In Virginia’s Largest Amish Community, A Small Amish Dairy Sells Ricotta, Cuajada & More (12 Photos)

I had a chance to stop in at a new (for me at least) Amish cheese business in Virginia recently. New Sunrise Dairy is located in the Charlotte County, VA community – the state’s largest Amish settlement – and got its start about three years ago.

I had just visited this community last year, and even drove down the road it’s on – but missed it somehow.

It’s off-the-beaten-path as we say, but not by any means “hidden” (as some businesses in this community seem to be).

From the road you’ll easily spot the large production/warehouse building, with an entrance to the small retail outlet right up front.

While I believe New Sunrise sells a good bit of its product wholesale, you can visit this part of the business and make retail purchases of cheese.

When I dropped in along with my brother back in December, we found ourselves in a small room with a refrigerator case stocked full of multiple varieties of cheese. There is not much more to it than this – but if you’re here for one thing only, cheese, you won’t mind the place’s simplicity.

As you see on the sign, they advertise both “cheese” and “queso”. Like Amish in this community’s parent settlement, they cater to a Spanish-speaking market as well (more on that below).

That’s evidenced in the types of cheese for sale. There were at least one or two Mexican or Latin American-style cheeses which I was told they actually bring in from outside, and sell along with what they make here.

One, I believe, is the cuajada, though didn’t buy any or get a photo unfortunately – though below you’ll see a pic of that style cheese from another place in the same community.

Wikipedia technically calls cuajada a “dairy product”, traditionally made by curdling sheep’s milk, not describing it as a cheese – though it is called a cheese in other places.

We were soon greeted by the Amishman running the retail end that day (I imagine he was at work on the production side when we arrived), a friendly man named Ben Esh.

Ben explained that in addition to what we saw in the store, they also sold queso and beans at a market in Maryland. So they are catering to a Spanish-speaking market as well.

There is at least one article that’s been done on this business already, giving some of the back story that I didn’t have a chance to get into with Ben. From the Charlotte Gazette:

With cows milked just right down the road to 11 varieties of cheeses produced in the shop daily, Elam Stoltzfus said the community started with the idea of the shop in 2019.

“We were selling our milk to places in Northern Virginia,” Stoltzfus said. “Now we can take our own product and turn it into a product for better farming success.”

Taking that milk product and making it into cheese means pasteurizing 16,000 pounds of milk before culture and coloring are added along with other ingredients to make their cheeses.

On average, Stolzfus said it takes five hours to make hard block cheese and three hours to make some of the softer cheeses like Ricotta.

According to Stoltzfus, making a living by farming is becoming harder and harder. We opened this and the other places for the future of the farmers in the Amish Community,” Stoltzfus said. “Income on a farm is limited.”

And here’s a bit more from the article on the status of dairying in this community. The settlement has four church districts and over 500 people, so likely 100 total households, or more.

With 10 dairy farming families in the Charlotte County Amish community, Stoltzfus said the cheese shop was established to benefit not just the farmers but the entire community and the general public.

“This benefits the community,” he said. “The general public accepted the idea we had and wanted to do here.”

So that would come out to around 10% of the families here dairy farming. That’s not a huge number, but not bad. The entire state of Virginia has only a few hundred dairy farms (though admittedly, most are probably significantly larger than your average Amish dairy).

Here is the New Sunrise Dairy cheese list, which I found here. That source dates from 2024, so it’s possible there might be small changes, but this gives you an idea of the selection:

I wish we had picked up more of these, especially the jalapeño sticks. It was excellent, the jalapeño pepper in particular, which tasted very fresh.

One problem was we had forgotten to pick up cash on the way in (I have gotten too used to paying by credit card everywhere), and so we were only working with about $25 we had on hand – with another store yet to patronize. So that limited how much we were able to get here, or else would have surely left with more.

Visit New Sunrise Dairy

If you’d like to visit, here is the address and business hours as of publication:

New Sunrise Dairy
4099 Germantown Rd
Charlotte Court House, VA 23923

Monday – Friday: 8 AM to 4 PM
Saturday: 8 AM to 11:30 AM (according to Google) OR 8 AM to 2 PM (according to the photo above, which I took in December 2025)
Sunday: CLOSED

And if you do visit, keep in mind that this isn’t the only business of the sort in this community.

Last year I gave you a look at Country Corner Dairy, also started by local Amish farmers in the last several years.

It’s located not too far from New Sunrise, and with a larger and more extensive selection of cheeses, foods and other products, is also worth paying a visit.

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