arrive or before serving, and can be presented on a cutting board or tile server for interest.FYI: Rinds are edible, even the funny-looking ones with spots of mold. OK, it's an acquired taste. And don't heat brie in the microwave. It gets too runny. A warm place will get it creamy quick enough.